Jimmy Fricke

Welcome all to my new blog at wisehandpoker.com. Gary and I actually met at Niagara last year (my first big live tournament) and when I mentioned that I used to be a magic player he took somewhat of an interest in me, so when I traveled all over to other tournaments we kept in contact and for some ungodly reason he decided to offer me a spot on his site. I'll try to keep it interesting and updated with travels and stories from what it's like going from a 20 year old starting out in the gambling world to hopefully a successful tournament veteran.

I spent over a month in Vegas this summer under the legal age to gamble and only one vested interest in the tournaments at the World Series. That left me a significant amount of time to do some philosophic thinking on the people who came together to argue over whether or not they sucked out. For the past half century, many many people have been gathering in Vegas and seeing all their old friends, rivals, and debtors. In the past few years, however, a new form of relationship has been formed. A lot of people have been meeting in online poker and the various forums or instant messages about it, and those people come together in Vegas for the universal poker get-together. The interesting thing about poker players is that they're usually quite trusting, they don't care about money nearly as much as other people and have no problem making friends with strangers. So when I meet someone who I've never 'met' before live, even if I haven't spoken to them much online, they pretty much become part of an extended family. I hadn't actually met several people I hung out with in Vegas and yet I had absolutely no problem borrowing or lending cash (or online money; online money is one of the coolest phenomena in the online poker culture. It's accessible, universal and damn near instant with tons of records being available to either party. It seems crazy not to have it in this day and age) out to them for extended periods of time.

I stayed in a big house a few miles south of the strip with a bunch of friends of mine, some of whom were playing in the WSOP, some of whom weren't old enough and some of whom were old enough but weren't going to play. It was an interesting crowd and over the month there was a lot of drama, a few arguments, some illegal activity and a lot of friendships strengthened. But we were all poker players, and the amount of money traded hands in that household must have been near half a million over the whole month. That's just in friendly prop betting, trading for online money, loaning cash, backing, trading pieces, paying for dinner, all of that. And we had absolutely no problem with it whatsoever. There are a bunch of people that I associated with during the WSOP and honestly the people I dealt with who were the most honorable throughout the whole thing were the youngest people I dealt with. There are a few exceptions, but the new generation of poker players/gamblers who are coming up in the poker world are smart, driven and honest. Every day there is talk of people who cheated in one way or another but the people who are accused of something are always good for the money one way or another. It seems as though the live players are all connected to each other in a small pool who have been playing with each other for a while. They're rivals and backers and friends and relatives, and a lot of it is business. Most of the online people I deal with I'm not forced to see or talk to unless I want to. You can always block people when you're on the internet. So you have a large pool of people who are all connected in various ways who are good friends with each other because they all know in this day and age if you lose the respect of the community it will be completely impossible to get it back. The people who matter in the poker community know people who are blacklisted, even if the general public doesn't.

So with all this brotherhood and money trading hands and friendship brought together over this month and a half, it's crazy to think that this is pretty much normal life for a lot of these people living out here. This is the second world series that I've been present at, and it's all pretty much new to me, but I have already learned a lot of things about the city (not the seedier stuff, but I'm not very interested in that anyway) and the lifestyle that I may adopt in a year. I've had a lot of people say different things about the occupation I've chosen, and they asked me if I was going to be doing this in five years, and I told them the truth: that I had absolutely no clue. Poker could die, I could die, I could join the circus, I could move to a new continent, I could be a millionaire, I could be broke, I could do anything I wanted, and that's what's so awesome about these years. Anything I do at this point is what I want to do with it. There aren't that many people who could just pick up and go at any time they wanted. My general plan for the next few years is to travel, play poker tournaments all over the world (and keep you guys informed, of course, on the schedule that I'm planning on) and live my life the way I want to.

Anyway, enough of all that philosophical stuff, time for some definites.

I'm back home, I'm planning out what I'm going to do until I turn 21 on April 19th and here it is:

In a week or so, I'm going to be at Turning Stone for the Empire State Holdem Championships. There's a few small preliminaries including a $1k NLHE event culminating in a $5k NLHE event which will be quite possibly the toughest NLHE field ever assembled, depending on if the players I'm thinking of will be showing up. It will probably only reach 150 players, and probably a third of those will be people under 25. That's pretty damn scary in terms of MTTs today.

After TS, it's right off to EPT Barcelona, where I have a backing deal beginning which will go all the way to the WPT Championships, which will be my first domestic WPT event when I turn 21 (and if I win it, will secure a record which would be essentially unbreakable). After Barcelona, I will be staying in Europe for WSOP Europe starting on September 6th and going until the 16th, where I will likely stay in London for EPT London and then fly home afterwards in preparation for Aruba and the WCOOP. After that there might be some downtime before going back to WPT Niagara for the anniversary of my first big live tournament (and we'll see if I can hold onto 800 big blinds for more than three hours this time, eh?)

The PCA is really up in the air at this point, since it's an EPT now and might not get nearly as many players and I really didn't enjoy Atlantis last year. I would be going for sure anyway since I'm under 21, but if I miss the PCA I would be able to go back and play all the preliminaries at the Aussie Millions, where I will be making a definite return to defend the idiocy I left behind. I like to believe that I've matured and learned quite a bit since then, but hey, we won't know for sure till I punt headsup again. This time around, there will probably be a lot more online players heading to Australia (thanks to my glowing review of the play present at the tournament).

There are likely a few more EPT's I'm going to be going to but nothing definite. There might be another TS trip sometime early next year, and I'll probably move to the west coast at some point in preparation for my run at the WPT Championships in late April, and the following WSOP which may change dates apparently.

As you can see, I have a lot to think about in the next few months and I will be trying to keep you all informed to my sights, experiences and the money I'll be winning and subsequently losing. Make sure you check back a few times a week for updates on your favorite gobbo (note: I am the only gobbo).

Take care.