Doug has been playing profitable poker for at least the last 30 years. He has a lot of stories to share but will do his best to keep it to poker. When he was a younger, he used to compete in chess at a very high level. Doug noticed that in order to make any money at playing chess you needed to be in the top 1% of the top 1%. All of the opponents that you faced were the best or they wouldn’t be there. In high school he soon discovered the game of poker through a home game. Doug admits that he wasn’t very good at first but fell in love with the idea of using his brain for gain. Doug had an excellent memory and could run through a half a deck of cards and tell you what the remaining stub was. So after he turned 21 he turned to playing Blackjack to make his fortune! Doug planned a weekend trip and after a couple of grueling days, he was dead even. He started to question if there was any game in the casino where the house did not have an edge. Looking around, he found the poker room, in that game Doug only had to be better than his opponent. There was no house edge to overcome. In those days the game of choice was limit, and so Doug found himself sitting down at a $3/$6 limit game. His first hand dealt pocket Aces and won. The second hand he was dealt pocket Kings and won. Doug thought that playing poker was easy until he ended up losing $200. That is when he knew there was more to the game than just having a good memory and being smart.

Doug was recruited to play basketball in college. The college where he went is where he met his wife. After graduating he got a job in finance to make his fortune in life. There was a cardroom just a few miles down the road from where he went to school. He continued to play poker through college and it took him about a month to figure out how to beat the game. So he kept playing on the side during and after college. Eventually Doug realized the money that he was making from playing poker was better than his working income. After discussing it with his then girlfriend and future wife, she gave him her blessing and he made the switch. Doug started playing as a prop player at a local card room, he would play with his own money but would get seated at the games that they needed to fill. It was a great learning experience for money management and self control. As his skill improved in the game of poker he began to look for jobs as a prop player in larger casinos that had higher limits. Over the years he worked his way as a prop player from $3/$6 limit to $40/$80 limit. Doug became quite successful playing some of the largest games in the Bay area and could hold his own at any limit game.

When no limit poker emerged as the new favorite game, he had to learn the game from scratch. He has spent that last ten years trying to get as good at no limit poker as he was at limit poker. Part of the issue is that players today are a lot better than they were twenty years ago. There are many books and sites that are giving away secrets to the game that took him years to acquire. The one thing that crossed over from limit to no limit was his ability to read players and notice tells. Doug’s no limit game was not very strong and half the time he had no clue what was going on. His ability to dodge trouble by using reads is the one thing that kept him afloat as a player. He has improved his game tremendously over the past couple of years by spending many hours studying modern poker theory. 

One day during the Covid lockdown, Doug found himself watching poker vlogs on Youtube. He thought he had something to offer from the perspective of an older player making the switch from nitty poker to an aggressive modern style. So as all the members of his family laughed at him when he told them about his plan to start a poker vlog, he rolled up his sleeves and plunged head first into the vlogging abyss. Doug has enjoyed his experience and so far and looks forward to the future.