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And you certainly couldn’t bluff another player.
Every knight, rook, and bishop were plainly visible.
The pieces never lied – but in poker, your opponents frequently did.
However, I was desperate for money to fund my lawsuit…
So I embarked on a crash course in how to play poker.
I read dozens of books…
Memorized hundreds of charts…
And played countless hours of online poker.
I skipped the free games. People who played with worthless chips played very differently from those betting real money. If you could just get another million chips for nothing, why not go all-in every time? It would be poor training for my ultimate goal of playing in tournaments.
No – I went straight to using cash.
Online poker for real money had been banned in most of the US for years, but it was still legal throughout Europe.
For a while, I stuck to the tables with the smallest stakes to conserve my bankroll. Once I got the hang of it, I moved up to tables where larger bets were required.
Though I had losing sessions, I began making 200-300 a day on average.
That was the equivalent of working three or four shifts in the restaurant.
Once I started pulling in real cash, I quit my day job and devoted myself entirely to poker.
I missed the camaraderie of going out with other people, but I was focused on revenge.
However, it would’ve taken me forever to build up enough cash through online poker to fund the lawsuit.
That wasn’t where the big money was. The big money was in tournaments.
Plus, playing online wasn’t real. You couldn’t see people’s faces or body language – and thus no real way to tell if they might be bluffing.
So I quickly moved on to casinos.
Bologna had only small casinos with limited opportunities to play poker. It was mostly slot machines, craps, roulette, and blackjack.
So I started taking the train to bigger cities with casinos that offered poker:
Venice.
San Remo.
Rome.
Of course, it was a long trip from Bologna, so I would have to spend at least one night. I usually chose weekends, since those nights had the most people looking to get drunk and gamble.
Now that I had more money, I opted for hotel rooms and better restaurants…
Which was wonderful.Muchbetter than hostels or my terrible little studio apartment.
And I was exposed to a completely different class of players.
Lots of sharks looking to fleece the tourists.