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Brad Owen, a WPT Global ambassador, entered the $5,000 buy-in World Poker Tour bestbet Scramble Championship with something more important than poker on his mind.
The poker vlogger went through a terrifying situation recently when his eight-month-old son suffered what was initially considered potentially a “life-threatening” health condition. He explained the situation to PokerNews on Day 2 of the WPT event at bestbet Jacksonville.
Poker Vlogger Concerned with Son’s Health
Owen entered Sunday’s Day 2 session in Florida with one of the smallest stacks. He couldn’t spin it up and was out quickly long before the money bubble burst. Before arriving in Jacksonville, he and his partner, Amber, went through a situation that would have any parent shaken.
“He had seizure signs, his eyes were going in the back of his head,” Owen said of his son.
The condition didn’t seem to improve, so the couple knew they had to take their son to the hospital. They’d get some mixed results from doctors upon running some tests.
“We ran a CT (scan), MRI, and 24-hour EEG (neurological) test, and everything came back negative,” Owen said. “He’s fine, which is great. Yeah, everything came back fine, hopefully it’s nothing to worry about and just stay vigilant and hopefully he’ll be okay.”
Owen described the trip to the hospital as “scary” and his son spent three days in the emergency room. The WPT Global ambassador explained why he had reason to be extremely concerned about his child.
“For three days, it wasn’t a very pleasant place to be not having any real idea if this was essentially a life-threatening situation,” Owen continued. “The doctors were all concerned about it. It seemed like there was at least some chance that he was having infantile spasms. It was possible that he would have seizures basically every day, and we’d give him medications for that. And then there was some small chance that it was nothing. But there was a good chance that it was something, so we were pretty worried.”
Owen’s son is out of the hospital, but he isn’t ready to assume the health problems are gone. He said that since all the tests came back negative, a positive sign, “it seems likely it’s just a phase he’s going through.”
“The doctors told us it’s somewhat common, babies just going through phases where they make strange expressions,” Owen said.
Busy Father
Owen led a busy life long before his child’s birth earlier this year. He travels to World Poker Tour stops as a WPT Global ambassador, is co-owner of The Lodge Card Club in Austin and San Antonio, and plays poker professionally. Oh, and he’s still the most popular poker vlogger in the world with over 750,000 YouTube subscribers.
Balancing work, poker, travel, and being a father isn’t easy. But he’s making it work and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“It’s tough, I was already pretty busy with The Lodge, WPT, two YouTube channels, trying to play poker well, traveling,” Owen said when asked how having a child has forced him to change his lifestyle. “Adding a baby to the mix has made it even more challenging, but I love being busy.”
Owen said he wakes up once a night between 2-4 a.m. when he’s home to take care of and feed his child and works hard to be present as much as he can with the packed work and poker schedule.
The poker vlogger said he’s still committed to pushing out a vlog every week or two and will continue to do so in the future. He’s also focused on helping grow The Lodge Card Club in Austin, the largest poker room in Texas, and the new San Antonio location, which will soon be even bigger. But he has another job now to go with it, and that is being a father.
Owen, Polk, Neeme Open New San Antonio Poker Room
*Images courtesy of the World Poker Tour.