Once the band was settled at the hotel, Rob Perelman could go play cards.
He was tour-managing for bands including Yellowcard and The Format, handling the work that kept other people moving. Poker began filling the hours around that life, first at home between tours, then in the cities the road took him through.
A friend had introduced him to online poker when his own schedule looked nothing like the schedules of the people around him. While they went to their regular jobs, Rob had time to explore something new. He stayed up playing, bought books, and started studying. An interest that had begun between tours became something he kept making room for.
Tab follows the point where those two worlds began to shift. Rob enjoyed tour-managing, but finding the next tour could feel like another job in itself. A connection through poker led to television work in Los Angeles, where his programming skills found an unexpected use. The next chapter drew on parts of his life he had already been building.
At the table, certainty remained out of reach. Rob talks about the frustration of making a decision he believes was sound and watching the cards go against him. Afterward, it is easy to look back and wish he had chosen differently. Living with the result means remembering what he knew before it arrived.
Those experiences lead into stories about other players, tournament travel, and the practical work supporting a life around poker. Tab gets past the image of the game to ask about the person who has to get up and do it again.
One of Rob's stories brings the scale back down to a conversation with his mother. Explaining the details of a hand could lose her. Explaining that he had had a hard day did not.
For all the distance between a tour bus and a poker table, that part of working life travels easily: coming home with a story and hoping somebody understands what the day felt like.
