Inaugural Post

This is my inaugural blog Post. I'll post some basic background about why this blog exists. I am a young non-profit executive with a family. I love my job and love my wife and kids. I also love to play poker. This blog is a way for me to log my poker journey.

When I was a kid I would visit my Grandma's House on Cabrini boulevard in the Fort George neighborhood in New York City once or twice a year. All of my mom's sisters and brothers would be there. It was a smoke-filled cauldron of crazy Filipinos. At night, inevitably, the games would begin.

The women tended toward Mah Jong, while the men would play poker. As a kid if I was lucky I could sit in for my mom or dad in one of the games.  They typically let me keep any profit from these games. I remember thinking as a kid that this was a great way to make easy money. The spoils of a nickel quarter game were a big deal to an eight year old!

The poker variants tended to be games like seven card stud, queens and followers, Little "L", five card draw, Jacks progressive and other dealer's choice games. I learned them all, enjoyed playing, but didn't think much of it.

We had a summer place on the lake in the finger lakes. Twice a year my dad would host a weekend long poker game with his work buddies, and they would install or remove the docks on the water. It was a lot of fun. The games were similar, though the stakes were higher than the family game on Cabrini. Opportunities were fewer to "sit in" during this big game. It wasn't a family game, and I remember that hundreds of dollars could change hands over these weekends. I was astounded by the stakes.

My college roommates and friends would also get dealer's choice games going about once a month. I once won every material belonging of my best friend Pete in an all night poker / pool match. It consisted mostly of crappy skateboard parts and smelly concert T-Shirts, but it was something. We'd gamble to see who had to do the dishes, or who would need to buy dinners. It seems like I generally had an edge, and was often free-rolling for meals and dishes. I once had 66 free Mighty Tacos banked on account with my friend Lane.

That said, I never really gave much thought to poker as a pursuit. There were no brick and mortar card rooms near my home in upstate New York, and online wasn't a thing yet. Of course that all changed with the Moneymaker boom, and like a lot of other folks, I made a deposit on to Party Poker and won some and lost some at some very small stakes. I still wasn't thinking much about it.

My wife and I got a kick out of playing on FullTilt against some of the characters that we saw on Television. We played a $1 razz tournament one night and knocked out Chris Ferguson on our way to winning the first prize of about $55. It was pretty big news in our house and we earned a Tee Shirt that said that we had knocked Jesus out of a tournament. Defeating a Demi-God and world champion was a pretty big accomplishment, but I didn't really know anything about the game.

Two events changed how I thought about poker. The first is Annie Duke's fault. My wife and I were up late one night watching a short lived show that preceded Nightline. Annie Duke was the subject of a half hour interview / profile, and she explained in some detail how she made her living from taking money from tourists at the Bellagio poker room. She talked about her background and what led her to this vocation. I was abso-freakin-lutely riveted. Knowing me as she does, my wife let out an "uh oh" when the show ended. "She's a female you - now you are going to want to play poker for a living." This got it into my head that there were people on earth who could earn a good living playing a game, a novel concept to me at that time (the interview happened pre-boom).

The second game changer that occurred happened basically on a lark, which was that I experienced some accidental and moderate WPT success. I'll cover it in more detail in a subsequent post.

Anyhow, I've had a small dilemma in life. I'm pretty sure that if I were younger and singler in life I would give professional poker a go. As it is, I've got many kids, a great life, and am moderately well accomplished for a young man professionally. I earned an MBA from Duke University. Earning six figures makes the barrier to entry / switching costs to poker prohibitive. Having a slew of kids makes the variance and uncertainty intolerable. And being an executive at a known brand not for profit, makes my poker interest somewhat controversial.

I wouldn't trade my life for anything. I'm not likely going to ever be a professional poker player and I'm very ok with that. I love what I do, and am pretty good at it. I did, however, this past December, decide to take poker more seriously, and put a little discipline to the pursuit of mastering the intricacies of this great game. A part of that is a commitment to doing more than just playing - to spend some time studying and analyzing as well. I want to become active in the forums. I want to start at the bottom and progress through all the levels, not skipping any, and see how far I can get. I view it as a fun challenge.

With my work and life obligations, I don't have a ton of time to devote to poker, but I will devote some. This blog is a way to express my thoughts about the game and my journey in a safe and anonymous way.