Russ Hamilton: From Poker-Playing to Blackjack-Playing
We may have heard of professional gamblers who shift from playing craps to playing poker professionally. Some shift from playing backgammon to playing poker. Some even shift from playing blackjack to playing poker. The bottom line is that, in most cases, professional gamblers opt to choose poker as their bread and butter. This is not surprising because as we see it, there are really a lot of professional poker players out there. We cannot repudiate the fact that poker is now the most popular casino game in the whole wide world. However, this is not the case with professional blackjack player Russ Hamilton. He was initially interested in playing poker. As a matter of fact, he was even taught by his father how to play such game. And as he was growing up, he was determined to pursue a career in playing poker.
Russ Hamilton was already fascinated by gambling as early as the age of five years old. All throughout his high school and college years, he never stopped playing card games with his schoolmates. Nevertheless, playing card games was not a hindrance to his studies, until he came to a realization one day when he was in college and taking up electrical engineering.
As much as Russ Hamilton wanted to finish his degree in electrical engineering to earn a living, he came to a realization that he could earn bigger from being a professional gambler than from being an electrical engineer. He did not waste any more time as soon as he made up his mind, Russ Hamilton moved to leave college in order to try his luck in gambling professionally.
Russ Hamilton first tried his luck in Detroit, Michigan. He was thirty six years old then and was successfully earning money from playing gambling games, particularly poker. When he felt like he was ready to play more seriously and more professionally, he then moved to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Russ Hamilton always thought that he was going to have a career in poker because that was what he had been playing ever since he was young. But then, destiny brought him to another type of gambling activity, which was blackjack.
The perks experienced by Russ Hamilton as a professional blackjack player included having competed against big time professional blackjack players like Blair Rodman, Fred David, Stanford Wong, and Anthony Curtis. Another perk was being able to travel around the world to join in various blackjack competitions. Unfortunately, the stellar level of skill of this professional blackjack player resulted to being banned from almost all blackjack events. As much as he wanted to continue playing blackjack, this professional blackjack player had no other choice but to go back to playing poker.
While he could not play blackjack, Russ Hamilton seriously and successfully played poker. After ten years or more, this professional blackjack player, and professional poker player for that matter, was asked to participate in the World Series of Blackjack. After such participation, he took the time to make blackjack an even more exciting game on television.
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