The Changing Face of Poker

As a boy, not that many years ago my only association with poker was from watching John Wayne, or was it Clint Eastwood playing 7-card stud in a dusty salon. Slugging shots of 80% proof whiskey before punching an opponent for cheating, or worse a heads up challenge and that’s not the kind were you glare into your enemies eyes across the table, but from 10 paces and down the barrel of a Colt. This was a mans sport and you needed to be a man to play it.

This image always played in my mind and coupled with my religious mother moaning over the perils of gambling – I always stayed away from gambling. In 1999 I moved to Belfast to study at Queens University. In my fist year the only factual
poker memory was how a Chinese man bet on of his restaurants and was called by a man owning Dukes of Belfast, which was a student bar making a health turnover. Needless to say the Chinese man won. These high stakes gave me the wrong impression of poker.
A year later poker started to arrive somewhat more mainstream, it was classed as a sport/sporting event and with the introduction of poker on TV the scene was well and truly set. Five boys in a run down student house, very little money and an unquenchable thirst for beer. Poker seem to be a calling – well it did
cost an awful lot less for a $5 buy in and a few tins of beer that going out on the town and paying extortionate prices. To say I was useless would have been an understatement, but thankfully so were all my friends.
This routine of playing for the sake of playing was short lived. I like my Maths, its better than my English (as you first hand can see!) I soon bought my first can so far only handbook on poker; it was simply a book of odds. It explained the chances of winning hands before the flop and after the turn. At least this gave me some basic knowledge of different hands. Now that my honeymoon period was over I could stop playing franticly with my heart – the gambling game my mother warned me about. I started to use my head, slowed my game down and played in 1/3 of the hands I used to and started down the path were I can see poker as a game of skill, finesse with a dollop of lady luck. You can sign up for free chips for poker with different poker companies. You can pllay completely for free or for a few dollars a game. Check out the offers in Bet Bonus Codes.
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