Interview: Taylor Caby

Age: 28 Hometown: Schaumberg, Illinois Resides: Chicago, Illinois Best Known For: High-stakes play online as 'green plastic' and founding CardRunners. This week, high stakes poker player and entrepreneur Taylor Caby freed up some time in his busy schedule to answer a few questions about his life and latest business venture. North America residents can win $1,000,000 if they visit DraftDay and predict the highest scoring NFL players at each position for the week. The 'Perfect Lineup' promotion is free to enter. online poker 468x60 PokerTips.org: First off, tell us a little about your educational background and how you originally made your way into the poker world. Caby: I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I went to college at the University of Illinois and studied Finance. I got into poker the same way many other people did at the time -- watching the movie Rounders. I was starting high school around this time and started playing with family and friends. PokerTips.org: You were at one time one of the most successful regulars in the world of high stakes online poker. Do you still play any poker these days? If so, where and what games/stakes? Caby: I play as much as I can, which is pretty rarely these days. I've played at the WSOP every summer since I graduated college. I don't play online anymore, so when I'm playing live it's usually a $10/20 or $25/50 NL game. If the game looks good I'll play a level or two higher, though. PokerTips.org: You exited the day-to-day grind of the poker world by building CardRunners to the highly-trafficked poker training site that it is today. Was that the plan all along or did you not really see CardRunners taking off like it did and leading you down the path of an entrepreneur? Caby: I had no idea CardRunners would become what it is. I thought it could do pretty well and hopefully make a profit, but I just figured it would be a hobby more than anything else. In retrospect, I should have probably realized that had a lot of potential but I really didn't at the time. Things just sort of evolved from there. I never set out to be an entrepreneur, it just sort of happened. PokerTips.org: What can you tell us about your new venture, DraftDay? Caby: DraftDay is a daily fantasy sports website. Traditionally, fantasy sports are played over the course of an entire season. At DraftDay, you can draft a team for one day only. It's a great concept because you aren't committed to a league or a team for an entire season. Injuries won't ruin your season, and if you don't feel like managing a MLB (for example) team for 162 games you can draft a team on days that are convenient for you. PokerTips.org: Do you think daily fantasy sports has the potential to go through a boom similar to what poker experienced in the last decade? Caby: I don't think we'll see very many gaming type booms like we saw with online poker. I think daily fantasy sports has a chance to be close, though. The sheer amount of people playing fantasy sports games is massive, it's something like 30 million people in the USA alone. When you consider that you have to commit to an entire season in order to play, you have to think the number could go up if people realize they can play daily games. I do expect daily fantasy sports games to become quite popular, it's just a question of if they will be played by hundreds of thousands or millions -- we'll find out. PokerTips.org: As the founder of at least one highly successful business with perhaps another on the way, what advice would you give to our readers with ambition to succeed in the business world? Caby: The best piece of advice I can give is to make sure you are passionate about what you are doing. Don't approach a business because you are looking to make a quick buck, that will almost never work out. The reason for this is that to be successful you need to be "better" at your industry than everyone else. You need to work harder, be more informed, be ahead of trends, and just generally understand things better than other key decision makers in competing companies. You will never get to this point if you aren't totally and 100% committed to that goal. It's just not something that comes quickly or easily. To do that, you need to really love what it is you do. It needs to be more than just a job or a means of making money. It almost has to be irrational, really. So basically, don't get started if you aren't going to approach things that way, it's just not worth it because you are extremely unlikely to be successful. PokerTips.org: Finally, if you could instantly be really good at one thing that you're not already really good at, what would it be? Caby: I wish I was more artistic. It'd be cool to be able to draw, paint, create music, something like that. I don't think I've ever met someone who is less naturally artistically gifted than myself.