White Belt Poker

Hi. My name is David John and I’m an amateur poker player from south Wales (that’s the land of Dylan Thomas, Tom Jones, Catherine Zeta Jones, and a lot of other people called Jones and Thomas and Evans and stuff) and I fit squarely into the group of educated IT geeks, aged 25-34 who have latched onto the game of poker in droves over the last few years. I say I’m an ‘amateur’ in the sense that I don’t make my living as a poker player; I have a regular job that pays the bills (although I am currently making just enough for probably a couple of cups of coffee a day at the time of writing – woohoo!). I don’t really have any intention of making a full-time living from playing poker because I like what I do for a living now. Even if my game improves and my bankroll increases, the vague possibility of being a professional is years away at best, so it’s not something that I’m going to waste my time dreaming about now.

So why should you care about anything I have to say about poker then? That’s a good question, but I don’t have a good answer. I’m not pretending to be an authority on the game – that really would be a transparent bluff. If that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, then you should definitely look elsewhere. Like many bloggers out there, I could have had a career in journalism, but somehow I wriggled free and became something else instead. That means that at least I can write a little bit. I think I can claim to be reasonably articulate and I can spell and punctuate, so any english teachers reading my work won’t need to wince too often or tut at the text-speak (if u no wot i mn).

So what kind of things can you expect from me? Well, there’ll be no tales of drunken debauchery, strip clubs or trips to Vegas (because I like to keep my private life separate ). There shouldn’t be very much that isn’t poker-related in fact, because I refuse to flatter myself enough to believe that anyone outside of my close friends and my family really wants to hear what I have to say about politics, religion, music, sport or whatever else. So if I just stick to poker, we’ll all know where we stand. Cool. I’m glad we got that settled. Being British, I’ll also try to discuss issues around the European game which may not come to the attention of North American-based players so easily.

Ultimately, I’m just another person who fell in love with the game of poker and I want to learn as much as possible about it before the day I die. That includes the theoretical side and the historical aspects – the characters, the venues, the development of the different variations of the game, etc. I started out in November 2004 with a small bankroll and set off to join the ranks of the low-limit gamblers and grinders. This site is where you’ll find me writing about what I see around me, like a child looking out of the window of a moving train; sometimes alert and wide-eyed, sometimes weary, but always intrigued by what is out there.

I began writing this blog not long after I started playing. Most of the first year reads like an embarrassing teenage diary to me now – full of cliches and observations so obvious that they make my toes curl, but I wanted to document what I was thinking as a way of remembering those lessons that we forget so easily. Its value to you as a reader will depend almost entirely on how long you’ve been playing poker. Reading my work so far won’t present you with any real revelations, even if you’ve never played the game (if I’m honest). At best it might give new players the encouragement to think and write about the game, the same way I was encouraged by the blogs I read by players like Iggy and HDouble who will always be a few years ahead of me in terms of playing experience (and maybe light years ahead in terms of quality). As of October 2005, I’ve moved from Blogger to my own site, White Belt Poker.com (using WordPress software) and I intend to make much more of an effort to write thoughtful, analytical articles about the game and my place in it.