Return to The Old Poker Home.

OK So maybe I didn't go to The London Beirut Express to Play Poker, But my first online game was directly across the street in the Internet Cafe

Last night I returned to one of my original online poker homes, Gutshot Poker. I reloaded a tiny bit (around 500) and set about readjusting to the interface in some tiny(.25-.50) NLHE cash games. Several things spurred me to a return: 1)PokerOffice now supports B2B/24HR network, 2) Return stagnation on PokerStars (Not losing but getting harder everyday to turn Profit) 3) The mighty Talisman of RakeBack. Gutshot was the 2nd online site I ever Played on for the simple reason that I could cash in and out at the Gutshot Club in London. This made it far more appealing to me since I never had to get banking details or credit cards involved and the payment was instant. The club still offers this service so it's pretty handy if you live in or are visiting London.

After about 400 hands of the NLHE and 100 Hands of PLO I won 250E at very little risk and felt quite nice about the experience. I shall be playing there again soonish rather than laterish.

The very first online site I played on was PokerStars. How I got into the whole thing is still a bit amusing. I had just played from 11PM SAT until 9AM SUN in a private game not far from The VIC in London. With a couple of freewheeling semi-fishys and a couple of pros (easy to dodge as we tended to take our turns at the fishys rather than attack each other) I had cleared a nice 800 quid profit with very little risk (other than of course the inherent risks of private games which I may list in great detail at another time). Once the game broke and I had finished my ritual 1 low stakes game of Rummy (London Style with a bookmaker, not the Gin Rummy us Yanks all know and love) and various of us had finished reviewing the Racing Post, I got in a discussion with a fellow player Andy N. (BB) about this whole online poker thingamajig.

We Went down to the internet cafe, he downloaded PokerStars and showed me the interface.
I said ok I'll have a pop, opened an account and bought 200 quids worth of $$ from him. Since there was still 5 hrs until the VIC opened and I didn't plan on sleeping I decided to have a wee spinup and see what it was all about. Well, In the span of 4 hours I had taken my $340 and promptly sat in a $5-$10NLHE game (Biggest NL game on stars back then) and spun it up to $1800. SWEET! I didn't think much of it as I trod down the street to the VIC to play the 30quid rebuy tournament (which I won of course) taking down about a 2000 quid prize.

Over the next 2 weeks I had run the Stars bankroll up to just under $6K. Of course as most of these stories go, I wasn't taking it seriously and still treated it as more of a video game than anything else so I spunked it all in 2 sessions. It was about 4 months later that I played online again and that was on the Gutshot Site.