Geographically speaking, there’s an ocean separating Dan Spencer and Greg Weber. But the two stay in touch on a daily basis, and each has turned his pain from gambling addiction into promise through an organization that emphasizes lived experience to reach people.
By all appearances, Weber was one of the most successful poker players in New Jersey . He started playing at 14, hosting games in his backyard. He won a lot, with his biggest triumph coming at the age of 18. While playing online poker , he won $53,000, which put a serious dent into his tuition at Rutgers.
Gambling didn’t impact Weber’s college experience much, but he admits to choosing it over other tried and true co-ed experiences.
“People wanted to go out to the bars,” he recalled. “I wanted to go to Atlantic City.”
On his 21st birthday, he did just that. Accompanied by his dad, he won $22,000 in a poker tournament there.
“I was officially the youngest person to win a poker tournament in Atlantic City, because I couldn’t really get any younger,” he said.
Weber majored in sports management at Rutgers but became a firefighter after graduation because he “couldn’t find a job in sports.” Firefighters don’t work 9 to 5. They’re either extremely on or extremely off, and Weber didn’t use his time off constructively.
“I spent a majority of my days playing online poker, betting sports ,” he said.
All the while, he kept winning poker tournaments in Atlantic City, but his face-to-face exploits masked an ongoing problem behind his four walls.“I started to have major issues with control,” he explained. “I couldn’t stop when I was winning. I couldn’t stop when I was losing. I could stick to my strategy and do well for three days, but on that fourth day, I would lose. I guess the poker expression for it is going on tilt . I would lose my mind.”By 2017, he’d lost almost all his money and entered another poker tournament at the Borgata with what he had left. Weber wound up winning $470,000.“When I started gambling, that was the dream: to make life-changing money,” he […]
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