At the end of the day, his favorite thing to pick up is a hand of cards ... and a couple of poker chips.

Known as 'The Big Dog' on the World Series of Poker circuit, Galella won a quarter of million dollars as winner of the Treasure Island Open in Las Vegas earlier this year and has played against professionals like Phil "The Unabomber" Laak, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Chris Moneymaker and Humberto Brenes. He's only been playing cards seriously for a year but has already picked up sponsorship from Big Dogs sportswear. Born and raised in NEPA, Galella's poker-faced ambition is tempered only by family devotion - despite suggestions to go pro, this No Limit Texas Hold'em wiz plans to play only the major events - for now - so he can be home for weekends with his daughter.

What was the World Series like?
It took place this year at the Rio in Las Vegas and when I first went into the convention hall area, I was in awe. All the people and the tables upon tables upon tables - I couldn't believe the amount of people playing poker. And from all over the world. When I looked at the top players in each event and I saw my (name), my wife and I were laughing because we saw one from Denmark, this guy's from Japan, this guy's from Hawaii, there's quite a few from Las Vegas, California, Belgium, and then there's Tom Galella, Scranton, Pa.

You pay a certain amount to enter?
There is a buy-in, depending upon the event. I play No Limit Hold'em. That's the grandpa of all poker. It's been around forever but in the last couple of years it's really gotten big. The Treasure Island event was a $10,000 buy-in. I scraped together money for that and luckily enough I came home with some money.

So there's a big risk.
There is if you're taking cash money out of your pocket. Now I have Big Dogs sportswear as sponsorship. When you enter a major event, ESPN wants you to fill out a profile sheet and they want a poker name, a nickname. I figured, "I'm wearing a Big Dogs shirt, I'll go in as The Big Dog. Why not?" So the name caught on and people started to know my name and when we came home from our vacation after the World Series and I got a call offering me sponsorship. So what they do is they pay 75 percent of the buy-in and I just have to wear their apparel and send them five percent of the take. So with a $10,000 buy-in, I only have to come up with $25,000. (Poker's) so big now, you don't have to win to make yourself a lot of money. Cindy Violette from Atlantic City came into money six times out of eight events and she made herself almost a million dollars - without winning an event.

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