After years winning thousands at poker, Steven Silverman is back at the university.
When Steven Silverman gets hooked on a hobby, there’s no turning back. His friends and family say, he goes all in.
The 22-year-old Rockville native looks like any other college student. Except a year ago, he was traveling the globe winning — and losing — millions of dollars in poker tournaments.
But now Silverman is back at the university he twice dropped out of, commuting from a penthouse apartment in Washington’s Chinatown neighborhood, with a renewed appreciation for academics and on track to graduate in spring 2012.
When Silverman first came to the university in 2006, he intended to go to class and get good grades. But after a series of online poker tournaments and a few nights in underground College Park poker clubs, he found himself taking only nine credits with a 2.75 GPA by the end of that October. By March, he had packed up and moved out.
“School was pretty much done, and I was losing a lot of money, and I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “My solution was to drop out of school and just focus on poker and win money online and work that up.”
Silverman spent the following summer racking up tens of thousands of dollars in both live games and online— his preferred setting. In underground clubs, the owner takes a large chunk of the final pot, he said.
After losing almost all his money to these clubs, Silverman opted to return to school for the next semester. But he quickly fell back into a familiar cycle.
“The night before I went back to school, I had won this tournament online for $10,000,” he said. “As I got more money, school started to go downhill again.”
Three weeks into the fall 2007 semester, Silverman had barely set foot in a classroom, but he’d accumulated about $30,000 from online tournaments. He dropped out for the second time, and his parents said they wouldn’t support him financially.
“We could not support his lifestyle,” said Mark Silverman, Steven’s father. “We loved him and we supported him, but he could not live [at our house], and he had to support himself.”
Silverman didn’t let that stop him. He traveled to Ontario for his first major live tournament during what would have been his sophomore fall semester, where he met players that were high up in the poker community. Although he walked away with more than $60,000, he said he was disappointed because only the top nine players advanced. Silverman finished 10th.
That first trip got him hooked. Silverman said he knew his potential and wanted to reach it. After positive media coverage, his parents warmed to the idea as well. He spent the following summer in New Jersey with three experienced poker friends, further developing his skills and strategy.
Silverman then found himself traveling the world to pursue the rush of the game, hitting Macau, Barcelona, Spain, and London in April 2008. He boarded the plane to the first tournament with $300,000 but said he returned home with just a small fraction of that amount by the time the international tour was over.
“You can play your best and lose $100,000, so there’s really no way around it sometimes,” he said.
When he returned from Europe, he started playing in online tournaments again — his fallback — to win enough money to support himself. He won more than $500,000 over the next couple months and once again felt comfortable playing in higher-stake games where players bet more, win more and often lose more. Silverman soon accumulated about $1 million.
He spent the next year living a high-stress, fast-paced lifestyle. He played in Monte Carlo and Monaco and entered the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas once he turned 21 in 2009.
“The whole thing was cool because it was Vegas, but at the same time I got sick of Vegas pretty quickly,” he said. “The expensive dinners and all that — I just got tired of it and wanted to live a healthier lifestyle.”
He was also losing money — including $200,000 in a single night — and even though he was confident he could win it back in online tournaments, he said he realized he was no longer happy. He had full pockets, but a part of him still felt empty.
“I felt like an outcast from society,” he said. “I always felt like people would judge me because I wasn’t in school. I was just the weird kid, the ‘poker kid.’ My identity was basically encompassed by all the poker stuff and not me as a person.”
In pursuit of a normal lifestyle, Silverman took classes at Montgomery College in Rockville while he reapplied to this university. When he was accepted for the spring 2010 semester as a biochemistry and dietetics major, he said he finally felt fulfilled, adding he now gets the same rush from learning as he once felt at the poker table.
“I was able to think about classes like chemistry the way I can think about poker and analyze the right questions to ask in order to understand the concepts,” he said. “That’s how I kind of go about life: I find out the building blocks and go up levels from there.”
Aaron Silverman, Steven’s older brother who graduated from the university three years ago, said Steven’s travels allowed him to broaden his interests, discover a passion for chemistry and stay grounded along the way.
“He was always really down to earth, and our conversations were pretty similar as they would be if he just stayed in school,” he said. “The only real difference is I’d hop in my Honda Accord and he’d hop in his Audi S5.”
Silverman’s childhood friend, Bradley Canter, who graduated from this university in May, said although Silverman has experienced more in two years than many people ever will, he never let the fame or money inflate his ego.
“He’s really just normal,” Canter said. “Even when he was traveling the world, I really believe he looked forward to the times he came to College Park, crashed on my couch and went to Cornerstone [Grill and Loft] and paid $1 for a drink like the rest of us.”
Even Silverman’s parents are convinced. Although they were initially devastated by his choice to drop out of school — they sent him to a child psychiatrist and Gamblers Anonymous meetings — they said they came to find that his poker years helped him mature as a person.
“It was clear that as a poker player he was successful, and I adjusted to the fact that he was going to do whatever he was going to do,” Mark Silverman said. “When he started this, we didn’t think he knew what he was doing. After several years, it’s very apparent he does know what he’s doing, and he’s making good decisions for himself.”
Silverman said despite those two years “without responsibilities,” he is most satisfied working hard in school, spending time with his girlfriend and caring for a new puppy.
And while his life may have been extraordinary at one point, his friends and family said Silverman is at his happiest since he returned to school.
“I remember having to turn down fun things on a Friday night to study, and he’s there now,” Aaron Silverman said. “It makes me know he’s focused and he’s a college student again — he just took a slightly different path to get there.”
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