Lee Davy sits down with Seth Berger to talk about life after his great WSOP showing in 2013, and how things have been developing with the Live High philosophy.
2013 was the year that put Seth Berger onto the poker map.
A $38,040 cash in a $1k event at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Borgata Winter Open gave him the confidence, and bankroll, to make a little splash at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and the money hit him in waves.
$619,481 is a lot of money, and that’s exactly how much Berger took away from the tables, after a second and third place finish in respective $1,000 & $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) events.
I first bumped into the young man playing at the WPT in Prague. His over-sized baseball cap and knee length shorts a bit of a tell that he was an American, and that generally means the player knows his flushes from his full-houses.
Young men can easily fall into the wrong crowd, particularly with money by your side, so it was refreshing to hear that Berger owed all of his success by falling in with the right crowd. A group of people who lived by the values expressed in the Law of Attraction. Believers, and positive thinkers with minds as open as the Grand Canyon.
So how has the past year been for Berger?
“It’s been great. I have been traveling, and having a lot of fun. I have been playing when I want to play, and taking long breaks in between. I started out on a bit of a downer, but after a break away from the game I got back into it and have gotten it all back.”
Berger hands me a t-shirt and it has the words ‘Natural High’ emblazoned on the front.
“It may be a bit big, but the message is perfect for you.” Says Berger.
The man has grossly under-estimated the size of the guns that are packed underneath this skinny white t-shirt.
The t-shirt is the fulcrum of the ‘Live the High Life’ movement that Berger referred to when I last spoke to him six months earlier. I was interested to find out how far they had taken it.
“It’s expanding. Some of my friends have just got back from a musical festival called Lightning in the Bottle. They went to spread the word about living the high life, and being happy. They have a wide range of t-shirts with slogans such as Natural High, Forever High, Live High, Dream High and Rise High.”
It sounds like a 1990s acid-house movement.
“It’s not drug related. We stand for something bigger than that. We spread the message to be high on life. It’s all about creating, and holding, that positive frame of mind. This year there are seven of us sharing a house. We all play poker and we all have the same philosophy. Every single one of us got up to play in this $1k today, and that’s pretty cool.”
The Law of Attraction is not for everyone. There are as many skeptics as there are believers. So how does a group of young poker players push this message?
“It’s important that we don’t try to push it onto people. Instead, we treat people well, and try to be the change that we hope people will inspire to become.”
He has certainly inspired me to want to follow in his footsteps, even if I can’t fit into his t-shirt.
