Biography
I’m Richard, born in 1982 and living in the Netherlands. I’m working part-time (24 hours a week) as IT-architect for a big financial company for over 10 years now. I also poker part-time and that’s mainly what this blog is about.
I have a common standard background in playing games which started with playing normal cardgames with the family, followed by Magic The Gathering which I played pretty serious for over 4 years. During my time playing Magic I also picked up cardgames like Poker (5 Card Draw) and “Zeilen”, probably something typical dutch. Next to my gaming background, I also always liked a bit of gambling, so when I turned 21 the first thing I did was booking a trip to Las Vegas.
In 2004 when I visited Las Vegas for the first time I played a bit of 7card stud, but a year later there was almost only Texas Hold’em left in Vegas. In 2004/2005 I still played mainly Blackjack and Craps but in 2006 I joined the $4/$8 and $8/16 limit cashgames in the Bellagio. When the pokerboom started in the Netherlands in 2006 I started playing more and more and could use the fact that I was already familiar with the game to my advantage.
I played little tournaments all over the place and as soon as my “local” Holland Casino offered a poker cashgame (Sep 2006) I became a regular in it. They offered €5/€10 Limit Hold’em which I played as much as I could for almost 8 months. I played a bit of Internet Poker as well, but at that moment I still preferred playing Live. After I quit a long World of Warcraft “addiction” and was tired of playing from 20:00 till 03:00 in my local Casino (combined with a normal dayjob), I started playing online on PokerStars in 2007. I liked the fact that I could stop and start whenever I wanted and play more tables at the same time.
After getting started online, playing Full-Ring $0,25/$0,50 and moving up and down along the way, I learned to play more and more tables at the same time. I booked two trips to Las Vegas in 2008 where I played $15/$30 Limit Cashgames in the Bellagio and also played a lot more hands online that year. Looking for a change in my day to day life, I choose to start playing poker part-time in January 2009.
In 2009 I played the WSOP Main Event, where I busted day 1. Next to the WSOP ME I hardly played any tournament poker in 2009, since I’ve now focused purely on playing Limit Hold’em. 2009 was a success, as I managed to reach my goal of 600.000 VPP, while making profit at the tables as well. I started the year playing $2/$4 and $3/$6 and I’m now playing all games up to $15/$30.
In 2010 I’ve reached the Supernova Elite status on PokerStars, which is the highest VIP level PokerStars offers. I played over 1.500.000 hands of Fixed Limit to achieve this goal but unfortunately had a rough year at the tables. You can read a small recap of the year here.
However PokerStars did ask me if I would like to join PokerStars Team: Online! For me this was a no-brainer and from the 1st of January 2011 I’m an official member of PokerStars Team: Online. I’ve decided that 2011 will be a year again with good profits on the tables and I’m doing everything I can to achieve this. You can follow this blog to see updates or follow me on Twitter to get more frequent updates: http://twitter.com/Tzen1
My poker setup:
