"Those lights and cameras won't throw me off. Not at all. You'll see," said Arnold Thimons IV just days away from playing the biggest poker game of his life.

The 44-year-old from Greensburg, Pa., is the latest amateur to win a seat on NBC's popular "Poker After Dark," (PAD) where he'll face five top pros of his choice in pursuit of $120,000. If he doesn't win, it's a sure thing he won't go down quietly.

"I'm a talker. I'll be there to have fun, that's first and foremost. Oh, I'll gamble, too," said Thimons (rhymes with Simmons, with a silent "h"). "I'm always telling jokes, trying to get people in a good mood. My friends say I should have been a stand-up comedian."

Given the lineup of pros Thimons picked, laughs should be abundant when NBC tapes the show Oct. 31 at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. Daniel Negreanu, Mike Matusow and Phil Laak will keep things lively playing alongside the legendary Johnny Chan and actress Jennifer Tilly.

Thimons' poker-playing pals in Pennsylvania say he has a chance to win. The first two "Dream Table" amateurs on PAD, Ken Light and Paul Featherstone, finished a respectable third and fourth in the winner-take-all format.

Thimons, as Light did a year ago, will blog his Vegas adventure daily at luckydogpoker.com starting next Wednesday.

"Five of my poker buddies are going to Vegas with me. These guys really think I've got a shot. I feel the same way," said Thimons, who greatly prefers playing face-to-face even though to win the $20,000 seat he survived three grueling elimination rounds online at Full Tilt Poker against large fields.

"I know the pros are better than me. They've played thousands and thousands of more hands, but I feel like I know enough and can judge people well enough that I might have a chance as long as I get some good cards," Thimons said.

Actually, he may not be all that far behind the others in poker experience. He's the seventh child in an Irish-Catholic poker-playing family of eight, and his father also was one of eight children.

"Growing up, my father's family would get together every weekend, often after Mass on Sunday, at his mom's house to play poker," Thimons recalled. "They'd play for pennies and nickels with grandma at the head of the table. I never wanted to stay with the girls in the TV room, so at the age of 5 Grandma let me sit on her lap and watch. I've been playing ever since."

When he moved 14 years ago to Greensburg, 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, he "ran into a good group of friends, including local business owners and a couple of Pennsylvania state troopers, and we've been playing home games on a regular basis," said Thimons.

Poker was part of his 20-year career in the building materials industry, too.

"There are a lot of gamblers in that business. Just about every convention and sales meeting around the country was held where there was a casino so we could play poker and gamble after the meetings," said Thimons, who has been to Vegas dozens of times.

In a quirk of timing, his latest and biggest poker exploit comes just four months after a career change. The brutal national economy and housing industry nosedive forced a switch to a position as assistant director of admissions for South University, part of a network of more than 100 colleges and universities under Education Management Corp.

"I think the change has been good for me," Thimons said. "I was getting burned out on the building materials industry. It was fun for 20 years when business was good. But things changed and even some people I considered friends turned cutthroat. I enjoy what I'm doing now."

What he really enjoyed a few months ago was winning that final hand on the computer with the nut flush against Jordan Morgan, one of nine Full Tilt-sponsored pros in the 800-plus field of qualifiers.

"When I won, I'm telling you, I screamed, jumped up, lost my breath," said Thimons. His wife, Teresa, heard the commotion and his 13-year-old son, Arnold Joseph Thimons V, was at his side when victory was secured about 1 a.m.

"Arnie was screaming, 'What'd you win?' and I was shouting 'I don't know, I don't know.' I figured I'd made it to a playoff in Vegas or something. I had no clue it was the grand prize until a few days later when I got a call from Full Tilt asking me which pros I wanted to play against," said Thimons.

His first pick was Chan, winner of 10 World Series bracelets, including back-to-back main event titles in 1987-88. "I think he's the best in the world. He's the most dangerous player I could have picked, but to be honest, I wanted him there just for the honor of playing with him," Thimons said.

Can a small-stakes amateur beat the great Johnny Chan?

"I'm not intimidated at all. I have a feeling they'll test me early with some raises, but I'll mostly stick with my normal game — conservative play, trapping and picking spots to gamble," Thimons said.

"I think I can get down to the final two. Whatever happens, I'll relish every second of it."

E-mail your poker questions and comments to russ@luckydogpoker.com for use in future columns. To find out more about Russ Scott and read previous LuckyDog Poker columns, visit www.creators.com or www.luckydogpoker.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 RUSS SCOTT

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