Try to get Matt Vengrin's attention at the moment. It is not a very easy more thing. than two weeks of the Spring Championship of Online Poker has been on, and that does not even start to consider the NBA playoffs, a very powerful Vengrin distraction.

How important? Well, the kid's first word was "ball." Once he could walk, he started playing, and he didn't stop. He played all through highschool where he competed for the brand new York state title. He got recruited to play at SUNY Plattsburgh (hence the PokerStars screen name), and fell in love with the team atmosphere. Now, he remains a diehard ball fan, which, again, makes this a very distracting time for him. 

Balla since birth

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Nevertheless, Vengrin has again won a web-based poker championship. He won his first in WCOOP 2014, the year we first got to understand him as a man who grinded so hard at an arcade that he got banned. The following came a year later when he won a second WCOOP title and revealed himself and his life much more deeply. Now, he's a SCOOP champion after taking down the $215 FL Triple Draw event last week.

With that sort of introduction, it might be easy to peer Vengrin as a child who was destined to be the web poker killer he is, person who never needed to try that hard, one that followed a route to being a professional in preference to blazing it himself. 

That could be really, really wrong. 

As it turns out, there has been a time back when he had just finished up his first year at Plattsburgh that Vengrin's route to today could've ended right at the famed Atlantic City Boardwalk, an afternoon that during only one moment could've meant we would never have known poker player Matt Vengrin. 

Don't get the inaccurate idea: he was never in mortal danger. 

But his poker life was, and when you wrote a screenplay about it today, it might be called Matt's Magical Summer Movie. 

It was summertime, and things weren't going well. Vengrin once had $2,000 in his PokerStars account. Now he had nothing. He was waiting tables in Vermont to pay his bills, and his tip money wasn't making his nut. He had reached some degree where he was going to must do the unthinkable. 

"I was basically broke," Vengrin said. "ALTHOUGH my parents had told me poker was bad, it was gambling and they might not support it, I still went all the way down to Cape May while they were vacationing with plans to inform them they were right, and ask them for a loan to get in the course of the summer and the following school year."

So, there he was. He had $270 to his name, and he was going to do the only thing he simply didn't wish to do. To do it, he needed to spent $50 on a brand new drivers license and $20 on gas. 

That left $200. 

He put his car at the Garden State Parkway and commenced to to drive. As he steered toward Cape May, he saw an indication for Atlantic City. He was 21 years old. He had $200 and a tank of gas. If it have been a movie, it would've been dark, and he would was wearing sunglasses. Hit it. 

"I figured, if I USED TO BE about to listen to it from my parents, I COULD in addition go enjoy some live poker before I do," he said. 

His first stop was the Taj. He put $70 right into a poker tournament, and it went about in addition to the remainder of his summer had. Before deciding to take a knee in front of his parents, he had $270. Now...

This is where, if it have been a unique movie, the unhappy music would've started playing over the saddest scene in a poker player's life: Vengrin sat within the food court eating Sbarro and wondering what he may be able to do next. 

Imagine that. Imagine yourself there with pepperoni grease to your chin and sensing that spot for your pocket that feels such a lot emptier than it did even two hours before. The crust is chewy and thick. The cigarette smoke from the casino is wafting in and combining with the smell of a spinach calzone. 

What do you do, hotshot? What. Do. You?

He decided to maintain playing.

"I remember being probably the most nervous in my life," he said. 

He put his $130 at the table in a cash game and doubled up. Then he did it again. And then, simply because that is like a scene from a movie, he hit quad fours in a monster pot. By the point the sport was over, he had $1,300 in his pocket. 

"I actually had a Taj security guard escort me to my car, because this much cash was so much and all of the money I needed to my name," Vengrin said. 

That conversation with Ma and pa? Didn't happen. Instead, Vengrin got a task at a hotel, essentially babysitting for vacationers' kids.

"My schedule that summer was basically: get up at noon, visit the beach, have some lunch. Work the kids' dining room for a couple of hours, after which visit Atlantic City and grind cash games at night," he said.  

The day job paid $6 an hour plus tips. Thing was, Vengrin wasn't getting any gratuities in any respect. So, he had an concept.  

"I decided to place a couple of dollars of my very own money into the top basket before anyone arrived. I BEGAN the experiment with two dollars. That day a handful of adults tipped a couple of dollars, and that i made some more cash"! he said. "I then got ambitious and commenced putting ones, fives and tens in there."

Before long, he was making okay money on the babysitting gig, and grinded his $1,300 roll as much as $5,000. 

For a summer that started so poorly, everything was going pretty damned well. 

At least, it was going well in real life. Meanwhile, back on PokerStars...

Vengrin hadn't found out the web game. It just wasn't working for him. In fact, his time at PokerStars was going so badly, he took his last couple hundred dollars out of his account and left himself not up to a dollar online. It was about that point he had an idea. 

"Why not attempt to run this 40 cents right into a bankroll?"

He hit the bottom limit tables and turned his 40 cents right into a $1. Then $2. After three hours, he had $5. 

You know what $5 was good for back then? That's right. AN INEXPENSIVE sit and go. Which, of course, because that is the Matt Vengrin Movie, he won.

Because the person literally has no give-up in him, he took that profit to a rebuy tournament, and by the tip of the night a last table deal had left him with $5,000 in his PokerStars account. 

"I remember at that moment thinking, 'Maybe I WILL do this,' and i have never looked back," Vengrin said.

Today, Vengrin thinks of it as his Magical Summer.

"That was one of the vital fun summers of my life," he said. 

Take this on board: Matt Vengrin's story isn't one you desire to try at home. For many people, working in such dark magic would finally end up like most magic: Now you notice me. Now you do not. Seriously. Don't be like Matt. Only Matt is Matt, and he's the one person who gets a film with this script. 

Indeed, most success stories are more like a tired academic film, person who extolls the virtues of bankroll management, slowly rising in stakes, and never reckoning on poker money to live. That is the screenplay we would like from you. 

That's just not how Vengrin did it, and since he lived a paranormal summer, today he's a professional living in Mexico, surfing when he wants, and living a life he couldn't have imagined when he was 21 years old. He has three COOPs, untold other online winnings, and nearly one million bucks in live cashes. 

If that is not magical, I DO NOT know what is. 

Ready to join PokerStars? Click here to get an account. Brad Willis is the PokerStars Head of Blogging.

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