November 9, 2007
We left off at Georgetown, where I first found poker in the form of a $5 buy-in mixed game.
Our game gradually grew in stakes, and word got out to other interested players. Soon we had about 20 regular players and were playing about 3 nights a week, homework permitting.
By sophomore year, we were doing a $40-$50 buy-in game with $0.25/$0.50 blinds, and NLHE was the dominant game, though the dealer could call what he liked and occasionally we got a round of omaha or some crazy wild-card game like “Follow the Queen.”
Follow the Queen is a 7-stud variant where the card that falls after a Queen is wild for all players holding that card. It is madness, the wildcard can change mid-hand, sometimes mid-street, and if the final face card is a Q then no cards are wild.
One of the regulars started playing tourneys online and had some success – he encouraged us to check it out, but we were skeptical:
My friend recommended checking it out, but the rest of us agreed – online poker was for chumps. I still wonder how much more I would have made if I’d have started playing online two years earlier!
Junior year came around and things got incredibly busy. I took an internship at Georgetown’s medical center, doing database work and some low-level web design.
I also had a packed schedule of classes, all my free time was spent programming or writing papers – mostly programming, which is about as boring as it sounds when you are doing busy-work projects.
I was getting burned out fast, and one of my friend suggested looking into studying abroad, so I applied to Sydney Uni in Australia, and despite my sweet 3.2 GPA they accepted me.
Australia was amazing – it’s sunny and beautiful in Sydney 260+ days out of the year, and the people are friendly and respectful if you are too.
Classes were fun and interesting, there were lots of cool people to meet. I lived in an international residence with people from all over the world.
I played some poker with other students for small stakes, and managed to buy a new surfboard with the profits. The waves were always good it seemed, so I got to surf 4 or more days a week, which was fantastic.
I got more amazing surfing in that semester than in any previous year(or two!) and I was only there for 5 months. In the middle of May I wiped out on a wave and broke my nose when my surfboard hit me in the face.
While it was a comical sight for the locals, despite bleeding heavily once they realized i could walk and was coherent they left me to my own devices. I drove myself to the hospital and phoned my parents – it looked like i would be out of the water for a bit.
I flew home for surgery, and fortunately it went well and I have no scars or visible remnants of the incident, despite my nose being pointed 20 degrees off to the left while it was broken!
Since I would be out of the water for awhile, I finally decided to give online poker a shot while I recovered from my broken nose.
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