My Journey as a Poker Player and Vlogger

Born and raised in Houston, TX, I grew up involved in sports, acting and entertainment. I acted in several plays throughout my younger years, played football and golf throughout middle and high school and was always very competitive. I wasn’t introduced to poker until college at Texas Tech University in the late 90’s. Several of us would play $1/1 NLH, 7-card stud and all the variants several times a week, and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. To this day, I remember when the poker group made our first trip to Vegas. I played my first live (non-home game) session at the Venetian in ‘99 when their poker room was only a few tables on the main floor (they shut it down in 2000 and reopened a much larger room in 2006). I brought the minimum $60 to the table and got smoked pretty fast. Very humbling experience to say the least, but was hooked.

After college in the early 2000’s, I moved back to Houston, got a job in the finance industry and continued to play poker, but mostly home games with high school friends. Dabbled a bit online, would make the occasional trip to Vegas once or twice a year to play poker and have fun, but also wrote a book during this time, well, more of a ‘how to’ book to play all the variants of poker that we played in college (you may be able to see it in the background on my bookshelf during my vlog intros). However, my itch to act or at performing in front of people stayed with me from my younger years. During this time, I also started taking acting and voiceover classes, auditioned and landed two movie roles, and both were released in the local theaters and other festivals (still find it cool to this day that I have an IMDB profile). I also landed an opening spot for ESPN’s Outside the Lines television show (swinging a golf club for the intro).

In addition to poker and acting, I have also always been good with numbers, math and technology. At my job in the mid to late 2000’s, I designed several templates and systems and traveled the country training associates to use these systems. Was a great experience visiting so many different cities, but the job limited my available hours at the poker table. It probably wasn’t until the early to mid 2010’s until my job slowed down a bit, which allowed me to take poker more seriously. I began studying poker more and more and several poker clubs started opening up in Houston. I remember playing at Post Oak Poker Club and couldn’t believe the action. Just about every hand, and I mean every hand, it seemed one or more people would be all in. There were no small pots whatsoever and variance was crazy high.

It wasn’t until around 2015 or 2016 Andrew Neeme release this new concept on YouTube called a poker vlog and I was immediately hooked. Not sure if he was the first to do it, but his was the first I saw. And I was like, this has ‘me’ written all over it. Poker, acting and technology (putting the vlogs together). So, I gave it a shot. At the time, I had begun playing poker fairly regularly in Vegas, Louisiana and at Post Oak and was very profitable. My wife saw the income and fully supported my poker travel and the foray into the vlog world. So, in 2017 I started my own poker vlog. Post Oak and the Louisiana casinos didn’t allow filming at the table, and in Vegas, was a bit apprehensive about filing at the time. So, I had to get creative. And over a one year stretch, I released eight videos, but didn’t really get that much traction and only gained about 250 subscribers.

Then, in 2018, I got a new job in finance which pretty much shut things down on the YouTube front for quite a while. Although I stopped vlogging, my trips to Vegas, Louisiana and the local poker clubs continued. But by 2024, my itch to restart the vlog outweighed all else and I reentered the vlogging universe. When I restarted, my subscriber count was at a whopping 162 people, yes, 162 loyal followers from nearly a decade prior. I initially wanted to have a western theme to the vlog and released a few, but quickly realized that was not going to work out so well, so, I changed things up a bit after vlog #11 or so and the rest was history. My subscriber count has increased nicely since 2024 and have now created a brand, opened up a merchandise store (at the request of several fellow poker players) and started this website here.

Overall, and to me, poker vlogging represents an excellent mix of who I am as a person: poker player, entertainer, technology geek.