PokerNews caught up with former professional baseball first baseman Jim Traber, who played for the Baltimore Orioles in the 1980s. He discussed how he got into poker and what he loves about the game.
"Well, it's interesting because about 15 years ago I had to stop playing golf because I had so many surgeries and I couldn't do it anymore and I just love the competition, so I started playing poker. And I was really, really bad, and now I guess I'm a little better, but, I like the competition going against other people. That's what I've done my whole life, so I can't just sit around and not compete against anybody, you know."
Traber talked about the similarities between poker and baseball, and how he has learned to deal with luck and failure.
"Poker is a totally different kind of game because, you got to kind of read and things like that. But what's unbelievable about it is, like in every sport, there's luck involved. There's luck involved in this. There's luck involved in everything. You know, you can hit a line drive in baseball and it's right at the guy, or they can break your bat and it can bloop over and be a base hit."
"So there's always luck involved. You just got to make sure that failure doesn't beat you down because in baseball, you fail all the time. So here, obviously you're going to fail a lot too. So you got to get used to it. I'm not the most patient guy, but I've learned over the last maybe five years to be a little bit more patient."
He went on to mention what he enjoys about attending RunGood events and his plans for the near future.
"I mean, look, I am so happy for Tana [Karn] because I was here when he first started this deal, and he was just doing maybe five or six tournaments. He's just done such a great job to not only treat all the players well and have good tournaments, but also obviously have good relationships with all the casinos."
"And this place here, I've never been, it's beautiful (Palace Poker). It really is unbelievably nice. I hope that they do some more things, but yeah, I'll be seeing Tana again probably up there in Joplin."
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