PokerTableRatings

While the name Rohan Aldridge might not be familiar to you, PTR has caught up with the recently turned professional online poker player from Australia known as “RAIDERDUCK_” to find out a little bit more about what makes him tick. In part 1 of the interview, we take a look at who “RAIDERDUCK_” is, what got him started in crushing opponents bankrolls, and a little about the man himself.

PTR: Where/When did you learn to play poker?

RAIDERDUCK_: I first played a hand of poker in 2006 in my hometown of Goulburn, New South Wales. A friend of mine was going to the local club to play in the weekly tournaments and invited me along. I had no idea how to play, although I had seen it on late night TV a couple of times and thought it looked cool. So I went down to the club, the players at the table taught me the basic rules of No Limit Holdem and I was away. No, I didn’t win the tournament (I probably lasted about 20 hands), but boy was I hooked. The very next day I went out and bought a couple of books on poker and insta-read them cover to cover. A short time after that I discovered online poker and the 2+2 community, made some great friends who were in similar positions to me, and went from there.

PTR: You left your job at the Australian Department of Defense just a few months ago to turn to poker full time. What happened that made you make the switch?

RAIDERDUCK_: It was something I had wanted to do for a long time. I enjoyed my “real job”, and it was very good to me – I made lots of great friends, it was fun, I travelled and had great experiences, and got paid extremely well for someone in their late teens/early twenties. It allowed me to save a bunch of money, make some real estate investments and get a real head start in life.

There was no single moment where I decided to make the switch to full time poker player, Poker was always my passion and for the last couple of years, I was making more money grinding than I was from my employer. My routine through the week was work 8 hours at my job, then I would come home and play/study poker for 2-3 hours every night, as well as playing 5 or 6 hours on the weekends. It might sound like a chore or a heavy workload for some, but I enjoyed almost every minute of it.

Poker was never a chore to me, and still isn’t. That is one thing I think that is essential for all poker players to have, which is a love and appreciation for the game. I think if a professional is ever bored or tired with the game, they’re in the wrong job. In my current situation I have multiple streams of income and my lifestyle is not expensive, I don’t have a need for a lot of money, I play every day because I love it.

PTR: You’ve recently begun blogging on a site lifefish.net. What exactly is LifeFish.net?

RAIDERDUCK_: Life Fish is a concept that started in early 2009. I had become close friends with a couple of Australian online grinders, namely Andy “Eurekakid” and Punchi “pwnchizzle”, and a couple of other guys from around the country from the Small/Mid stakes full ring community. During one of our trips to Macau, Andy came up with the idea of creating a Facebook group where we could post hands and talk about strategy. We started off by inviting about 6 or 7 of our poker mates and it was a lot of fun as well as being very educational. Since then, it has grown from a small strategy forum to all the “Life Fish” members going on regular poker playing trips together, having nerdy matching t-shirts, and having a domain name (lifefish.net) website that contains our forums where we talk about hands, strategy, lifestyle, planning trips etc. We have recently also merged our separate blogs to fall under the lifefish.net domain. There are currently 13 members of Life Fish, and they have grown to be some of my closest friends. We have recently expanded lifefish.net to have our own YouTube Channel, public Facebook fan page, and Twitter account.

PTR: You recently ran a 2 hour course on “The Science of Poker” at the Canberra Casino as part of the Australian Science Festival. Is poker really a science?

RAIDERDUCK_: It’s one thing to study poker, watch instructional videos, and grind for hours live or online (which are all things I love doing of course), but it’s a different ball game to get up and talk about it in front of an audience. It was really great to communicate my knowledge and experiences as a professional to a crowd – which consisted of absolute beginners to seasoned online grinders. I had a lot of fun and I am currently looking at similar opportunities for the very near future to do more talks and seminars on poker. It was an honor to speak alongside some extremely intelligent people (A poker room manager, a statistician, a micro expressions/body language expert, and fellow “Life Fish” Johnny who is Co-Author of a poker book coming out shortly) and I found the whole experience very rewarding.

And is poker a science? Well, it depends on your definition of science. Almost any subject could be considered scientific in some regard. I wouldn’t say poker itself is a form of science, but there is no doubt that poker has several scientific aspects to it, everything from the pure mathematical side of poker of pot odds, probability, and game theory, to the “real world” side of poker – body language and psychology. These are all extremely important aspects of poker that are also common science topics.

PTR: If you’re not playing poker, what are you doing in your spare time?

RAIDERDUCK_: For the last 18 months or so I have been in a band “Something Like This” which plays at popular nightspots around Canberra. We generally play twice a week, so I spend a lot of time doing band bookings and administration, practicing new songs, buying gear, dealing with agents etc.

Real estate investment has also been a keen interest of mine ever since I read a couple of books on it when I was 18. I was very inspired and since then have bought a couple of investment properties and in late 2008 bought my current place of residence in Canberra. Real estate continues to be a passion of mine and is a big part of my long term financial plans and goals.

My other passion that has developed over the last few years is travel. I have been to Vegas multiple times, and have also recently gone on adventures to Macau, Hawaii, New York, Thailand and Vietnam. In the next fortnight I’m going to New York again, a quick stop in Vegas to appear on the Cardplayertv.com show “Under the Gun”, and then I’m headed to Ecuador and the Galapagos islands. One of the great things about being self-employed is the freedom to do things like travel whenever and wherever you want. The beauty about being a poker player specifically is that you can also “work” while travelling!

Time to call the clock…Fast 20 questions:

1. Online or live: Online 95% of the time, 5% for live ANZPT and WSOP events, and drunken 2-5 No Limit at the Rio/MGM.

2. Game of Choice: I really like monopoly or cheat…oh, poker games? I can’t go past the obvious answer, the” Cadillac of Poker” – No limit Holdem

3. Favorite Online poker room: I have done all my online gaming for the last 2 years on UB.

4. Tournaments or Ring games: Tournaments have a place in the poker scene, they’re exciting, they make for great TV, and they make stars out of players, which are all great for the game. My preference though, is for the purest form of poker which is definitely Ring games.

5. Do you trust the math or the gut for the soul crush? Never really been a “gut feeling” guy, give me the math (or maths as we say in Australia) all day.

6. Casino of Choice: Locally – Canberra casino, and Crown in Melbourne is the best casino in Australia by a mile. Internationally speaking, the MGM and the Bellagio in Vegas are my favorites; the Wynn in Macau is also spectacular.

7. Would you rather hang out with a guy named Rob or a guy named Chuck? Definitely would prefer to hang out with Rob(sainter).

8. Should poker be an Olympic sport? Sure, why not. Let’s work on getting it legalized in the USA though first right?

9. If I wasn’t playing poker professionally, I’d be: in the shipping business.

10. Who will win bracelet #12 first, Phil Ivey or Phil Hellmuth? I think Ivey’s crazy eyes are intimidating to players at the table, giving him an edge over Hellmuth, even when Hellmuth is in his gladiator costume.

11. The item that I’m most proud that I own is: A purple Hannah Montana guitar I bought off the internet for $35.

12. How much time do you spend studying poker vs. playing poker: It’s around 5 hours of play to every 1 hour of study at the moment.

13. 3 words of advice for any poker player: read DoubleFly’s Blog.

14. Surf or Ski: Snowboard.

15. If I won the Main Event of the WSOP, the first thing I would buy would be: A Delorean.

16. Person that I’ve learned the most from: The one and only Eurekakid.

17. Last text message that you received says: “Hi Princess, how are you?”

18. The CD that’s in my car right now is? The Beatles anthology.

19. Ace-King suited or Pocket 9’s: AKs (as long as their diamonds).

20. Greatest poker player ever is: I can’t name one, but I can narrow it down to the top three – Dmitri Nobles, Phil Galfond, Ellix Powers.

Check back later this week as we talk Poker Strategy and opponents in Part 2 of the Interview…:

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Featured Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.