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NIU graduate makes poker a career
Last updated on 10/05/2009 at 7:08 p.m.
The phone rings. Frank Rusnak picks up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Frank. Is this a good time to...”
“Wait, real quick. I got Ace-King in the big blind. One guy limped in, should I raise?”
“Uh...”
“Yeah, I’ll raise. Sorry, go ahead.”
Rusnak is slightly distracted for this interview. At random moments, he will blurt out things like, “Oh this guy just sucked out with Ace-Queen to my Ace-King” or “Oh wait, three-way all-in. I got pocket nines, other guy has Ace-Queen and the other guy has Queen-Five. Not sure why he’s in there.”
He’s distracted because he is playing in two multi-table tournaments on PokerStars.com, an online poker site, at the same time. The buy-ins are $100 and $72, respectively.
Rusnak is sitting in the comfort of his home in Las Vegas. This is where he spends most of his time. The 27-year-old says he spends 50-plus hours a week playing online poker, at some points playing in six tournaments at once.
“I used to be very interested in watching him play,” said Elsa Rusnak, Frank’s wife. “But I realized that when he got into bad beats, I was the one he would blame, so I leave him alone in there.”
In his career, Rusnak, an NIU alumnus and former Northern Star sports editor, has won over $1 million playing poker, online and in-person.
It all started in 2003, when Rusnak and his friends decided they should host a poker night once a week. They went to Salvation Army, using the Northern Star van, and bought a glass table for $10. They would need something to cover the table, so they headed to Walmart and bought some makeshift felt. This would be the beginning of Thursday night poker, and Rusnak noticed success among his friends and co-workers.
“Well, they were just there for the drinking and getting away from school and work,” Rusnak said. “I was actually putting forth an effort. They didn’t give two [expletive].”
After finishing his degree in journalism at NIU in 2005, the 6-foot-5 graduate landed a job writing for the Chicago Sun-Times as a high school sports reporter.
“I was like, ‘Oh great, I’ll actually get a shot to win a seat,’” Rusnak said. “I took that shot and won the seat. I was just excited I was going to the Bahamas. I never really had a realistic view of winning. I wanted to, but I was just looking at it as a nice vacation.”
His vacation would turn to profit, as he made the final table of 937 entrants and finished sixth overall, good for $247,234.
The trip got Rusnak thinking about his career. And after the Sun-Times wouldn’t give him time off to compete in the L.A. Poker Classic, he quit. He was going to give this poker thing a shot.
“I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t quit,” said John Rusnak, Frank’s father. “I tried talking to Frank a couple times just to tell him to be cautious and he told me, ‘Dad, I’m playing cards; it’s different than gambling.’”
In July, Rusnak took his skills to the biggest event in poker, the 2009 World Series of Poker. The main event, which is televised on ESPN, was host for 6,486 players. Rusnak finished 82nd overall for $57,991.
At one point in the tournament, he was put at a table with poker pros Dennis Phillips, Peter Eastgate and Joe Hachem, among others. Eastgate won the WSOP last year, Phillips finished third and Hachem won the WSOP in 2005.
“It was a dirty table,” Rusnak said. “I sat down and I was like, ‘How is this not the featured table?’”
Sure enough, after a break in the action, the table was moved to ESPN’s featured table, which gets the most TV time on ESPN.
Rusnak said ESPN called him a few weeks ago confirming his information and told him that at least one of his hands would make the TV cut. That cut will likely be televised tonight at 8 p.m. on ESPN.
***************************************************
During the interview, Rusnak made the money in both tournaments, finishing second in one of them, winning him over $1,000 on the night. The next night, Rusnak won a satellite to the 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Poker Adventure, the same tournament that he finished in sixth place back in 2007.
John Rusnak was asked how he feels now after his son has won over $1 million.
“At this point,” he said, “I think my worries have calmed.”
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That's cool stuff.
