Photo: Robyn Martin

Driving down I-90 toward the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, Eric Narciso (B.A. ’05) smiles. He took this route nearly every night after class to pursue his “other” education: poker. “Columbia knew me as ‘that guy who played poker.’”

Not long after graduation, Narciso moved to Las Vegas and put his audio arts and acoustics degree to work at Ford Audio-Video, installing sound systems. “I wouldn’t have known how to do any of that stuff without my degree,” he says. “The audio program was super hands-on, the classrooms were small, and if you were unsure about anything, you could go and try and do it. Columbia gives you the resources.”

Eventually, though, Narciso became dissatisfied. “I didn’t want to sit there and wait for an engineer to quit so that I could finally have a ‘real’ job,” he says. “I asked myself: Why am I doing this when I know I can beat these Las Vegas games?” He began dealing cards at the Orleans Casino and playing poker professionally. In 2007, Narciso came in first in a World Series of Poker tournament, winning $104,000 and a diamond WSOP bracelet, which he flaunts proudly around his left wrist. He paid off debts, made investments, and bought a house in Vegas.

So what’s next? Narciso says he’d like to travel, return to school to become a teacher, or work in a recording studio. And if he does, he says, Columbia prepared him for it. And poker? Playing professionally is not in the cards. “It’s too stressful when you don’t win,” he says, “and you can’t win every time.”

—Brent White (B.A. ’08)