I have long said that it is a natural progression for any successful gamer that you will end up playing poker.

As a child I learned to roll dice and hold cards more or less as soon as I could see the pips and hold the shapes. For cards, Uno was never played, cribbage was a swift diversion from numerous east european card games. Spades and Hearts provided a useful introduction to learning hand patterns and distribution before the yawning chasm of Bridge appeared. As the son of two very good Bridge players the natural expectation was that I would follow in their suit (Budum-Tis). Fortunately for me I dodged it and managed to become a purely social player who occasionally visits a local club with his brother to terrorise the locals with bizarre bidding and hand play which only the extremely imaginative but annoyingly competent card players can pull off.

Board and Computer games rapidly became boring once the existence of a fixed number of controllable variables was grasped, and essentially it came down to moving in the most efficient pattern dictated by dice. At the end of the day, however complicated you make Tic-Tac-Toe it becomes just as pointless. Chess naturally is the best expression of a board game and to this day provides an enjoyable afternoon with a friend over a cup of coffee. Fortunately (again) a pitfall I dodged before my brain became inundated with endless calculations of possible game theory scenarios.

The explosion of Internet gaming was a salvation as it introduced the constant variable of human influence on decision making. Age of Empires was a dream for a generation of boys who had previously had to go through the boring as hell process of painting models, so boring that before you were half way through you decided it just wasn't worth the hassle to create that glorious battle. Animated pixels created in seconds saved the dream!

Bring all of these things together and Poker is the clear, ultimate expression of all gaming experiences. A mechanical game can be mastered very easilly by any intelligent person. However Poker introduces two variables which do not bow to statistical probability. So Poker has three clear aspects:

1) The mechanical game.
2) Luck.
3) Human Beings.

At best we can learn to contain and influence variables 2 and 3, but ultimate control is ever elusive. The introduction of a thinking opponent, into a game which is largely not mechanical at all, provides the ultimate challenge to someone who truly loves to game.

For me now there is a greater challenge. As someone who learned to play, with some success, many many years ago, the world of online poker is a mystery. Moving from a live game scenario where more than half the game is nothing to do with the cards themselves into an online game is quite a culture shock, which to be honest I am struggling with. Trying to absorb a new game which is built around statistical tendencies which must be painstakingly learned through maths and endless notes on players is not easy!

Nonetheless, here is my blog in which the journey will be.... logged. Wish me luck, and if we meet in a game please bear two things in mind. Firstly, remember that anything you do to me may well be published without your consent on this page, baring you to the world as a git. Secondly, and most important, dear lord please don't 3 bet me on the turn!