Madness

With a couple of hundred $'s deposited I headed straight for the $215 Sit n Go tournaments, the set up at party poker basically ensures very quick games. My game ended very rapidly, I think it was the third or fourth hand when a player called 1/3 of his chips on a gut-shot straight draw and hit, knocking me out. Oh well, try again, the action was so loose I decided to play super tight only to get knocked out 1 off the money in 4th. Third time lucky, I managed to win 1st prize of $1000 and called it a day. I was mentally exhausted, I couldn't believe people could play like that at such stakes.

 Poker: Luck or Skill?

After playing at PartyPoker for 2 weeks there was a lot of hype about the 2004 World Series of Poker (biggest event in the poker calendar) and the massive $5 million being paid for 1st place. PokerStars (very gold site) was showing a live broadcast of the main event, it had an audience of about 25,000 people. Primarily I thought it was pretty ordinary, but I soon realised what a tremendous, well run site it is. Compared to PartyPoker the traffic is small (but you can say that about all other poker sites), they have the best multi-tournaments on the web, the whole set-up and pay out structures are truly excellent. The competition is extremely tough with a lot of online pro's playing there. I transferred my money from PartyPoker to PokerStars through Neteller (online wallet, very handy for poker players) and began to play. After a while I realised something, I didn't know hardly anything about the game I had won a substantial amount of money in. At no point in the past had I considered odds in the mathematical sense, I was playing purely on instinct but these guys at PokerStars knew the pot odds and other poker odds. I thought I would buy a few poker books as not to be at a disadvantage with these excellent players. I lost a couple of thousand but I had paid for my education, and I returned to PokerRoom, refreshed, rejuvenated and a far better poker player. (Continued: The Return of ACE)