Kirk Morrison

By it’s nature, poker stardom comes with a redemption of sorts. Stardom is achieved with a big win or consistently strong performances, and those who have achieved it have unanimously done so after experiencing the pitfalls poker provides. No one starts and stays a winner; we all have to take our beats in order to come out clean on the other side.

Kirk Morrison came out clean, but only because of drastic measures taken as his world got dirtier and dirtier. Morrison is the man who tied old friend Daniel Negreanu’s World Poker Tour record of four for most consecutive money finishes, the last of which came in a runner-up performance at the WPT’s $25,000 championship at Bellagio. It was long before that, though, that he’d learned that money and victory pale in comparison to life, health, and happiness.

Morrison started out in this world with nothing. His parents, Brian and Louise, were New Zealanders who decided to move to California with their two children when Louise was eight months pregnant with Kirk. “They had nothing… like $200 in pocket when they arrived. Dad was a gambler. Actually,” he laughed, “he was gambling in Vegas when I was born in LA.”

With that kind of role model, it was no shock that Kirk would take to gambling early. By the time he was fourteen, he was spending time at the race track, getting older gamblers to put his bets down on his behalf. A year in, he hit a $15,000 “pick six” jackpot. He had to get his father to cash the ticket.

By the time he’d reached university, Kirk was adept at card counting and had found success in any number of games. “University wasn’t for me; I knew by then that I wanted to gamble for a living.” He made his way to Vegas with $3,000 in his pocket, but his dreams of cultivating the cash lasted around twenty minutes. That’s how long it took him to go bust.

Fortunately for Morrison, his winning personality has proven to be one of his greatest assets in this business and it didn’t take long for him to borrow $200. It was with that money he played his first Vegas poker sessions, between which he did a lot of watching of more experienced players. Finally, his bankroll back up enough for a buy-in, he sat at a $20-$40 Limit Hold’em game at the Mirage. Suddenly he’d built his roll back up to $2,000.

“It was too easy, man,” he remembered. “I eventually entered a tournament back at Excalibur and got heads up against Barbara Enright. There were a lot of other known players there too, but I didn’t have any idea who any of them were. That was probably for the best, because I managed to win. I was still underage, but the guys who ran the rooms back then were cool about it.”

His first tournament win in tow, Kirk went to visit his family, now living in Wichita, but before he could enjoy it for long, he caught wind of another tournament going on back in Vegas. This one was called the World Series of Poker.

It was in April of 1994 that Kirk found his way to the biggest tournament series of them all. His father put up half of the $1,500 entry fee for the first tournament of the event, but never claimed his half of the investment when Kirk finished third. He’d outlasted 503 other players, only turning twenty-one when the clock struck midnight twelve hours into play. In total, the event lasted twenty-three hours, all played in one sitting. Morrison’s take was $72,300.

With the money bundled up in paper bags, Kirk went back to Wichita. “I remember having the cash on me and sitting on the plane between these two nice ladies. They had no clue that the money was right at their feet. I got off the plane and went to the daycare where my mother was working and dumped the cash out on the table. She completely flipped out.

Mom and Dad each got a piece. “When I win something, everyone gets a piece,” he says now with pride. “I thought I was God’s gift. I wish I could say I wasn’t that cocky, but I was.” It was then that Kirk started traveling for games, going amongst other places to Mississippi, where he lost $15,000 in a five-day session. “That was a reality check for me,” he says now, adding, “but not a big one.”

Kirk went back to Vegas and started playing tournaments again. The poker was going well, but at the same time Kirk was traveling in high society circles. “I started spending time with Hollywood directors and people like that, and it was hard to want what they had without actually having it. I was so young. I didn’t know any better. Whenever they had a bet on a game, I’d take a piece myself.

Sports betting was the devil that brought out Kirk’s demons. Looking back now, he recognizes that one of his strengths in poker, the ability to disassociate money and its value, was what brought him down. He’d lose big, take out lines of credit to bet again in an attempt to get even. It was a vicious cycle that he now terms “a sickness.”

After five years of this, Kirk knew he needed a wake-up call. An old man at twenty-six, he went back to Kansas, vowing to take a job. He did, selling cars for all of one day. “All I did was think about poker,” he can laugh now. “I gave away the commission and went back to Vegas for WSOP.”

There Kirk hit the biggest score of his life to that point. It was 1998 now, and Kirk entered and won a $1,500 buy-in 7-card Stud event at the WSOP, but the money didn’t last as long as it should have. “I went right back to making the same mistakes again. I lost huge on football and knew I needed a break. I mean, I lost every game. You see the Eskimo Clarks of the world… gambling all day every day, consumed by the gambling, and you don’t want to become one of them.”

Up to his neck in debt, Morrison did the only thing he could see as an option. He paid off what debts he could, leaving behind $55,000-$60,000 more, and moved to New Zealand. “Some of them (the bookmakers) took it well, some didn’t, but I didn’t care. You have to understand, they won so much money from me. They were totally taking advantage of my addiction; they’d offer me all kinds of lines of credit just to make sure I was in the game. As long as I had a debt, there was a chance I’d play some more. It was disgusting. You know, when I came back this year, one of them came to me within a couple of months and offered to re-open my credit line. I told him where he could stick his credit line. They’re vultures.”

Kirk arrived in New Zealand with $200 in his pocket, the same amount his parents had when they arrived in the States. He still gambled small, but in between wagers he found yoga and meditation, means by which he could center himself and transcend the fever that gamblinginflicted in his past life. He stayed on the island nation for six years, enjoying the peace he’d finally found.

That tranquil new lifestyle came to a halt this past January. Kirk made his way to Australia for the Aussie Millions, unaware of just how huge poker had gotten on the American side of the pond. It was there that his old friend Negreanu coaxed him out of retirement. “I couldn’t believe it. I saw Daniel on TV and sent him an email to see how things were going. He wrote that he’d be at the Aussie Millions, so I made my way over. Changed my life again.”

At the Millions, Negreanu walked off the elevator and embraced his friend and they immediately got to talking about old times. They went to The Crystal Room, a chic private club where they saw a number of tennis stars who were in town for a tournament. “Roger Federer and James Blake came in and asked Daniel for his autograph. That’s when I really started thinking about coming back. Daniel offered to back me and suddenly I was on my way to the States.”

Morrison has come full circle now. His return tournament was the LA Poker Classic at the Commerce Casino in LA, where getting knocked out on the bubble failed to discourage him. Thing is, if he’d managed to make it to the money, it would have been all the more remarkable because of what came afterwards. In Kirk’s next four tournaments, all World Poker Tours, he managed to finish in the money, the fourth of them the WPT World Championship, in which he finished second to Carlos Mortensen. Of course, Daniel was only too happy to be there supporting his friend and new cash cow.

Things continue to go strong for Morrison. As I write this, he just signed a deal to become the color commentator for the National Poker League. It’s hard to believe that the one-time degenerate underage gambler has now become respectable enough for TV. Asked for the one indispensable piece of advice that he needed to get himself here, he knew the answer before the question was done for the asking.