Poker is all about luck!

Poker is all about luck right? FALSE. Nope, not at all, and as a matter of fact, I can confidently tell you that poker is 100% skill. Does that mean luck isn't involved in some way or another? No, but theoretically, poker is a game of all skill. Before I get into all of that though, I want to explain the reasoning behind me starting this blog.

First, some info about myself. I am currently a college student working towards my bachelors in mathematics. I'm in my 4th year, in a 5 year program, and for this summer, I have been working full time as an intern for a financial company in center city Philadelphia. Which is really nice, except that my pay is a significant downgrade from my previous job, which was a professional online poker player. :)   But unfortunately I can no longer play poker online, if anyone has read the news lately, the U.S. Government sued the online poker companies and banned U.S. citizens from playing. There goes my additional income :( F@#K!

I am creating this blog to record my trials and tribulations as I attempt to become a live professional poker player at my local brick and mortar casino. I also want this blog to help keep my thoughts in order about my life in general, but mostly about poker. (AHHH YEAAHHH)

So my first post should probably explain how I got into poker in the first place...... Way back when I was still in elementary school, my family would always have some sort of a game night with my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. And I LOVED playing, and for a kid, won my fair share. I was always pretty smart, I am able to catch onto things pretty quickly if it peaked my interest, and games definitely did. Gambling is also kind of promoted in my family as well, both sets of my grandparents go to the casino monthly (almost weekly), my parents go to the casino monthly as well. So, to see a game that was fun, and could also win money at the same time, was definitely intriguing to me. To say the least, ever since I was young, poker peaked my interest.

I never got serious about it though until middle school, because around 2003 "The poker boom" occurred. For those of you who don't know your poker history at all, let me explained what happened, because I was there for all of it.

Every single summer, there is an event held in Las Vegas called the World Series of Poker. It is a serious of tournaments where all of the top poker pros in the world come to play. The biggest tournament in the series is simply called "The main event" or "The No Limit Texas Hold em World Championship". It's a really big tournament with a 10,000$ buy in and over a million dollars rewarded to the winner. This very tournament, and a very cliche story surrounding it that year, caught the attention of millions.

What ended up happening is that the spring and summer leading up to the television airing of the 2003 main event on ESPN, ESPN showed re-runs of the 2002 main event, which grabbed the attention of many, including myself. With that initial attention, ESPN aired the 2003 main event. What made this event so crucial to the poker boom was the journey of the eventual winner, Chris Moneymaker. Yes, that's right, his last name is money maker. ESPN did a great job of explaining his story throughout the tourney. He had entered the main event by playing a 40 dollar satellite. (A Satellite is basically a tournament which has a first place prize of an entry fee into another bigger tournament) He then battled his way through countless professional poker players to win the 2.5 million dollar first place prize. YUP, some guy name Moneymaker, took 40 bucks, and turned it into 2.5 million in sponduli, WONDERFUL. You couldn't have asked for a better story, big time underdog with a cool last name, taking nothing and winning millions. This story caused the world to blow up over poker, and so did I.

Well I am getting tired as it is 3am, so I will finish my poker story in the next post.

-Coopb20