One Door Closes: Michael Loncar on Basketball, Fatherhood, and the Night That Changed His Life

From the age of three until seventeen, Michael Loncar played basketball almost every day. Then a knee injury ended the dream. What it could not end was everything the game had built into him.

The competition, the work ethic, the practice, the grind. All of those things also exist in poker, says the ACRPoker Team Pro. Going from the basketball court to the poker felt was very easy. Poker has so many similarities to sports, which is why you see so many former athletes thrive in it.

For Loncar, that crossover is not a metaphor. It is the story of his life.

The Gift of Shoot

Ask Loncar about his childhood and the first image that comes back is a gym, a ball, and his father.

He would rebound for me and tell me positive things for hours, daily. I always think about how those thousands of hours shooting hoops with him shaped me into the man I am today. I thank him for those moments all the time.

His father was also the one who introduced him to poker, and years later he put their relationship into a short book called The Gift of Shoot. For Loncar, seeing his own story told that way was moving rather than strange.

He depicted our relationship and those moments so perfectly in that short book he wrote about us.

Practice First, Play Second

Loncar estimates he has played more than 150,000 sit-and-gos. That is a number most players would find numbing. To an athlete, it is just reps.

An athlete has to practice and work on their game before they play, he says. They need to work on moves and make sure their mind is right when it’s game time. It’s the same for poker players. You study, you talk hands with other players, you make sure you’re mentally ready to execute when it’s game time, just like in any sport.

The discipline he learned rebounding for his father, thousands of shots at a time, is the same discipline he brings to grinding volume online.

$3,000 and Two Boys

The lowest point of his career had nothing to do with a bad beat. It was a bankroll of about $3,000 and a family that needed him.

At the time I was engaged with two boys, and I knew I had to rise up and make it happen for them.

He did. From October 2017 to January 2018 he turned that $3,000 into $25,000 through coaching and live cash games. Then came the night that changed everything.

In January 2018 he played the $265 buy-in Million Dollar Sunday on ACRPoker and won it for $138,000. He was in bed next to his wife when the final card fell.

I won that tournament in bed with my own wife, and it changed our lives. That will always go down as the most special moment of my poker career. The timing was magical.

A Tournament With His Name On It

That win was the start of a relationship with ACRPoker that has only deepened. Years later, the site did something that still stops him in his tracks: it named a tournament series after him.

It means everything. It’s so motivating to know that Phil and ACRPoker believe in me and see something special in me. It’s been years since they did me that great honor, and I’m still to this day amazed and grateful for it.

When he streams, the thing he most wants recreational players to take away is not a hand-reading trick. It is an attitude.

I want them to see how always staying positive can have a tremendous impact on your results, he says. And I want them to see how amazing it is to be able to play big guarantees every day on ACRPoker from the comfort of their own home.

What Deep Cash Taught Him

After Black Friday, Loncar shifted from online to live cash games, then eventually back to tournaments. That detour turned out to be an education.

Live cash really made me a better deep-stacked tournament player. I played in lots of table-max games where you’re 1,000 big blinds deep. Playing deep cash for years made me that much better in similar spots in tournaments at the early levels.

Playing for Four Other People

Loncar is now a father of three sons, and fatherhood has reshaped how he approaches a career defined by variance.

I think about it all the time, how crazy it is that I’m a professional poker player, a professional gambler, and have three kids. Being a dad makes me focus on not risking too much and being smart with my bankroll management.

At the same time, it gives me extra motivation to play my best at all times, thinking about them and my wife.

Advice for the Athlete Whose Dream Just Ended

Loncar has lived the exact moment when a first love is taken away. Asked what he would tell a young athlete facing it now, his answer is the same optimism his father drilled into him between rebounds.

This door has closed, but because of it another door will open, he says. Every single time something bad has happened to me in my life, something great happened later because of that event.

Stay positive, keep doing the things you love, and in time you’ll see that you wouldn’t go back and change anything, because of all the great things that end up happening to you.

For a kid who thought his story ended on a basketball court at seventeen, that has proven true more than once.