A contestant at the recent World Poker Tour Shooting Star Tournament at Bay 101, the Willow Glen resident shared the card table with the likes of Scotty Nguyen, Kathy Liebert and Chris Ferguson.

Even though he had never sat at a real poker table or touched poker chips before the event, Dowhan finished 118 out of 440 players in the tournament.

"I went from sitting at the kitchen table with my family's kids to playing with pros just overnight," Dowhan says.

His chance experience began in November 2004 with a few online poker games he was playing for fun. He would enter a game with $5 or $10 and always finished in the top 30 percent.

A former marketing territory manager for Chevron who now trades stocks from his home, Dowhan said he's not a "techie" absorbed by computer games or a calculating math guy.

He's developed a strategy during his short stint with online poker that has helped him improve his game. He jotted down all the mistakes that caused his elimination and that became his "not-to-do" list of moves.

In mid-December, Dowhan won a free seat to an online tournament that promised a highly attractive top prize: A $10,000 seat at the Shooting Star at the Bay 101 Club.

Dowhan's wife, Juli, remembers heading off to a holiday party when her husband entered the game. When she returned, he was still playing, so she started to watch. The couple couldn't believe their eyes when the flashing computer screen announced Dowhan the winner out of 146 players.

"We were both pretty happy and pretty shocked and amazed," Juli says.

Equipped with a special chip from his 10-year-old daughter, Britney, that read, "I love you, Daddy," Dowhan entered the Shooting Star Tournament as one of 220 players on March 7--the other 220 players had their chance on March 8.

On March 7 each table seated at least one poker celebrity. "It was almost surreal," Dowhan says. "I would look at my hand, then I would look up and there was this guy [I knew from TV] staring at me."

But a few hours into the game, the strangeness of the situation faded, and he focused on what he had learned playing online, which he summed up as, "It's not about who you're playing, but about how you play."

His baseball cap pulled down, he kept his gaze lowered and stoically tapped his lucky chip against the table, he says. Dowhan survived a 10-hour ordeal that involved dropping to as low as $1,200 in chips to accumulating $29,000 worth of chips to five times of "going all in"-- betting it all.

His wife says she couldn't tear herself away from the game, even though she had to stand the entire time.

"It was very nerve-wracking," she says. "He would go all the way in and you'd be holding your breath, not knowing whether that was going to be it or not."

By the end of the day, Dowhan had a following of 30 strangers rooting for him and $19,900 worth of chips in his pocket. Finishing 43 out of 65 "survivors," he returned to the poker table two days later. But barely two hours into the game he was knocked out with a pair of Jacks while going all in with a pair of 8s.

Dowhan says his experience at the event was unforgettable. While many of his friends think he should continue with high-profile tournaments, for now he's happy playing an occasional online game.

"I'm not going to spend my own $10,000 to participate in a tournament," he says. "I might spend $10."

Juli says that the next time they go to Las Vegas they might consider hitting the poker tables, or they may just stick to horse racing, where Doug won $36,000 four years ago.