Johnny Kampis

Hello all, this is my first post on this here wonderful site. I've known one Gary J. Wise for a few years now and must say he is generally an upstanding citizen (although he is a bit of a dirty fantasy baseball player.) I've written numerous articles for WHP in the past, but have been mostly absent recently. It's good to be back.

First, a little about me: I am 31, recently married, live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, (ROLL TIDE) and have been playing and writing about poker on a professional basis for three years. I left my newspaper job in 2005 to pursue a book and travel the country to the various tournaments. I went to Vegas (twice), Atlantic City, Foxwoods, Tunica and Reno. I had a ball, but got no book deal. So it was back to school for a master's degree in 2006-07. Funny thing was, after I graduated last May I just didn't want to go back to the daily grind of office work. So I said, "I'll look for a job after the World Series." And I honestly did look for work following the WSOP, but I got no job I really liked. So rather than take some crappy job I would hate I've stuck it out writing about and playing poker.

Now I do have some good work, although it isn't full time. I am an editor with Rounder magazine. We're in our second year and we're growing. I think we are continually putting out a better product each month.

It's a recent interview for the magazine that inspired the following:

You spend enough time in a casino and time carries no relevance for you. Case in point, Monday night I came in from a bad night of poker in town and slipped into bed after midnight. At about 1:30 a.m. my wife and I were awakened by my beeping cell phone.

The message read as follows: "Lookr like in the morning wil call u wen i wake"

That came courtesy of Tom Schneider, who I'm profiling for the May issue of Rounder. Two things seemed apparent. One, he needs a teenager to teach him how to type text messages and two, he has spent too much time in casinos, warping his sense of time.

All kidding aside, I'm not sure he realized I'm over in CST. I had met him in Tunica in January and finally got around to calling him for the interview. Procrastination = my friend. Nice guy that Schneider, even if he did wake me up.