Posted by Andrew Feldman
I'll tell ya what. I really like Darus Suharto.
Entering the WSOP main event final table in sixth, Suharto is loving life. He's been thrown into the media frenzy and is simply enjoying the ride. He's been doing interview after interview and playing more tournaments than he has in the past, but still remains the same person he was before … just with a few more fans.
AP Photo/Isaac Brekken
Darus Suharto was eliminated on Friday.
He began playing when he was in graduate school for his MBA in 1996. His friends taught him how to play, but once he graduated and started his job, poker took a backseat role … for the next nine years. In 2005 he started playing online, since the closest casino to Toronto was an hour and a half away.
"I joined PokerStars, and if you knew me in 2005, you would be happy to play with me," Suharto said. "I thought it was horrible at first. I had no idea how to play."
After starting to take the game a little more seriously, he joined PokerXFactor, an online poker training site, with hopes of stopping the losing sessions. After he implemented the necessary changes, Suharto's bankroll quickly changed direction and led him to his first WSOP appearance in 2006. He cashed in the 2006 main event, earning more than $26,000 for 448th place, but rarely played live poker over the last few years.
Earlier this year, Suharto found his way into the main event through an $80 satellite on PokerStars, the site he now represents. The Toronto native dumbs down his job by calling himself merely an accountant and claims he'll "be the only donkey at the final table."
Somehow, this story seems eerily familiar to someone whom everyone reading this column met in 2003: some guy named Chris Moneymaker, who won the main event bracelet in extremely surprising fashion. In fact, Suharto and Moneymaker worked for the same firm for a period of time. Could this be a sign of things to come, and honestly, what is it with accountants and poker?
I've interviewed Suharto twice since the November Nine went on their hiatus, and both times was too busy to nail down a time at first. Not with practice or anything poker-related, but work. Not wanting to burn his bridges, the 39-year-old associate director for a 10,000-person accounting firm has been working through the summer, taking only a short amount of time for himself to prepare for perhaps the biggest night of his life.
"I love my job," Suharto said. "The glamour of a successful poker player traveling all around the world and spending big money seems great, but even if I'm going to do it, I'm not going to do it full time."
In his position, Suharto has the day-to-day responsibilities of meeting with people on all levels of the company hierarchy. When auditing other companies, Suharto acknowledges, he can quickly gain a feel for people's levels of honesty, something that he tries to incorporate into his poker game.
"Day-to-day, you meet with different people at different levels of the company -- managers, clerks, etc.," Suharto said. "I meet with a lot of people, and when I do my job, investigation and interviews, I can tell that some of the people are telling the truth or lying -- if they're hiding something."
While working may simply be something to take his mind off of the final table, he's also reached out for some assistance from professional poker player Eric "Rizen" Lynch to prepare. As a member of PokerXFactor, Suharto has been learning from some of the game's best online players -- since his poker play has primarily been online until now.
Once he made the final table, he began to work with the team, and specifically Rizen.
"We're discussing how to expect what's coming, the hands that I'm going to play and how I'll do things different," Suharto said of his training. "To see [the game] from a different perspective. I have my style, but we'll go through hands in different positions and how I'll do it, with my style. I obviously don't want to give away too much about it."
While many of the players have been less than candid about their preparation, Suharto did note that he believes having a coach is a good idea.
"I think that anyone can learn something from anyone," Suharto said. "It doesn't hurt to hear someone else's opinions. It doesn't mean you're going to use it, either."
Using all his tools, Suharto recently held the chip lead during the North American Poker Championships, a World Poker Tour stop in October. He ran into some bad luck with his pocket aces getting cracked by pocket jacks and was eliminated on Day 3, but more importantly, he feels that he found a leak in his game, something that may help him come Nov. 9.
"It's so weird starting as the chip leader and drop down," he said. "You need to change your mindset, change your game. It's something I need to work on. If I'm a short stack I have no problem, I play really good, but when you're the chip leader and then become the short stack, you just play completely different.
"I hope to learn from these mistakes," he continued. "My endgame is fine, but after Day 1 as the chip leader, you feel great when you go to bed. The next morning you sort of enjoy that moment, and the next day you're the short stack. It's just a little different and disappointing, while at the final table it's the endgame. You'll play throughout the table, and that won't bother me."
It's been a surreal journey for Suharto, and you can hear it in his voice. Some of the $900,000 he's earned so far has been invested, and to show how good he's running, he invested it in the U.S. dollar, which has made significant gains over the last two months. He's paid off his mom's mortgage, and she has become his biggest fan. Before the WSOP, his poker playing wasn't quite welcomed in his family, but now they want to know all the details about every tournament. He's talking poker at work, and although he's looking forward to Nov. 9, he's experiencing something he wishes would never end. If he wins the tournament, chances are, it might not end.
"I can't even describe [what it is like being here]," he said. "It's unbelievable. Who the heck knows? To make the final table is just a life-changing experience. Everyone knows me; everyone wants to talk to me."
The next poker ambassador will be crowned in just over a week, and while Moneymaker comparisons abound, there's just one thing Suharto says time and time again: "He's the champion already. I'm not … yet."
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