Professional Rock Climber Funds Career by Playing Poker

When André DiFelice tore a flexor tendon in his right arm, he couldn't open a door or grasp a cup in his hand, let alone scale a rock wall. When you're a competitive climber, this poses a problem. This was back in October and for about three months, DiFelice stayed off the rocks.

For the Canadian climber, that meant no bouldering, the sub-category of the sport he specializes in. Bouldering is climbing, stripped down. It requires no ropes and minimal equipment—climbing shoes and chalk will do—and has climbers use a variety of maneuvers as well as their intellect to figure out the correct path to the top. The routes—called problems—are usually short, about six metres or less off the ground, but complicated. It's equally a test of the body as it is the mind. During those three months, DiFelice's body wasn't up to the task.

While others ascended the walls, DiFelice remained grounded. It was all very depressing, he said. It was then that he decided to turn to his other passion: poker, which also works hand in hand with his climbing career financially. Within North America, there's no funding for the sport, outside of private sponsorships. That means he uses his poker earnings to fund his rock climbing career, which he estimates costs between $10,000 to $20,000 annually.

Inspired by his older brother, the 24-year-old climber had dabbled in professional poker previously, even winning a $10,000 prize when he was just an 18-year-old. But in recent years, his pursuit of competitive climbing had gone into overdrive. The silver lining to the arm injury, he said, was rediscovering poker.

"And thankfully I did because then poker has been amazing this year," he said.

In 2016 alone, DiFelice's earnings are already in the six figures. And speaking of good hands, after months of recovery DiFelice's arm has mended and he's competing in the World Cup season. Three to five days a week, DiFelice focuses on climbing. On Sundays and Thursdays, he plays on PokerStars. This is the ideal balance, he said. Each must be done in moderation. Yet each, he believes, is vital to his success.

"You can become injured when you climb too much. Or when you play too much poker, maybe you start not playing so well and that can go downhill very fast. So now that I have two and I'm focused on both, they both seem to be going very well," he explained.

"Basically I'm always motivated to do both. I don't burn out."

The first time DiFelice burnt out, he was 18 years old.

Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, DiFelice's family emigrated from Canada when he was 3 years old. After quick stops in Mexico and Mississippi, the family settled in Fort Collins, Colorado. It's there that DiFelice found rock climbing.

"When I was eight, I was like 'I want to be a professional rock climber,'" he said.

One summer, he swears that he and his older brother Alex climbed every day for two straight months. Each day, the brothers would look at one another and ask, 'Are we going to the gym today?'

"I remember saying, 'Yeah of course we're going to the gym,' and just being so sore," the younger DiFelice recalled. Neither ever wanted to say no. Even when his whole body ached he wouldn't turn down a chance to climb with Alex.

In his youth, DiFelice enjoyed climbing outdoors, including bouldering and sport climbing, a variation using ropes and fixed bolts in the rocks. But after his interest in outdoor climbing began to wane, he switched to indoor competitions. After enrolling in some local contests, DiFelice decided to take part in a World Cup event in Vail, Colorado. That meant a trip back home to Canada.

Despite not living in Canada for the majority of his life (he resided in the United States on a visa), DiFelice remained a citizen. If he wanted to compete in climbing, he'd have to do it as a Canadian. So DiFelice attended a national competition in Montreal, and placed third, qualifying him for the Vail event. Back in the U.S., he showed up for the World Cup wearing the Maple Leaf, much to all his friends' surprise. "Nobody actually knew I was Canadian back home until I did a World Cup and had a Canadian jersey," he said with a laugh.

At his first major event, DiFelice finished a respectable 18th place, but the rush of competition left him equally uninspired to climb. He half-heartedly enrolled in a few more events—including two World Cups in Vail and Canmore, British Columbia—but proceeded to have poor results. The final straw came when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament. "When that happened, I was like 'OK I'm done.'"

At 18, he retired. Talking about it now, he describes the decision to quit like a drawn-out breakup. And it kind of was. He just fell out of love with climbing.

"I just got so sick of it. I hated it, everything about it," he said.

"I was really disappointed when I stopped climbing, when I lost my passion for it," he added later. "It felt like I had an empty hole inside."

For a time, DiFelice tried to fill that void with different things. He began playing poker online. When that became illegal in the U.S., he found a job in marketing, though that left him feeling unsatisfied. In 2014—three years removed from climbing—he moved to the Netherlands. The plan was to stay there and play poker to earn a living. But things didn't exactly go according to plan. Poker didn't bring in the money he exected and DiFelice found himself once again turning to an old hobby.

"Once I started to feel psyched to climb again, I was like, 'Yes! I have this feeling again,'" he said, recalling his relief. "It was different than climbing outside, but just as good a feeling."

A funny thing happened during DiFelice's layoff from climbing. He developed a fear of heights. A competitive climber afraid of heights, you say? When pressed and probed about this unexpected nugget of information, he swears he didn't encounter any traumatic, height-related incidences during his break. But he does remember how he discovered his newfound phobia.

About a year ago, while he was still in Europe, a friend invited DiFelice to do some sport climbing in Northern Spain. The terrain was daunting—massive 70-foot limestone boulders and lots of cliffs, he said.

"I went there and I started to climb and I was petrified. Terrified. I couldn't believe it," he said. "I was just really scared of being up there. So I tried for like two weeks. We were climbing there and I was like, 'OK I'm going to get used to it again. This is something I do; it's something I used to do.' It just never happened. And I've tried, but I'm very scared. Now I just do bouldering."

At the World Cup level, bouldering is one of three categories contested, along with lead climbing—which requires competitors to climb a long, difficult route within a time limit—and speed climbing, where climbers try to reach the top as fast as possible.

Bouldering is characterized by its short, but difficult-to-solve problems. In a World Cup event, competitors must attempt to climb five boulders in the qualification round, followed by four problems in each of the semifinal and final rounds. They get a time limit (five minutes in the first two rounds, four minutes in the final) to try to reach the top or get as high as possible. When time expires, there's a short break and then it's on to the next problem.

With bouldering, DiFelice avoids climbing great heights, much to his delight. But there's one thing that would convince him to expand his training to both lead and speed climbing: the Olympics.

For the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, climbing is on the shortlist of sports that may be added to the competition roster. If it does make it, climbers would most likely have to compete in each discipline and a winner would be chosen based on an overall score, according to an article on Climbing Magazine.

"If it makes it into the Olympics, this will be my main focus," he said. "I will start lead climbing again, even though I'm scared, and I will start speed climbing."

In his first bouldering competition of the year, DiFelice didn't have the result he was looking for. In the April World Cup event in Switzerland, he finished tied for 57th. His hands still felt weak, he said, not yet up to their usual strength following his injury.

"It was actually like a good way to start the year because now I've got just like a burning fire of motivation underneath me," he said over the phone from the Netherlands last week.

That fire will burn even as DiFelice skips the next two World Cup events in Japan and India to instead attend the European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monaco, where he'll look to add to his already respectable 2016 earnings. Once he's wrapped up there, he'll rejoin the World Cup climbing tour in late May in Innsbruck, Austria, with his sights set on the World Championship in September.

DiFelice can transition between the worlds of poker and climbing after years of practice. Also, he said, the two aren't as dissimilar as one might imagine. Both require sharp focus and the ability to make important decisions under pressure, and he believes luck plays a role in each of them. But for DiFelice, it's more than just similarities.

"There is a very symbiotic relationship between the two," he said about his passions working in tandem.

Which is perhaps why he can't imagine life without them. When he's older, after his competitive climbing days are over, DiFelice dreams of a life in France, living near the forest of Fontainebleau, known for its lush greenery and unique rock formations. "I would like to spend the rest of my life climbing on these boulders," he said of the French terrain.

"I will always climb and always play poker."

All photos by Daily VICE