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Interview With Mike “Timex” McDonald

Mike McDonald’s made headlines for a variety of reasons over the course of his brief poker career. In this interview, we talk with him about the latest reason – his announcement that he’s pulling back from poker.

For those of you unfamiliar, Mike McDonald, aka TIMEX, has made a name for himself in both the online and live poker arenas over the last few years. Online, he’s known as a steady earner at MTTs and instructor for Cardrunners; live he’s perhaps best known for his long string of European poker Tour (EPT) successes. Mike was nice enough to take some time out of his schedule to discuss his recent decision to step back from poker at the ripe old age of … 20.

PTP: You talked in your blog about poker being an impediment to living a well-rounded life. Do you think that had more to do with some innate quality of yourself or some innate quality of the game?

MM: Its tough to say which it had more to do with. It had plenty to do with both. On the one hand, the nature of the game is that you can play as much or as little as you want, and when you aren’t playing there is tons you can do to still improve; beyond that it is completely independent and in a lot of ways not a very social environment. I run into tons of people who claim they like live poker so much for the social aspect of things but I think a lot of those people just like the idea of having 8-9 other guys “trapped” into having to talk to them when they otherwise wouldn’t be much of a conversationalist.

On the other hand, I personally get very caught up in what it is that interests me. For the last several years that has been poker, and although that has definitely afforded me the opportunity to pursue whatever I want; I tend to prefer doing things that I’m good at, or can work towards being good at, and the more successful and more competitive I got at it, the more tempting it became to make poker a large part of my life. I definitely know plenty of successful poker players who manage to have several other interests that take precedence over poker so I definitely don’t think its completely a quality of the game, and my personality type definitely contributes to things.

PTP: I know in the 2+2 thread you said you planned to hit the WSOP once you were 21, despite the retirement; do you worry at all about the time off inhibiting your play at that point, or do you think the break will prove to be an asset?

MM: The time off will definitely hurt my play more than it will help it but I don’t think it will hurt it a significant amount. I’m sure I’ll still keep in touch with trends of the poker world, and keep in touch with many of the top players, so I don’t think that I’ll have too much to worry about.

PTP: What’s the one thing about playing full time you think you’ll miss the most? The least?

MM: I’ll definitely miss the opportunity to hang out with the many interesting people I’ve met over the last few years and I won’t miss running away from armed robbers one bit.

PTP: Do you plan on continuing to make videos with CardRunners long-term? If so, do you see the style / nature of your videos evolving as you play less and less?

MM: Yeah, I enjoy working with CardRunners and think I could definitely make reasonable videos even after a long hiatus. Perhaps a better approach would be to say make a video series called like “getting back into it” or “playing while rusty” or something to outline a lot of the major things to work on after a week/month/year of not playing regularly. I don’t know if this has been done but adjusting after time off is one of the most frequent questions I get asked and I think that could make for some neat videos.

PTP: Would you mind talking a bit more about this line from your blog: “I think the goals I wish to accomplish are very different from what most people wish to accomplish.”

MM: Perhaps this line of my blog was naive. Very few people quit poker and no one really talks about taking time off so I assumed people were more attached to it than they were. In actuality I’ve had probably close to 100 people AIM/text/PM me that they felt the exact same way on tons of different levels and thought they were alone but enjoy seeing someone be able to write them down.

What I meant when I said this is if I play a day of tournaments online, I enjoy playing but am not that much happier after a winning day than after a losing day. Most people seem to be happy if they win, unhappy if they lose. Lots of people seem to be happy to lose out of a tournament if they got it in with the best hand, I’ve determined whether I’m happy with my play before seeing my opponents cards exposed. Most people play for the money and once they get there play for the titles/bracelets/glory, I have always played for the ability to get really good at something and have $ be kind of a way to track that. Now that I feel less motivated by the $ and the competition it just seems like there is almost nothing less.

I guess I just meant my mentality was different than a lot of peoples but even that might have been a wrong statement after how many successful players have said they feel the same way.

PTP: Your quasi-exit doesn’t seem like the result of a full burnout – maybe a pull away designed to prevent a full burnout. Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently to extend your career lifespan in the game?

MM: Run worse? I’m sure if instead of being one of the luckiest players over the last couple years I was one of the unluckiest, I’d still feel the need to play. That said I’m pretty glad thats not the case since I definitely enjoy poker more after running good than running bad and this would probably only “force” me to play, not make me want to play.

I have always been very much a believer in just playing the worst players possible and most of my mentors/roll models shared a similar view on things. I think its likely if I took a very different approach, met different people, looked up to different posters on 2+2, I could have possibly become the type of person who really likes beating other good players. If that were the case, I likely would have been able to have a longer career since my goals of being the best would have been important to me for a lot longer rather than fizzling out as I became more and more successful.

PTP: Did you consider waiting a week or so to make the announcement so it wouldn’t have such close proximity to April Fools? Or was there a little bit of fun in posting it so close?

MM: Nah I didn’t really think about the date very much at all, but if I was doing this for publicity I picked a pretty genius date. I had been torn about things for quite some time and just recently reconsidered returning to school and over a week or so realized it was what I really wanted to do and that I should make steps towards it as quickly as possible. I just kind of started writing and once I was finished submitted it. I think from the length/tone of my blog it was pretty clear to people that I meant what I said so I don’t think there was too much question about it being an April Fools joke. The one slight complaint I had was that it so quickly got changed from me not being interested/motivated by poker any more to people thinking that means I’ll never play again. When I play poker I almost always enjoy it and although I’m confident in my decision to scale back poker, I didn’t want this to turn into the poker world questioning “will he succeed at quitting” since the goal was just to inform CardRunners/my close friends of my thoughts on things.

PTP: Without sounding too serious, what lessons do you think other poker players – especially younger ones who have grown up with the online game – can / should take from your experiences and specifically from this decision?

MM: I would say that anyone can take as much or as little as they want from it. This is just how one person, with one mentality acts in one set of circumstances. I don’t really think my actions need to be used as a learning experience for others. Maybe in a year, or 5 years I’ll be more able to answer how I feel about things, but for now I’m not even 100% certain this was the best decision in my situation(if it was I’d have made it a lot sooner) so I don’t really want to comment on whether its right for other people. If the next little while goes as planned I guess if I could show one thing, its that you can “get out” of the poker lifestyle which is something that I think plenty of players want to do but are afraid of.

Mike is an instructor at leading training site CardRunners. PTP has teamed up with CardRunners to offer our readers free CardRunners memberships – learn how to get your free CR membership here.

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