Just Playing Cards

It was a cold November evening in 2001. I had put my 2 year old daughter to bed and cuddled up with a blanket to warm up and watch tv, there was not anything on so I was channel surfing. I just so happened to stop for a quick second on ESPN to find my pack of cigarrettes when I heard a man say, "I raise 180,000 baby!" I thought to myself, "Holy shit, what the fuck is this!?!" Needless to say it grabbed my attention so I decided to watch. It was a re-run of the 1998 World Series Of Poker and I was absolutly captivated by it!

I stayed glued to the show, watching and listening to what the commentators and players were saying about the hands and how they were played out, I even got out a notepad and took notes! Scotty Nguyen, also known as "The Prince Of Poker", is the player that uttered the words that fascinated me and unknowingly changed my life as I knew it. I remember the final hand, seeing the million dollars sitting on the table, watching Scotty play with his chips and count them out as he made his calls while trapping Kevin McBride. I loved the end of the tournament when there was a Full House on the board and Scotty uttered the now infamous phrase, "You call it gonna be all over baby!"

When the WSOP was over I was sitting there thinking to myself, "Scotty beat 349 other players to win a million dollars by just playing cards, I know that I can do this!" I was so excited and I couldn't wait to learn more about the game! The next day I went to the store and bought Hoyle's "Friday Night Poker" CD-Rom game and taught myself how to play. This game starts you off with 1,000 chips and within 4 months I made it into the game's Poker Hall Of Fame twice by earning 25 million in chips.

That Christmas my mom bought me Howard Lederer's DVD on how to play tournament Poker. The strategy that I learned from him and the basic Poker knowledge that I learned from Phil Hellmuth's "Texas Hold'em" book gave me enough skill to take down the first tournament I played in. The very first time I played live was a $35 buy in event that was held at the Holy Redeamer Festival on May 21, 2002. I won this tourney and brought home $550, the start of my Poker bankroll. I was so excited that I had won the first time I played and I knew that this was something that I wanted to continue to do.

Little did I know that November night that a man I had seen on tv playing a card game would forever change my life, and to him I am truly greatful! Over the past 9 years I have developed a true passion for Poker and have learned that it is much more than "just playing cards."