wackyJaxon Joins PokerSoftware Writing Staff

I am pleased to join PokerSoftware and would like to introduce myself.  I am a 39-year-old poker player living in Vilnius, Lithuania.  Although I am older than most online players, I like to believe that with age comes experience.

I grew up in New Jersey where I started to play nickel and dime games with my friends.  My father had a regular poker game that changed houses every week, which perhaps was the catalyst for my interest in the game.  We would play dealer’s choice games, which exposed me to many different types of poker.

As I got older, I played poker in college as well as Stud cash games in Atlantic City to help pay for expenses that came up as a student.  I could only imagine how life would have been different if online poker were available then.

In 2002, I deposited online for the first time on Ultimate Bet.  It was really my first experience playing Hold'em and I lost almost my entire deposit playing cash games by not understanding bankroll management and the nuances of Hold'em.  With my last few dollars, I joined a $5.50 MTT and, being that it was my first tournament ever, I must have gotten lucky to make the final table and have some money to play with.

From there, I decided to start learning about the game and, for a while, stuck to playing sit and gos and MTTs and stayed away from cash games.

I eventually went on to play on other sites like PokerStars, PartyPoker, and Empire Poker.  I started learning tournament and sit and go play quite well, but the game was also different in 2003, 2004, and 2005 than it is now.  I won a few tournament leaderboards on Empire Poker and was enjoying playing at nights while working as a financial controller during the day.

I then learned how to use a HUD in the initial version of PokerTracker.  I felt it definitely gave me an edge in both my MTT play and especially my SNG play.  I also started reading message boards like PocketFives in 2005.  I found PocketFives when I searched my name in Google after chopping the Nightly $162 on PokerStars and found out that people were talking about a bad beat I gave to the beloved ActionJeff.  From there, I was hooked on PocketFives more than the other boards and still love the community there.

In 2005, I was spending a lot of time for work in Henderson, Nevada.  During the 2005 World Series of Poker, I played my first live tournament and finished 81st in a deep-field $1,500 No Limit Hold'em event.  I had a bit of experience playing live cash games, but it was nice to have a deep run in my first live tournament.

In late 2006, I had a job opportunity to move to London.  Since I was working hard and enjoying life in London, I found less time to play tournaments.  Plus, the time difference was not conducive to playing the bigger online tournaments during the week.  I wound up playing a lot of mixed cash games on PokerStars and PartyPoker and found this to be a more consistent moneymaker than SNGs or MTTs.

In 2009, I moved to Vilnius, Lithuania with my girlfriend and we got married in August 2010.  Around that time, I became an active Moderator on PocketFives.  My world changed in December 2011 when we had a baby boy.  At that point, I wanted to get back into working, but did not want to go back into accounting.  The love of my life has always been poker, so I was very happy when I was offered a position at PocketFives doing customer support and marketing.

Over the years, I have used many different software programs and learning tools.  I look forward to sharing my experiences with you and also learning about new products that are constantly innovating online poker.