How to play poker

TheBluffCy is a poker player from Nicosia, Cyprus which currently resides in London. His game of choice is No Limit Texas Hold’em cash games but has a vast knowledge amongst most variations of poker. He has transited into the writing world just a year ago but has accomplished to amass an impressive portfolio including some of the industry’s giants.

For how long do you play poker? Any achievements?

I remember the first time I played poker very vividly actually, seeing how it proved to become a turning point in my life. I was on holidays in Paris, when friend of mine invited me over at like 3:00am for a game of cards and a drink. The game might have been played with a couple of cards missing from the deck and newspaper cuttings as chips but I instantly fell in love with it.

When I started out playing four to five years ago no-one had even heard on No Limit Hold’em in the small island I like to call home. I had a bit of fun online and maybe a friendly game with a couple of my friends but that was it. Finally, a couple friends and I managed to get enough players to host a home game, which run 2-3 nights a week at my friend’s house.

A year later and the people of Cyprus started to catch on to the game. We have always been considered a people with a niche to gamble so underground poker games seemed to be an inevitable course of action. I remember going to these games and being the youngest of the group by at least 20-30 years but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t a big winner.

Since we never had established a tournament sector the only tournament action I was getting was online and although I have had a few good cashes and win’s, I never enjoyed tournaments like I do cash games. By 2008/9 the online poker games where so competitive and let’s be honest, would you rather risk playing online and hoping for a fish on your table or go down the road and play with at least 5-6 fish on the table. For this reason, online cash games have also never appealed to me.

What is poker for you and what do you think about this game?

Poker for me is game. But it’s an ingenious game which in many ways reminds me of the game of life; only in poker everyone has an equal chance of success or failure depending on their actions. At the felt, you can choose to be anyone you want and as in life, the aggressor usually finishes first. For me, the real turning point in my poker career was watching Tom Dwan on high stakes poker. I was never so intrigued in my life, his style of play was so unique and out of the box that you could tell the old school guys had no idea of what was going on in there. Poker is a sport and unlike games such as chess or backgammon, it has a constant supply of increasing players due to the fact that anyone with the right cards and some luck can win big!