Ricardo Festejo Profile

Financial and retirement experts all say the same thing about investing and age; go risky when you are young, go stable when you are old. When you are young you have plenty of one of the key factors in successful investing: time. As you grow older you have less time to recover if you make a mistake along the way. For a person to start taking the risks later in life instead of sooner must create a great deal of anxiety, “Am I doing the right thing? Should I be taking risks? Perhaps this is a mistake…”

When Ricardo Festejo decided to become a professional poker player it was not as many today, who come out of college (or simply drop out halfway through) and catch a ride on the poker train. Born in the Philippines and haling from Margate, new Jersey, Ricardo took on the role of professional poker player in 1999.  Prior to this Ricardo worked a lot of different jobs, including one of the biggest “pre- professional poker player” jobs around; blackjack dealer.

Ricardo considers himself a struggling pro, one who works hard grinding it out, trying to build a better bankroll. For someone like Ricardo, winning a seat into a major event is a lot more than “something cool”, it is a great career move. When he got into the Borgata Poker Open during the 4th season of the World Poker Tour it was the biggest poker tournament of his life. When he made the final table it had to come home to him then; “I did it. I made the right choice. I was meant to be a professional poker player.”

When he took second place, it was more than the money he took home with him that day. But then again, the nearly $800,000 nicely solved his bankroll problems for the foreseeable future.