Nathaniel Montague
I’m supposed to tell you who I am… but first: a disclaimer. Unfortunately, If you want to know who I really am some of you will be offended. There, you’re forewarned. I was born in Australia (no… Hachem is not my favorite player). The family moved a lot. From the age of five I was a geek for mathematics, specifically statistics. Not much money in my family; instead of playing with the coolest new toy I would make charts and graphs tracking how quickly things were sold on the shopping channel.
After graduation I had saved almost two grand and, after reading Into the Wild, it seemed like a decent idea to put $1800 towards a plane ticket to Brisbane, Australia. The rest of the cash could go in my pocket for when I got there. Despite the fact that I didn’t have any close friends in Oz, I threw my sleeping bag in a backpack and hopped on a plane. Two months, three jobs, and four incriminating stories later I had found myself working as a dealer at the Conrad Treasury Casino. I stayed there for three years and learned every game they had on offer. Being the math geek that I am, I would actually sit at home and study the games I dealt. I had to know the answer to every question; what is the house-edge? What is the games history? What sort of scams have people attempted on them and which ones work? Soon I grew tired of the games our casino had to offer. With a house-edge game, there is only so much to learn before you know it all. But then something wonderful happened.
To the great disappointment of the casinos, poker had been taking leaps and bounds in its level of popularity. After Hachem won the WSOP, Australia had found a new way to gamble. You see Australia has the highest gambling rate per capita in the world. We Aussie’s will bet on anything. You combine that with the constant need to prove that you are a bigger man then the next, and you have a salmon breeding ground just waiting to be harvested by any grizzly bear that is willing to simply lift their paw into the air. As soon as I learned to deal Texas, I attacked the game the same way I had Blackjack, Baccarat or Roulette. I read book after book, studying poker more intensely then I had ever bothered to study any Spanish class with Madame Peltier’s. Quickly, I learned that this game was different. If you were interested enough to read this far, then I’m sure we probably came to the same conclusion about the game of poker: it is simple to learn… but it would be impossible to ever truly master. You always have room for improvement.
I flew back to the States. For the next year, while working at a local poker room, I focused on building my bankroll. Everything in my life was poker. If I wasn’t dealing it, I was studying it. If I wasn’t studying it, I was playing it. Nevertheless, I had to find time for my girlfriend somehow. We all know the constant struggle of balancing our poker play with our social lives, but lucky for me I had found a girl that loved to watch the game.
It was at the age of seventeen that Patt and I met. We both loved to mess with people and it was with that common interest that we became friends. The stories here are endless, but as the majority are also incriminating, I’ll save them for when I meet you across the table.
We arrive at the present… I ask Patt if he wants to take our bankrolls and road trip it to Vegas, hitting up as many poker rooms in as many states as we possibly can, while using thepokeratlas.com to find our next game. Patt agrees. Here we are. I’m sorry if it may disappoint some of you, but we’re gonna’ be livin’ pretty simple here. We’re not lookin’ to make a shit ton of cash, we just want to arrive in Vegas with the same amount of money we’ve started with. That, and not get arrested, robbed or beaten too many times along the way. We don’t know how long it’ll take, we’re just gonna go and hope the poker God’s don’t screw us too hard in the process.
My promise to you: I will report everything. No stone will be left unturned. You, avid reader, you deserve the truth and the truth you will receive. When Patt accidentally folds a Royal in a monster, multi-way pot, it will be reported. When Patt unwittingly gets “involved” with an unusually large women with unusually large hands, it will be reported. When Patt is forced to “squeal like a piggy” while several two-toothed, incestuous, backcountry hicks have their way with him, as I watch in horror from a safe distance, it will be reported. We have nothing to hide, and nothing will be hidden.
Are you ready to follow us? It doesn’t matter where in this country you play. There is nowhere to hide from us. Maybe, if you’re lucky you might look across the felt and one of us will be there… staring you in the eye. If so, let me apologize in advance – oh – and thanks for the gas money.
