POKER ROOM REVIEW INTERVIEW

Interview with Doyles Room Manager Trish Salazar

Women online poker room managers are, at this point in time, not very common, yet anyone suffering from the delusion that women cannot compete in this line of work can be instantly cured of it by meeting Trish Salazar. She is feisty, opinionated, outspoken, and thoroughly competent. This woman knows poker. After all, she hangs out with guys like Doyle and Todd Brunson, not to mention Mike Caro. She is also very genuine and considerate. I caught up with Trish on a busy day, yet she was completely accessible and gave me her full attention as we talked about the business of poker, the Dollies, and hanging out with Doyle at the WSOP.

MF: Okay, listen carefully: If you were in a lineup with 2 winos from Hoboken, a Nun, a College professor, a traveling liquor salesman, a circus midget, and any one of the Village People, and the person was asked to pick the poker room manager, how many guesses do you think it would take before they picked you?

TS: (laughs) That’s a great question. That’s very clever. Ahh, I would say one.

MF: Why?

TS: Because I would be the most normal-looking person there.

MF: Really, hmm, which leads me to my next question: How did you get involved in this business?

TS: Well actually, I was just in the right place at the right time. I had come down to Costa Rica, and Carlos said, “You’re going to be bored, not having a job, and I know this American guy who’s starting up a poker room, why don’t you go and talk to him.” He didn’t hire me right away, but a month or so later he called and I went to work for him. I started out by doing e-mails for Poker.com 6 years ago, before the URL was hijacked. 2 hours every other day turned into 4 hours a day, 4 hours turned into doing the 3rd shift from home, then ending up with me managing the office, and that’s where I was for 3 years. They decided they didn’t want to pay the high taxes in Costa Rica and shut the office down.

At that time, I had been meeting with new skin owners to add to the Poker.com network, and one of those skin owners decided he didn’t like what Poker.com had to offer, and wanted to go out on his own. He offered me a job. I worked with the Platinum Poker network for about 6 months, and they were all working with Doyle and trying to do something. I always tease Doyle by saying that he wanted me so bad he bought the network just to get me. (laughs) His name started showing up about August, 2 years ago, you know, that we’re going to do this thing with Doyle “Brunson,” so I sent him an e-mail that I thought was pertinent, that he should see, having never met the guy before in my life, and he sent an e-mail back instantly, and said, “Are you the Trish I tried to hire 6 months ago? If you are, call me back immediately at this phone number.” So I called him back and he said, “Did you or did you not get a phone call from me or from so and so—I don’t even remember the guy’s name—about 6 months ago about a job?” and I said, “Well, you know, I got an e-mail and I got a phone call from somebody, and we talked for a bit, but he never told me who he was, he never told me who he worked for, and he never called back.” Doyle said, “Yeah, I know, I fired that guy. Well good, I’m glad you’re on board; I’m going to be on board shortly, too.” So the Doyles Room skin came up, and that’s how it all came into being.

MF: You’ve been there what, approximately 2 1/2 years?

TS: I’ve been here since June 2004.

MF: How and where did you learn to play poker?

TS: My grandpa taught me, the same old story! I have been playing for as long I have been able to read the cards. In fact, I taught my granddaughter how to count by teaching her 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, Jack, Queen, King!

MF: All right. So it’s in the blood?

TS: (laughs) No joke. Yeah, I have been playing poker forever; we use to have home games, forever. Texas Hold’em was new to me as of 6 years ago. I learned it on the network obviously, but basically, I’ve always been into gambling, I’ve always been into games, I’ve always been into poker.

MF: I hear that you run a home game.

TS: We do, we have a game every Friday night. It’s now turned into a tournament; it’s now a Texas Hold’em tournament rather than a ring game.

MF: I am not exactly sure of this—you probably know—are you the only female poker room manager?

TS: I may very well be. I know that the manager of Paradise Poker was a gal before they sold it, but I don’t know who’s there now. I don’t know any other female online poker room managers, no.

MF: Yeah, so you’re something of a rarity, has this ever caused you any problems?

TS: No, it’s never been an issue because my voice is so deep, when I talk to players on the phone they think am a guy anyway (laughs).

MF: Have you ever been able to use it to your advantage?

TS: I’ve never tried.

MF: There’s a false perception that Doyle hangs out around the office, playing cards and overseeing things. How often do you actually see Doyle?

TS: Doyle comes down to Costa Rica about four times a year.

MF: How long does he stay?

TS: Usually, 2 weeks or so; sometimes 1 week. Depends on his schedule.

MF: Do you ever play cards with him?

TS: I have.

MF: You ever beat him?

TS: Not in a tournament, but we’ve played a few hands back and forth that I’ve won, and he’s lost. I also dealt a private game for him at the Versace mansion in South Beach, Florida.

MF: So what’s he like, what’s the real Doyle, the legend? The Father of poker? The Moses of poker?

TS: He is, actually. I just spent basically the last 40 days with him. Wanna talk about being Moses . . . (laughs) . . . at the WSOP. I watched him play tournaments, one after the other, after another. I saw exactly how good the man actually is at reading people. I interacted with him in the Doyles Room hospitality suite, just practically every single day. He never—I’m not going to say never—he extremely rarely refuses an autograph or a picture. He is genuinely a true southern gentlemen; I really believe that. He’s extremely generous, in his manner; he always treated me with equal respect. Whether we were sitting with Johnny Chan, or whether we were sitting with Jennifer Harmon, or whether we were sitting with my colleagues who were up from Costa Rica, up at the WSOP, he always treated me with equal respect. I never saw him lose his temper, and the only time he ever refused an autograph or a photo was when he was truly late for something and just needed to get moving. He really is a gentleman, and he is really like that. And he is a one hell of a poker player.

MF: Yeah, we all know that.

TS: He really is.

MF: Does he attract groupies?

TS: He does.

MF: Tell me about that.

TS: Umm, no. There could be no people whatsoever in the hallway at the WSOP, but when Doyle’s scooter came through our suite was packed. People literally followed him to the suite, to either see him, talk to him, just observe him; he couldn’t go to the bathroom without being swamped.

MF: That’s not a pretty picture.

TS: No, it’s not. But it’s true.

MF: He’s got a presence, you know, I don’t know what you want to call it, this aura.

TS: He does.

MF: Do you ever get seasick working offshore?

TS: (laughs) Cute question. Explain.

MF: I’m just trying to make you laugh . . . What’s the biggest misconception people have about your job?

TS: That it’s easy.

MF: I know, I’ve interviewed a few managers . . . What is a typical day like?

TS: Well, a typical day would be having a typical day (laughs). There is no . . . for example, when you come into the office, you don’t know what you’re going to meet. I do everything here from . . . I’m the Director of Player Services, which is my quote-un-quote official title, but I am also in charge of all 3 customer support teams, all 3 shifts, I handle the VIP program, and dabble a little bit, as you can tell, by being at the WSOP in the public relations end of it. The day is 100% for either the client or the staff, whether we have a server crash in Curacao, which puts the game down and upsets several thousands of players or whether I have a player who simply can’t make a deposit, each one of them have to be treated with equal importance. For example, when you called to confirm the interview, I wasn’t at my desk because someone’s phone in security had been ringing and no one bothered to pick up, so I went over and picked it up. As it turned out, it was a player who was having a problem making a deposit, so I spent 20 minutes with him, getting his deposit into his account so he could play poker.

MF: And that’s where the focus should be.

TS: Exactly, focus has to on the client, and I’m the escalation desk. If I have to escalate something, it can’t be fixed.

MF: What makes you uniquely qualified for your line of work?

TS: I’m people person, I can relate, I play poker. I can also relate to the frustrations that the clients have, online, and I can understand the clients. My ability to understand is more important than the actual ability to help. So that’s the basic qualifications that you need, is the ability to be able to say, “Look you had a bad beat, its sucks, but move on.”

MF: You have to be firm in a nice way.

TS: I’ve also said several times that for anyone who plays poker online, one evening of poker on the Travel Channel needs to be mandatory, because you actually see genuine bad beats on the Travel Channel. You actually see people lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on the river, and a player on my site who loses 5 dollars because he got rivered, their first complaint is the software is rigged, and it’s not. Anyone who plays poker online, the Travel Channel should be mandatory viewing every Wednesday night.

MF: That’s good advice. A lot more women are beginning to play online, do you have any numbers that show the gender breakdown?

TS: No I don’t, I wish I did, but I don’t.

MF: What do you think?

TS: Actually, we are coming up, percentage-wise; I would say 1 in 10 that I deal with right now is a woman.

MF: Okay, right around 10%, yeah?

TS: Basically.

MF: I think that number is definitely going to rise.

TS: I agree.

MF: You guys added Stud not too long ago, but doesn’t really appear to be taking off, would you have any comment on that?

TS: Stud is a very selective game. We do have a small group of players who play nothing but Stud and it was simply added to round out the number of games, and the type of games that we offer. We had a very big client who wanted Badugi, which also has not gone as well as we wanted it to go, but it does bring in that specific Korean player base and it also rounds off our game structure, because we’ve had people say, “Wow, you have Badugi, I’ve never known anyone who had Badugi.”

MF: I’ve heard Badugi is kind of picking up all across to the board.

TS: It is

MF: Okay . . . Whenever I see Todd Brunson, he always looks as if he wants to clobber somebody. He has this look on his face like—come near me, I’ll kill you.

TS: (laughs) He has the persona of a bad boy. The problem there is you have to understand that Todd does a considerable number of interviews, but Todd’s interviewees start out every single interview with, “How does it feel to be the son of the great Doyle Brunson.”

MF: That would bug me after a while, too.

TS: So he’s been in that shadow for a while. He’s made quite a name for himself—he actually has a great personality.

MF: That’s what I was going to ask you, what’s he like in person? Tell me about that.

TS: He does have a great personality. He’s very stern-faced, and he is very serious a lot of the time, but his main focus is simply playing poker, and that’s basically what he does. He also was very important in the autograph signing and the picture-taking event at the WSOP, and he was very obliging to do so. And he always did have a smile for anyone who came and asked him for his autograph. He is a little like his dad . . . he has a beautiful Russian wife, whom he adores, her name is Angela, and they are very social people even though he doesn’t come across that way. I would be walking down the hall coming from a horrible long day at the WSOP, and he would say, “Trish, come on and have dinner with us.” The conversation was about poker a lot, but it was also about when they travel to Hawaii, or when they do this and that, and he has funny stories to tell!

MF: Well that’s good to know because I’m going to be interviewing him, so I’ll make sure my first question is not—what does it is feel like to be the son of Doyle Brunson?

TS: Ask him what it feels like to know Trish Salazar (laughs).

MF: Why should anybody play at Doyles Room? There are a million online poker rooms.

TS: You should play at Doyles Room if for nothing more than the fact that we have 100% great customer service, and that I’m there. And, I really mean that. A lot of poker sites don’t have phone support; we have phone support, live support, manager chat support, and e-mail support 24/7. We also have the Doyle Brunson name behind us, and if you remember—I’m sure you remember the name of that poker room better than I do, because I cant think of it right now—long, long time ago, Doyle was involved with another poker room that went under.

MF: Highlands Poker

TS: Doyle took money from his own private bank account to pay those players when that poker room went under. That’s the attitude that Doyle comes into this with. We don’t dicker over nickels and dimes. We won’t lose a client because you got busted out of a 2 dollar game or because your Internet went down, as long as the player tells me the truth, then I’m going to help that player. But if a player lies to me, I would just assume that they do go somewhere else to play. For example, we have Action Points, with your Action Points you can earn Doyle Brunson merchandise, you can redeem them for cash, you can earn entries into tournaments on our site. I had a player a couple days ago who came on the chat and I just happened to pick it up. She had been registered for an Action Point tournament where it didn’t cost her any money to play—it cost her 400 Action Points, but you win real money—just as the tournament was about to start, they had a thunderstorm and her power went out. Because she told me the truth, I gave her her 400 action points back, so she can try again.

MF: That’s great, if more poker room understood that, first of all, I wouldn’t have to work so hard at chasing them for money for players.

TS: Exactly. It’s about understanding the client, and when you come to Doyles Room to play, you have that. You have the safety and security of our three different departments: the accounting, the security, and the customer support department, and we make it easy for you to play with us. You know, this is where you spend your leisure time; it shouldn’t be a hassle to do so.

MF: That’s well put, I agree with that 100% . . . The Dollies are always around, hmm, uh . . . provocatively dressed . . .

TS: Yes?

MF: How do you fell about that?

TS: I think it’s wonderful.

MF: Why?

TS: I think it creates the aura that the fact that Doyle isn’t 73, Doyle is just Doyle, and Doyle creates an entourage of all the ages. Some of them love him because he looks like their grandpa--and they even tell him that--some of them just love to be around him because he is a fun guy, and I think it adds a lot to the Doyles Room persona and it adds a lot to Doyle.

MF: Do you ever get dumb guys who try to talk back to the dealer in the chat boxes?

TS: (laughs) No.

MF: What’s the weirdest customer interaction you’ve had or the most bizarre question?

TS: The most fun one was the gentleman who was so upset because he had 4 million play-money chips and we wouldn’t give him 4 millions dollars for them (laughs).

MF: And he thought he won a million dollars and already had it spent?

TS: Exactly.

MF: Where do you see online poker in 10 years?

TS: I see it, both live and online, just as strong as it is now, I don’t see it stopping. We’re already running feeders to the 2007 WSOP. We’ve already made arrangements for the 2007 WSOP event, and we were doing that actually during the 2006 WSOP. I think that the World Poker Tour and Mike Sexton’s people have done an incredible job to bring it to the forefront, and to make it the wave that it is. And I actually see it exactly where it is, if not better, more refined. I believe that it needs to be regulated, and I think that time will come. I think there are, by a long shot, a lot more legitimate, genuine, online poker players than there are money launderers in this business. I think that’s just a minor, minor issue and you’re going to have that in any industry.

MF: Exactly. I mean, just because you have Dry Cleaners laundering drug money in Miami, what are you going to do, ban dry cleaning?

TS: Yeah, and I think poker is something that’s been around through the ages and I think it will continue to be around, and I think that the games will just get better. There is no Super System 3 coming out, but there is a new book coming out by Doyle, unfortunately I don’t recall the title of it. Mike Caro is also coming out with a new book. They just keep going and going and going, and they come up with new and better ways to educate the players, educate the public on better poker, and genuinely making poker into a sport rather then just gambling. And I think that’s where we’re going with it.

MF: Do you think you’ll still be a part of it in 20 years?

TS: I hope not. (laughs) I hope not.

MF: Really? What else would you do?

TS: Spend time with my family, do a lot of traveling that I don’t get to do and enjoy right now.

MF: Final thoughts?

TS: As long as Doyle’s in the business, Trish will be in the business. And you can quote me on that!