by Paul 'Dr. Pauly' McGuire - @taopauly
 

by Paul "Dr. Pauly" McGuire
 

by Paul “Dr. Pauly” McGuire

 “You’ll never make money playing video games!” That’s a direct quote from my mother 30 years ago. She was frustrated with my newly-formed addiction to video games and preferred I hit the books instead of playing Atari with my brother. She scoffed at how many hours we wasted playing mindless games.

 Flash forward to the early days of the 21st Century. Almost twenty years after I acquired my first Atari video game console, I ventured into the virtual world of gaming and played online poker almost every day for seven years.

by Paul “Dr. Pauly” McGuire

The 1981 World Series of Poker main event was the first poker tournament poker I watched on television. Fifteen years ago I sat in my apartment in New York City, flipping through the slim pickings of late-late night television and eventually stopped on ESPN2. I watched the final table of the 1981 main event, which was hosted by legendary sportscaster Curt Gowdy.

 I had never seen a poker tournament before. I sat in awe and wonderment at the action as Stu Ungar held on to win his second main event in a row after he beat out Perry Green, a furrier from Alaska. Ungar faded a field of 75 players—nine tables—to win $375,000.

by Paul 'Dr. Pauly' McGuire

Since Black Friday, Americans who considered themselves professional online poker players have been unemployed. One minute online pros like “durrrr” and “OMGClayAiken” were revered as gods among men in the poker universe, and the next, they were considered criminals—enemies of the state.

by:  Paul ‘Dr. Pauly’ McGuire

 One of the hardest poker decisions to make is knowing when to stop. Easier said than done, right? When you’re running hot, you want to keep pressing your run to maximize profits. Winning streaks are few and far between, so you never want to walk away from that rare opportunity to pad your bankroll. When the winning streak subsides, that point becomes the perfect time to take a vacation in order to reassess your game and enjoy the fruits of your labor (e.g. take your lady friend to a nice dinner, or splurge on good seats at the football game).

Technology advances every day and you’d be surprised how easy it is to create your own animated short film using websites like Xtranormal.com. All you have to do is type your script into the system, pick your avatars, and viola! The software generates a short film for you. Granted, the raw, glitchy shorts are hardly worthy of competition at international festivals like Cannes, but considering that Xtranormal is a free service, you and your friends are able to create something and have a few laughs in the process.

Five weeks passed since the DOJ handed down indictments on April 15, 2011 that decimated the American online poker market. The poker community was still trying to deal with the fallout from Black Friday when the online gaming community was struck with a second wave of indictments.
 
On May 23, 2011, a Maryland court indicted two major players, ThrillX Systems and K23 Financial Services (BMX Entertainment), for money laundering and running illegal gambling business. As a result, domains affiliated with both companies were seized and shut down by the Feds. Two of those sites were online poker rooms—Doyle’s Room and True Poker. A pair of sports betting sites were also targeted—BookMaker.com and BetEd.com. Also seized were Funtimebingo. com, Goldbnarchcasino.com, Betgrandesports.com, 2Betdsi.com, and Betehorse.com.
 

By the end of the first quarter of 2011 play, we have some interesting results from the high-stakes cash game on Full Tilt Poker. The Great Dane, Gus Hansen had an auspicious start to the year having netted more than $4.5 million. Hansen bounced back vigorously after a tumultuous 2010. At his lowest point last summer he was stuck over $2 million, but he stopped the bleeding and clawed together a string of winning sessions to finish the year with only a $250,000 deficit. If you go back to August 2010, Hansen has won almost $6.9 million.
 

At the end of 2010, PokerStars signed the enigmatic “Isildur1” to Team PokerStars. Viktor Blom, a 20 year-old pro from Sweden, officially unmasked himself as Isildur1 in the Bahamas during the 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. His unmasking came as no surprise to anyone because it was the most open secret in poker.