When I announced media would be considered for Studs my email box began to overflow with nominations. It would be ridiculous to include media in the Stud quest and not award the man we love to call…doctor. Paul McGuire, or Pauly, is best known for his comical sense of humor. His realistic views allow his writing to show the grand spectrum of the poker community, ranging from the seedy, self-centered, unfavorable individuals to the people you would want to take home to mom. And while his cynical hooker stories and urinal sightings may exhibit an unruly man, I would lay 100 to 1 that his mom is proud. After all, who wouldn’t be proud of their son who is known by first name only. Like Madonna or Cher.
Just as October baseball was getting underway we spoke about his Wall Street career, writing struggles and a brief life in late night film.
Michele: How’s it going?
Pauly: It’s going pretty good. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling. I just spent a week drinking a lot of Tequila so…I’m really tired. But I’m in New York so I’m happy. I get to hang out with my brother and baseball playoffs are starting.
Michele: Are you originally from New York?
Pauly: Yes, I grew up in New York City.
ML: Did you go to college in New York?
PM: I went to college in Atlanta at Emory University in the early 90′s. So that’s been my background in the south. That’s really when I started gambling a lot, I grew up in a gambling culture in New York since there’s a lot of sports. And with sports, there’s a lot of gambling attached. But, when I went to college, pre-online gaming, there wasn’t a lot to do so we played a lot of cards.
ML: Me too, we started out with our laundry quarters.
PM: Right, there you go, you’d always have those people that would bring the jars to the game. That’s when it was a lot of fun. I went to school with a few rich kids so we’d take our IOU’s to them because we knew they were good for it.
ML: So, you left college a true gambler but with a degree and then you went back to New York?
PM: I went back to New York and I didn’t know what to do. So, the first job I took was…I was a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ML: Nice, were you there at night?
PM: No, no. I worked during the day but I had friends that worked the night-shift. I met a lot of interesting artist type people. Through them I realized that if you really want to work at your art you’re going to have to get a job to support yourself to pay the rent. And every other waking hour you have to work on bettering yourself as an artist. I saw a lot of tremendous work ethics from the creative people.
And then there are shady people that are guards that like to gamble. We used to bet on the horses a lot and we had a weekly home game where we would play cards.
Then I cleaned up my act and got a job on Wall Street trading bonds for a while. After year and a half I quit my job because I realized my calling was a writer and not as a broker or trader. I was doing pretty well but it wasn’t fulfilling to me. It felt like I was 23 going on 40 so I quit, went home and started writing a book. And I kind of…never looked back since.
ML: Wait, back up. Did Ben Stiller contact you to help him with his method acting?
PM: No, not at all. And he worked at the Museum of Natural History across the park.
ML: I know, I know but come on…I had to ask.
PM: [Laughing] He would have asked me though. People used to come up to me and ask me where the dinosaurs were.
ML: No.
PM: [Laughing] Yeah, I would tell them… you have to out the front door, down the steps, get in a taxi, go across the park, go into the Museum of Natural History and go up to the fifth floor. People would get confused.
ML: [Giggling] That is awesome. OK, so back to the mid 90′s…you started writing.
PM: Yeah, I started writing and taking a lot of dead-end jobs. I did every job under the world. A lot of service jobs, I was bartending for a while, I moved around a lot, lived all over the country, ended up in Seattle at one point.
ML: Were you wearing flannel shirts then?
PM: No, but I had really long hair and a beard. I was a burned out hippie. I didn’t wear the flannel shirts but I guess you could say I fully reversed myself to the bohemian lifestyle. I was playing a lot of poker when I was in Seattle. It was right when Rounder’s came out. And everything was different after that.
ML: Oh yeah, as a Hold’em player back then I couldn’t wait for it to come out. I saw the first showing on opening day.
PM: Wow, in Texas?
ML: Yeah…so you worked a lot of jobs. Did you ever work at Starbucks?
PM: [ Snickering] No, never worked at Starbucks. Although there were jobs I took where I thought maybe I should work at Starbucks because I would be making more per hour. I did manage an adult video store at one point. A lot of weird jobs… I bartended, a waiter, washed dishes, painted houses, a plumbers assistant, I did a lot of telemarketing jobs, phone sales, call center stuff.
ML: I might have hung up on you before.
PM: Maybe, maybe.
ML: OK wait, so back to this adult video store…was it one that had a hole in the back room?
PM: No, there were no peep booths so I didn’t have to do any jizz mopping. They sold a lot of novelty toys, dildo’s, sex toys and stuff like that. As a writer it was fascinating because you had a lot of sexual deviant people in there but at the same time our regular clientele were regular wealthy doctors and lawyers from Long Island.
Growing up in New York in the 70′s you always had that image of the vile peep booths in Times Square and the p@$# industry [edited due to spam attacks] and then you realize that its infiltrated more common everyday life. It’s kind of like poker in a way. You know, people kind of had this quiet thing they kept on the down low. Yeah, it gave me a nice glimpse into humanity.
ML: Hmmm, that’s really nice.
PM: Yep.
ML: So, how did you get involved in poker writing?
PM: After 9/11 I was broke and went back to work on Wall Street. I reconnected with an old friend who was writing for a newspaper in Florida and he told me about his blog and he kept saying I should start my own. I didn’t do it for a while and finally I started one called The Tao of Pauly. On Wall Street you could be busy for four or five hours and then you have ten or fifteen minutes where you do absolutely nothing. I would take those opportunities to blog. This was 2002 and I was that guy that would forward on those funny emails and you would get fifteen emails from me a day so I decided I’d put all of that stuff on the site so my friends could check it out. I started writing random poems and haikus while I was working at a well known investment firm on my lunch break.
I was playing and writing more about poker. Some people didn’t know what I was talking about and some wanted me to start a new blog. That new blog was the Tao of Poker. I started writing there and I didn’t think anyone was reading but I slowing found out that there were people reading and there was this huge community of poker bloggers. About a year after that someone contacted me from a Dutch website asking me if I’d be interested in helping write player profiles then offered me a column. And the next thing I know I had three or four online clients that found me through my blog.
At the time I wasn’t really working just playing in the clubs and I needed a few bucks to supplement my income so I decided hey, I might as well do this. After that, the Poker Prof, Lasvegasvegas.com, and his father were big fans and they wanted me to come out to Vegas and help them cover the World Series. Through them I met Stan Sludikoff from Poker Player Newspaper. I started writing for him and then Fox Sports made a deal with Stan to provide poker content for Fox Sports. This is a cool story…Stan told them (Fox Sports) they could pick any writer and use the content for their page and they chose me. Then I met people through Amy Calistri and it took off from there.
I’ve been really fortunate to meet the right people. It seems the people I met were already fans so I didn’t have to seek out the jobs.
ML: That’s a sweet ego booster.
PM: Yeah, I can’t complain. I lived ten years in obscurity and everything I sent out to magazines and stuff got rejected. I wrote four books and two screenplays and nothing happened. Then all of a sudden people were recognizing me for being a good writer. And it was in poker which is small verses everything else out there but it gave me confidence and it came at the right point in my life.
ML: Oh yes, the rejection in writing is horrible. What kind of degree did you earn?
PM: I was a double major in Political Science and Film with a minor in Philosophy. I wanted to go to law school but that didn’t happen. I applied to NYU film but didn’t get in. Then I thought the museum job would be interesting and never applied to law school or other film schools. I ended up on Wall Street because I could make money quickly instead of going to school for three years and then start making money. You know?
ML: Yeah, I do. I dropped out of grad school because I wasn’t 100% and why waste the time and money? So, who are your favorite people to work with in poker media?
PM: [Laughing] Wow, that’s a loaded question. I’ve been very fortunate to work with a good friend of mine, Brad Willis known as Otis, from the Pokerstars blog. He hired me for the 2006 WSOP and I was also able to meet and develop a unique friendship with Wil Wheaton. I sat with Brad a lot during tournaments and you know how that media room experience is. Being hired by Pokerstars I was able to get to know Wil really well as well (laughing at his pun) if that made sense.
Flip Chip has become sort of a father figure for me. He’s been around the block a few times and he’s always the voice of reason. He’s been a tremendous help as a photographer. I always thought I had a creative eye but technically I was a poor photographer.
ML: Didn’t he work for NASA?
PM: Yeah, he’s been a career scientist. Now that he’s retired he focuses on playing poker and taking photographs.
Just recently I was able to work with John Caldwell with Pokernews. John went out and hired one of the best staffs for this year’s WSOP including Amy Calistri, BJ Nemeth, Mean Gene, Steve Horton and of course Change 100.
ML: Yes, they did hire that girl Change 100.
PM: Well, John had hired her earlier for some articles and then he tapped her to do the World Series.
ML: Wait, he tapped her?
PM: Well, he asked her. It’s good I get to work with my girlfriend because she gets to go to all of the places I do and I don’t have to pay for it.
ML: Which means you have more money to buy her handbags.
PM: [Laughing] Handbags! Right, right, well you know…tournament reporting is not a very lucrative business. You’d be lucky to get $150 a day sometimes. And it’s nice to be in London or Barcelona but when you’re inside a casino 16 hours a day it doesn’t matter if it’s Tunica, Atlantic City or Commerce. You’re in a casino and they’re all the same.
ML: Plus it’s 150.00 dollars not Euros.
PM: Right. I end up breaking even on those gigs because I stay a few extra days to enjoy it and everything is so expensive in Europe right now. The experience is positive so I’m doing it mostly for the experience. The travel is tough. Just domestically alone the traveling is hard and you add in international and it’s ridiculous. Every weekend there’s a big buy-in tournament going on somewhere in the world. Not to mention online poker.
Find out in part two what Pauly loves about his job, the fascinating and sleaziness of poker, what poker blogs he likes to read and which poker writer needs to lay off the crystal meth.
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