It’s likely – really likely, in fact – that when the devs over at PokerStars thought up PowerUp I wasn’t their first choice as a target demographic.
In terms of poker background I cut my teeth on live underground NL games around the American west during the game’s prime boom years beginning in late 2005 & didn’t even transition to the online grind until 2006, At that point playing was my main source of income, and I’d chosen mixed games – and mostly fixed limit mixed games at that – as my bread and butter. The edges seemed to be even bigger than in NL at the time (at least to me) – and as much as I loved playing poker, winning as much money as possible, with as little hassle and requisite study time as I could get away with, was always the bigger draw. I was in college. There were better things I thought I could occupy my time with. I never did make it to the highest stakes.
Cut to 2017 – one cash game career, and a second advertising career somewhat in the rearview – and I find myself back on the digital felt, this time living in Europe, staring at what seems (no pun intended) to be a completely foreign lobby than what I was used to when I opened up the PokerStars client. I’m here to begin a journey into PowerUp and take the reader along, and I feel like – for lack of a better word – a complete noob. Maybe that’s a good thing, because from the lack of content I’ve found on this game I can only surmise that everyone else who’s trying it is too.
So – here we are boys and girls. This series is going to chronicle my initial jump into the world of PowerUp. I’ve been told it’s a game with a deceptively high strategic ceiling, but that my existing poker knowledge should give me a good baseline to jump right in (provided I’ve read all the rules/ watched all the tutorials).
We’ll go day by day with this one – starting out at the games lowly $1 buy-in level and a $50 bankroll to keep the swings nice and buffered. I’ll try to keep a log of all my – as I see them – most important experiences, and keep readers in the loop. The ultimate goals here are to have fun, and make money – so let’s get on with it. Day 1 here we come…
