Chris Carlson, a bright son of New York, returned from college in 2001, looking for a job in the securities industry.
"It was kind of the de facto path for Long Island kids who studied business," recalled Carlson, 36, who had a couple of promising Wall Street interviews that led to nothing after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the subsequent recession and the loss of thousands of Wall Street jobs.
After a few years as a waiter, Carlson was hired as a deskbound junior equity analyst for Reuters in 2004. He was bored. He started playing online poker at night, using his proficiency at math and probability to help him make $100,000-plus within six months. He quit his lower-paying day job.
"Poker is a game of skill, not of chance," insists Carlson, who eschews other casino games because of the long odds when playing against the house. Carlson also built an online business organizing poker competitions and getting a cut for sending players to online games sponsored by various sites. Those big paydays stroked his ego, financed a pricey Manhattan flat and resulted in a booze-laden nightlife.
A decade later, Carlson is the humbler and now-sober CEO of FourCubed, a small business housed in a renovated car-painting factory in northeast Minneapolis. The company builds poker websites, attracts thousands of players, tracks them and guides them — for a fee — to licensed-gaming companies who also are his advertisers.
"I don't even play poker anymore," Carlson said in an interview last week. "It takes a lot of time, and now I have a business to run and build and a family."
Carlson moved to the Twin Cities in late 2005 to undergo treatment for alcohol addiction at Hazelden. He liked the Twin Cities. He doubts that he would have survived a business setback in 2011-12 if not sober. A gradual humility, gratitude for his wife and two kids, and some financial success have replaced hangovers and the smart-guy edge. But he still has that drive and ambition.
"Chris was kind of the typical 'ADD' entrepreneur, six or seven years ago, chasing any 'shiny object' because he recognized that gambling thing could be great, but there was also great risk,'' Jeff Redmon, a veteran business lawyer who has advised Carlson. "Chris understands that the Internet is about eyeballs. He gets people to go through his site, keeps them, and then effectively sells those folks to the poker sites that pay Chris for bringing players to them."
