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He knows when to 'hold 'em' - Texas style
By Jonathan Allen Fort Mill Times
(Published April 19, 2006)
FORT MILL -- It took only one trip to Las Vegas for Rob Arrington to get hooked on his new hobby.
He's been playing poker - mostly Texas Hold 'em - in casinos and online ever since his first trip to Sin City more than six years ago.
"I went just to gamble," Arrington says of his 1999 Vegas trip. "It was my first time ever to Las Vegas, it was really the first time I ever gambled."
Back then, he said, poker wasn't as popular as it is today. The World Series of Poker was not part of ESPN's regular programming schedule.
"Most people thought of poker as mostly old men playing in a smoke infested back room," he jokes.
Since Arrington started playing poker has enjoyed a glamourous rise to the forefront of cable programming. People from all walks of life play cards. And the last three people to win the World Series of Poker were members of Pokerstars.com, a Web site that offers players several online games and tournaments. It is one of two sites Arrington frequents; the other is www.ultimatebet.net.
For the last two years Arrington has taken a trip to Vegas, Atlantic City, N.J., or Aruba every three or four months. Between trips, he says, he plays two or three times a week online.
However, he's not worried about becoming addicted to gambling. He says he's just in it to have a good time, though it's nice when he comes away with some extra cash.
"It's not like blackjack, where you can lose $1,500 in a matter of minutes," Arrington says. "I mean, you can do that playing poker, but it has to be high stakes poker."
Arrington says he sticks to the lower stakes tables when he plays.
"I don't spend more than $2,000 or $3,000 in any trip," he explains. "I don't bet the mortgage."
That may sound like a lot of money to some people, but Arrington says he can afford to spend that much on a vacation. In his day job, Arrington is a landscape surveyor and one of the owners of a landscaping business based in Charlotte. And because he goes to the casinos as often as he does, they frequently send him offers of a free room for a night or two to get him back in the door. For Arrington, it's a hobby like any other.
"It's kind of like golf. You don't think about your cell phone, you don't think about work or anything else."
At the tables in a casino, he will spend a few hours at a sitting playing, unless he's playing in a tournament. Then it could take four hours or more. At home he'll play online for about two hours at a time when he's just practicing. LIke real world tournaments, online tournaments can take longer, sometimes up to five hours.
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