Greg Mueller
4.9K posts
@GregFBT
3-time World Series of Poker Bracelet Winner, ex-pro hockey player, golf rookie/addict
Jürgen Klinsmann: “There were 70,000 people, we were warming up seriously. While ‘Live Is Life’ was playing, Maradona started juggling the ball. We stopped warming up, because there was nothing more we could do except watch him.”
Greg “FBT” Mueller after opening twitter today
2014… I rolled up to the Bellagio with my entire bank account in cash. At the time, that meant a couple hundred dollars. I sat down at a $1/$3 game with money I couldn’t afford to lose. But I wanted to play in a Vegas poker room so bad. Almost immediately, I lost close to half my buy-in. And then out walks Greg Mueller from Bobby’s Room. The guy I had watched on Poker After Dark and ESPN. FBT = Full Blown Tilt. The same guy whose words had already changed the way I looked at poker… and he had absolutely no idea. There I was in a tiny $1/$3 game, watching him walk past after probably playing pots worth more than an average house. I gave him the goofiest, somewhat starstruck smile as he passed by. I texted my friends on the Strip, “OMG, I just saw a poker pro I watch on TV.” A little while later, he came back around. And then he sat down at my table. Just for fun. This man had just come from the biggest cash game on the planet and sat down with us, running up a stack like it was nothing, while I was over there stressing about a couple hundred dollars. We started talking, and I got to tell him how he unknowingly changed my life. Rewind to 2013. I had just started watching poker, playing on Full Tilt, trying to figure out what the hell this game even was after discovering it at a team bonding night in college. I dusted off a couple hundred dollars on my credit card and lost sleep over it. But I was hooked. I didn’t know anyone in my life who played. I was just fascinated. So I did what so many of us did back then. I watched the WSOP Main Event on ESPN. That’s when I saw it. Greg was making a deep run, and they did a segment on him. He talked about retiring from professional hockey and being left with this competitive void. Then he found poker. He talked about how he realized he could outwit, outsmart, and outwork people at the table the same way he had on the ice. How poker gave him back that fire. And something in me lit up. Because I was living that EXACT moment. I had just walked away from being a college athlete and basketball coach. And the hardest part wasn’t the lifestyle shift. It was losing that competitive part of myself. That thing that made me feel most alive. I didn’t know where to put it anymore. It clicked… poker was not just gambling. It was a battlefield for the mind. Where you could outwork your competition. Just like in basketball. I loved that. From that point on, poker was different to me. Still a tiny fish… but learning to swim. So there I was a year later, sitting across from Greg at Bellagio, telling him that his ESPN segment had shaped the trajectory of my life. We ended up talking for hours. To this day, Greg is a friend, mentor, and one of the biggest inspirations in my journey through this game. And I still do not know if he fully understands that one ESPN segment helped rewire the way I saw my entire future. So hearing the WSOP Main Event is coming back to ESPN brings all of it flooding back. The nostalgia. The DREAM. Back then, watching the Main on ESPN felt so far away it almost didn’t seem possible. It felt like something that belonged to others. Surely not me. And now I will be playing my fourth Main Event this summer, after cashing for the first time last year, after building a career and a life around this game that I once thought was just a card game on TV. How insane is that? What I love most about poker comes down to competitiveness. It has challenged my biggest insecurities, torn apart my mental walls, and demanded more of me in every element of life, not just at the table. It’s not a card game. It’s a mind sport. And ESPN putting it back on the biggest stage in sports will create more moments like the one I had watching Greg all those years ago. More lightbulbs going off. More athletes, competitors, and dreamers like me realizing this game is so much deeper than what it looks like on the surface. And that’s a beautiful thing. @wsop
Funny I posted this yesterday with my opinion of what I do best and it’s on point 1. Short Game 2. Putting Didn’t miss a shot from 150 in Driver wasn’t friendly to me today
Start the year of right with 1 of 1393 in the @GGPoker 525 bounty #notsureif#whap#runninghot
On the perfection of the #CurbYourEnthusiasm finale with Larry David and a never-before-told story from "The Marine Biologist" episode more than 30 years ago — @JerrySeinfeld crushed it with us today: #Seinfeld #Unfrosted @SeinfeldTV @IJasonAlexander
Save the whale George. For me. / S05E14 The Marine Biologist #Seinfeld #Seinfeldism
