Life and Times of a Poker Addict

Everyone needs an outlet to get the tough beats off their chest, right? Poker has been a family activity at holiday time for as long as I can remember. Endless games of Follow the Queen, Baseball, Low Chicago and many more marked the beginning of my poker life. I was in college when Rounders hit and I was first introduced to Texas Hold'em. There were poker nights here and there but I ended up getting away from it for the most part outside of holiday games with the family.

Somewhere between Robert Varkonyi and Chris Moneymaker I got sucked back into the craze. There were plenty of games with my older brother, endless hours spent in a staredown over double blind Guts games, neither one of us willing to submit to the other. And as the popularity of hold'em grew I finally got a fateful phone call inviting me to play in my first tournament.

I won $120 with pocket Aces versus Ace-duece.

The next week I went back, and I won $120 with pocket Aces versus Ace-duece.

Eight months later I feel fairly certain I'm certifiably addicted to this game. I've found a few games a week that I play in with friends, mostly NL Hold'em tourneys for $40 buy-ins or so, with the occasional Omaha tournament sprinkled in.

Since I started playing last September I'm up about $2000 between my live games and online play. And I still generally don't know what the hell I'm doing. Therein lies the great thing about poker, even a blind squirrel can get the nuts every once in a while.

So I thought I'd start out on something else that has become a bit of a national craze lately and start my own blog. Hopefully the content that follows this initial post will be much more entertaining. I welcome any and all comments but for now I have to go get ready, poker tourney starts in a couple hours...