The Poker Bookie

A journal dedicated to my exploits into Poker, Sports Betting, and Thoroughbred Racing

Name:
Location: Bloomington, Illinois, United States

Friday, May 28, 2004

Welcome to my blog!

Thank you for taking time out to check out my blog. After many months of lurking on RGP and other forums as well as reading the other blogs, I feel that the time has come for me to contribute by posting my thoughts and experience with online poker. Like the majority of new poker players, I caught the poker bug after watching Chris Moneymaker win the WSOP 2003 on ESPN. I started playing online around December of 2003 and in only a few short months, I have started to show some nice profits. I am exclusively a tournament no limit player and I have won 7 multi-table tourneys in addition to many other money finishes.

Who am I? Well I am a 29 years old male living in Duluth, GA. I graduated from the University of Georgia (go DAWGS!!!) It was at this fine institution that I first started to bet on sports. At first, it was just parlay cards and small bets with friends….but that gradually gave way to much larger bets placed over the Internet to offshore sportbooks. The games are just so much more exciting to watch when you have some money riding on the outcome. However, it can be a very expensive hobby as I quickly found out. As soon as I turned 21, I started to experiment with casino games. Living in Atlanta, the closest casinos were 6 hours away in Biloxi, MS so those trips were few and far between. My game of choice was blackjack….then I fell in love with craps. The one constant here is that no matter what my new gambling poison turned out to be, I continued to lose.

All that ended when I found poker. Although, some of you who have been playing this game for much longer than I have will undoubtedly attribute my recent success to beginner’s luck, I feel that this is much more than just a short-term anomaly. I am a fairly intelligent guy who has a good grasp on math concept and able to quickly compute odds and probabilities. I also have a strong memory so I feel that I have an “edge” over the majority of the people that I play against online. I also have a bit of a compulsive personality as my fiancée would say. I tend to absorb myself fully into whatever it is that I am doing. For example, when I was rolling dice, I would spend hours each day scouring the Internet for articles about dice setting (the art of controlling the spin of the dice so that they land on a specific number).

And so it has been with poker, I have logged many hours online playing, reading hand histories, reading blogs, and reading some of the recommended poker books. I am now taking the next step to share with you my experience. What I am looking for is some critique of my play so that I can continue to improve and maybe one day be able to sit at the final table of the WSOP. Lofty dream, I know but don’t count me out!