Hitting The Virtual Tables<\/strong><\/p>\nGrowing up with three brothers, competition was a regular part of life for Coleman. Living on a dead-end street meant basketball or hockey games could break out at any moment. He credits those early sibling battles with giving him his edge at the tables.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have that chip on my shoulder, a little bit of my toughness,\u201d he says. \u201cI definitely attribute a lot of my success to my upbringing for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like many professional players, Coleman grew up playing cards. He remembers small-stakes games in the basement with his brother and his friend as young as age 12. Coleman\u2019s own friends soon joined in and those basement sessions turned into a twice-weekly home game by the time they reached high school. These days, those same high school poker friends still follow his action and blow up his phone after a win.<\/p>\n
After moving on to Rutgers, Coleman\u2019s poker scene was reduced to about once a week during his freshman and sophomore years before the game died out as he finished his degree. Then the planned administration job fizzled and playing each night online became his routine.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnline poker was going super well all the time. I was really enjoying it, and I saw consistent results,\u201d he says. \u201cSo, I decided to give it a shot and haven\u2019t had a real job since.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The ramped-up online efforts began with cash games in 2015, playing from six to eight tables of $1-$2 and $2-$5 no-limit hold\u2019em to build his bankroll. By 2017, he got bitten by the tournament bug.<\/p>\n
\u201cCash games kind of got boring to me,\u201d he says. \u201cTournaments were a really good opportunity. Online poker in New Jersey was just incredible. It was perfect timing to really build a roll in a small market with small player fields. I got to know everybody pretty well and how they played, and the variance was quite low. It was a very stress-free way to start my career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many parents may not be on board for their son deciding to play poker rather than making use of a freshly-minted finance degree, but Coleman\u2019s parents took a different approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were more supportive than a lot of other parents,\u201d he says. \u201cThey saw how well I was doing and how much I enjoyed it. They didn\u2019t fully get it at first, but as I got older, they did. They still don\u2019t fully get it \u2013\u00a0no parent fully does. I say it was a big moment in my career when my mom stopped calling poker \u2018playing\u2019 and started calling it \u2018working.\u2019 That was kind of the moment where things clicked, and I started to really feel like I was where I belong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Transitioning To The Live Game<\/strong><\/p>\nAt the time, Coleman seldom played live poker, just mixing in occasional events in Las Vegas and at the Borgata in Atlantic City and Parx Casino in Philadelphia a few times a year. Even in those limited forays into the live game, Coleman began finding success.<\/p>\n
He began playing more PokerGO Tour<\/em> events, quickly finding nice results in the 2021 PokerGO Cup<\/em>, including a runner-up finish for $455,000 and a third-place score for $144,000. He also found a third in a WSOP<\/span><\/span><\/em> Online event for $102,720 and a runner-up at the 2021 Super High Roller Bowl<\/em> Cyprus $50,000 high roller for $364,000.<\/p>\n\u201cMy results in the high stakes [tournaments] weren\u2019t amazing at first. I just started to run much better, and definitely started to play better too as things started going my way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
All of his big finishes in high rollers culminated with a victory in the $25,000 buy-in Alpha 8 event at Wynn, which paid out $730,300.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won six tournaments this year, but that was probably the most memorable one,\u201d he says of the Alpha8. \u201cThat was a really great tournament, and I got to take home this insane trophy. It was incredible to win that, and it felt like a big weight off my shoulders because I\u2019d only won $5,000 and $10,000 events prior to that, so a $25,000 win was an extra treat against some really good players.\u201d<\/p>\n
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What does Coleman see as some of the main differences between playing at mid-level stakes and high roller events?<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, they\u2019re just much tougher fields with much better players,\u201d he says. \u201cOne of the things that has contributed to my success recently is just that I\u2019m very adaptive to learning through just watching other people play. Not only have I built a community of poker players that I talk poker with and learn from, but just from watching these guys play these high rollers, I\u2019ve picked up a lot and that\u2019s helped me tremendously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking Ahead<\/strong><\/p>\nAway from the tables, Coleman enjoys staying active, watching sports, and traveling with his girlfriend. With some big bucks coming his way over the last couple years, Coleman is also now putting that finance degree to good use. He owns a couple properties and invests in the stock market and some cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n
While he talks poker some with other players, including high roller standouts Brock Wilson, Chris Brewer, and Justin Saliba, perhaps its befitting a longtime online poker player accustomed to going it alone that Coleman has historically been more comfortable working on his game by himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, throughout my career, I\u2019ve been somewhat of a lone wolf as far as studying goes, much more than others,\u201d he says. \u201cI definitely use different training websites and other content out there to help me, but I think compared to other people, I don\u2019t rely on study groups as much. I like working alone, but I\u2019m learning as I get older that it\u2019s good to work in a study group to delegate and split the workload up, and then share the work you each individually put in. That makes things much more efficient. That kind of hasn\u2019t been my M.O. until more recently since I moved to Vegas and built more of a network.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite some close calls, Coleman has yet to capture a WSOP<\/span><\/span><\/em> bracelet and most of his big scores have come away from the series. But chasing trophies and tournament titles isn\u2019t necessarily foremost on his mind.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s definitely on my bucket list,\u201d he says of winning a bracelet. \u201cIt\u2019s something I want to get accomplished as soon as possible. It\u2019s much more doable when I play high stakes with much smaller fields, and seems like a much more accomplishable goal than when I played mid-stakes and had to deal with 2,000 players every tournament. But to be 100% frank, I\u2019m not as much of an accolade chaser as some other people. I\u2019m more just chasing EV and happiness, more so than trophies and bracelets. But I\u2019m not going to say I don\u2019t want one.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s ahead in the coming year and what goals does he have for the future?<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m going to play a somewhat similar schedule that I did last year. The key difference will probably be playing a little bit less overall, not forcing myself to play if I don\u2019t want to. I love to play, but sometimes I feel a little burnt out from playing so much. I will try to find more days off when possible, but I just find it challenging at times because the schedule is so good. But I will try to be better at that and just have more relaxation in the middle of big series and enjoy time with my girlfriend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll also try to make more of a vacation out of these trips. I\u2019m going to go to Jeju (South Korea) in February, and then hopefully stop in Japan after just for strictly vacation. No poker involved, just purely vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/a> Fresh out of Rutgers University with a degree in finance and minor in economics, David Coleman<\/a> didn\u2019t exactly land the job he\u2019d hoped for. Pushing papers as a pension plan administrator didn\u2019t quite make use of his analytical mind and penchant for numbers. The goal was to land a gig at a big bank or hedge fund, but that wasn\u2019t in the cards.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/media.cardplayer.com\/assets\/000\/038\/189\/Fullscreen_capture_3102025_74610_AM.jpg\")
The big finishes just kept coming. In February, he grabbed a runner-up in a $50,000 Triton Poker<\/em> Jeju event for $642,900. A U.S Poker Open<\/em> win followed in April for $202,300 with several other final table appearances in the spring. He added fourth and fifth-place finishes at the World Series of Poker<\/em> and then struck gold in the World Poker Tour Alpha8<\/em> high rollers at Wynn Las Vegas, finishing sixth in the first of three events for $97,000 and winning the final event for $730,300.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/media.cardplayer.com\/assets\/000\/038\/188\/Fullscreen_capture_3102025_74420_AM.jpg\")
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