welcome to zero limit poker

Hi I'm Neil and this is my first post, so i suppose I better introduce myself....

I'm a 46 yr old guy from a little town in the north of England called St Helens, it's stuck between the bigger cities of Liverpool and Manchester so largely goes unnoticed to the outside world unless you drive along the M62 and see the "Dream" sculpture, St helens own Angel of the north. I spent most of my adult life working in the building industry managing brick and block factories but seeing as that's been decimated by the global downswing so I'm currently working in the telecoms industry selling mobile phones to f@ckers who want the most expensive blackberry or iphone they can get their grubby little hands on, but only want to pay the price of two bean tins attached with a piece of string!

This blog is mainly going to be about my poker exploits but I have been known to ramble on a bit so I may even touch on subjects as diverse as health & fitness, zen buddhism and the political landscape... what do they say? never talk about politics and religion? well it's my f@ckin blog so I'll post what I like!.

I discovered poker about 2 years ago, obviously I knew it existed but it just hadn't attracted my attention, I was busy working, backing horses, going to rugby league matches and watching ballet (yeah you read that right) One night I happened to come across the poker channel on sky tv and started to watch and suddenly found myself intrigued, I've always been one for trying to make a fast buck so thought "I can do that!" then suddenly realised I didn't have a bloody clue how to play, so being a bit of a bookworm I ordered "Play Poker like the Pro's" by Phil Hellmuth (stop sniggering) and digested it. I deposited $200 on PKR and and another $200 on Carbon poker and started to play full ring cash games nlhe .10/.25 and it was a rollercoaster winning one day then losing what I'd won the next day so I was kind of breaking even but to me my first impression of playing poker was of 9 fella's sat around a virtual table in cyberspace swapping money!

I continued swapping money with the other regs on PKR for a few weeks and then the opportunity came up to go on a "dirty weekend" with a stunning ex girlfriend of mine and I withdrew my entire $400 bankroll to blow on a wild weekend... the weekend was awesome but poor old Destruval didn't have a bankroll anymore so poker fell by the wayside for about 8 months mainly due to some personal problems I was experiencing. I wanted to hit the felt and improve myself as a player but I was in a dark place at the time and decided to abstain from the tables, I just knew I would tilt badly and probably wipe out my entire finances so I spent the time reading about poker mainly how to play sit and goes and eventually started playing $6 sng's on Party, UB, Full Tilt, Paddy Power, bwin and just about every othersite you can name. I'd have some success and then go on a downswing, blame the site and withdraw what was left and deposit in the next site hoping this next site would be my "lucky site" as I didn't have a clue about variance.

What am I trying to achieve by writing this blog? I want to be succesful at playing poker, my idea of success may differ to anothers but basically I have worked for "The Man" since I was 16 and I see online poker as a means of becoming self sufficient, independent and free, if I can spend the remaining days of my life doing something I enjoy while interacting with like minded individuals I'll be extremely happy so this blog is a record of my efforts to achieve personal freedom through poker and it can be a meeting point for others who may be on the same journey as me where we can share experiences and enjoy the ride.