James McManus, Columnist

Poker Has a New, $15 Million Anti-Hero

Is Daniel Colman an adolescent narcissist, happy to take people's money on the felt but unwilling to help improve poker's image as a game of skill or a vehicle for philanthropy? Or is he an anti-huckster hero amid a swarm of endorsement-happy pros, greedy tournament presenters and the journalists who fawn over them?

July 7, 2014 at 9:20 PM UTC

By James McManus

James McManus is the author of "Positively Fifth Street" and "Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker." He has written about the game for the New York Times, Harper's, the New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Esquire and Grantland. He teaches writing and literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Is Daniel Colman, poker's new heavyweight champion, an adolescent narcissist, happy to take people's money on the felt but unwilling to help improve poker's image as a game of skill or a vehicle for philanthropy? Or is he an anti-huckster hero amid a swarm of endorsement-happy pros, greedy tournament presenters and the journalists who fawn over them?

After refusing almost all interview requests after winning the $15.3 million first prize of the Big One for One Drop -- a tournament that benefits the One Drop Foundation, which provides water-management systems in drought-stricken countries -- the 23-year-old Colman became even more hostile and self-contradictory on the online poker forum Two Plus Two: