Wouldn’t we all like to turn $1 into $20,000? Though a feat just short of turning water into wine, former World Champion of Poker Player Chris “Jesus” Ferguson has accomplished this staggering stunt and much more.

The man, distinguished in a black suit coat and pants, black felt hat and long, brown hair, admitted to first playing poker for money in the fourth grade. His father taught Game Theory at UCLA, the same university Ferguson graduated from after 18 years (yes, all of them at UCLA) studying mathematics. The same year they handed him his ph.D, he won the World Series of Poker (or $1.5 million). He’s a well-studied swing dancer and can slice a carrot with a thrown playing card from a distance of 10 feet (although when I asked him to sever a Payday candy bar he graciously declined).
Oh, and his annual poker income is $4,000,000+.

Ferguson joined legions of other professional poker players from around the world through Nov. 18 at Harvey’s Lake Tahoe to try his hand at another World Series of Poker title. I asked him what could turn a poker hack into a card-playing genius. His advice was enlightening, inspiring and got me thinking about how much more money I’m likely to make in poker than in my 401K.
Read on…

Money management
Likening poker to a lifetime sport, Ferguson urges players to keep their eyes on the long run and money management, he insists, is the only realistic way to do that.
“I know a lot of incredibly skillful poker players who don’t succeed because they don’t know how to manage their money and they will gamble too much,” says the soft-spoken sage. To beat the odds, Ferguson came up with a list of rules he follows to avoid seeing red.
• Never buy in to a game for more than 5% of your bankroll.
• If you ever have 10% of your bankroll in play at the table, quit.
• In tournaments, never buy in to a game for more than 2% of your bankroll.
• When you’re caught in a cold streak, move down in games.
“Moving down in games (playing games that require less of a buy-in) is what is going to save your bankroll and a lot of players won’t do that. A lot of players will actually do the opposite and there’s nothing worse than raising the stakes when you’re losing.”