Life on the Tour with Clonie Gowen

Last year Clonie was featured in a spread in Maxim magazine, blond poker pro Clonie Gowen keeps herself busy both on and off the tour. Clonie played almost every event at last year's World Series, cashing twice, and travels the tournament circuit as part of the Full Tilt team. She is best known for winning the first WPT Ladies' Night, defeating Evelyn Ng. The personable beauty grew up in Kiowa, Oklahoma, where she was a basketball and track star and won the Miss Teen McAlester beauty title. She eventually moved to Texas, where she played Omaha against T.J. Cloutier and other tough Texas players.

Question: How do you stay sharp when you play so many tournaments a year, day after day, week after week?

Answer: Staying sharp isn't so hard if you eat well and exercise. You have to make sure to keep alcoholic drinks to a minimum. Stay at a nice hotel that has comfortable beds. Another important thing is to make sure all your friends know that you are a poker player who often plays late nights, so do not call before 10 a.m.!!

Question: Does loneliness ever zap in?

Answer: Loneliness goes with the lifestyle. After you bust out of a tournament, though, is when it really hits you, because all you have is to think about what happened.

Question: What is your favorite city to travel to for tournaments?

Answer: Vegas, of course! There are poker games of all size 24 hours a day, the best food in the world and then there's the shopping, it doesn't get any better than that.

Question: What is your greatest poker accomplishment?

Answer: I don't think I have achieved my greatest accomplishment in poker yet, but winning over half a million in 2005 while technically unemployed, I can't complain.

Question: What does it take to be successful on the road?

Answer: To be successful you have to keep a focused mind and good health.

Question: What do you do for fun on the road?

Answer: I hang out with friends whenever possible. I also try to check out what the city I might be in has to offer. In between I train at home and watch some professional poker movies to understand and learn other poker strategies.

Question: Do you like to gamble on anything besides poker?

Answer: I don't gamble on any of the casino table games unless I have a friend in town that I want to entertain for a while.

Question: Do you worry about expenses, or if you are past that point, do you worry about going broke?

Answer: I used to worry about going broke, but I don't anymore. I never gamble my entire bankroll anymore. I usually only risk about 5 percent of my total bankroll in any given session.

Question: How do you overcome the luck factor?

Answer: I think everyone has an equal amount of good and bad luck, it all evens out in the long term.

Question: How much does it cost you to be on tour?

Answer: It costs a lot of money to play the tour. There are approximately 36 tournaments a year that cost over $10,000 plus all the World Series of Poker events. Then you have to factor in travel expenses, and you will need to maintain a home somewhere.

Question: How much do you have to win just to break even?

Answer: I wouldn't play if I just broke even.

Question: Does it feel odd to suddenly be a sex symbol in the poker world, rather than just a player?

Answer: I don't know necessarily that I am a sex symbol, but definitely since the Maxim shoot of course it is going to take me to a different level as far as how people normally look at a poker player. I don't feel like I'm some type of a sex symbol, though. I am just me, I play poker and that's it.

Question: Would you ever date a poker player?

Answer: No, and that's all we need to say about that?

Question: Tell something about Maxim (the sexy photo shoot).

Maxim was a lot of fun. There are lots of photo shoots for poker magazines, it was kind of cool to actually go in and feel like a model, even though I'm not a model, but to feel like a model for a day and feel beautiful and have people doing things for you. They really set up the shoot so wonderfully. All the staff that they had there right at my hands and feet to make me look gorgeous, it was really great. Every woman should be able to experience something like that once in her lifetime, because it makes you feel so beautiful.

Question: Is it hard being on the road away from your kids?

Answer: My kids travel quite a bit with me, but any time you are a mom or a dad and you are away from your kids, it's hard, you always have them on your mind. I'm very lucky because I have an extremely supportive family that I trust and love so I wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't have a supportive family and the trust within my family. I just couldn't do it without that.

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