My name is Barry O’Callaghan. I’m from Ireland originally, but now I live in Portugal. I’m a professional poker player, I primarily play online but have been known to play some live events around the globe from time to time. I’ve been a poker enthusiast for most of my life, I’ve my older brother to thank(or blame) for that. He thought me how to play poker (5 card draw – that was ‘poker’ back then) at the tender age of 8 years old. Since then, I’ve never gone too long without playing a poker game, from the days when it was just playing for matches against other kids, until I progressed to pennies and later as a teenager and young adult where I began playing in pub games and tournaments. I remember thinking I was a good player back then, the reaility was I was probably pretty awful in comparison to a real shark. For most of my 20s I had little interest in poker, but I rediscovered my enthusiasm when I saw ‘Late Night Poker’ around the turn of the century on the British Channel Channel4. I think that excellent show played a major part, in the UK and Ireland at least, in generating interest in the game of Texas Holdem. I think it could be argued in fact that it created a ready made British and Irish player base when online poker took off around the same time.
I started playing online around 2001, nothing too serious at first, just played now and then, back then it was all Limit Holdem. Over the next couple of years I gradually got more and more interested in poker and bought a number of books on the subject. My limit holdem game began to develop more. I deposited about $100 on Paradise Poker, which back then was one of the main online poker sites. Over 10 days I managed to build up my initial deposit to $2k playing $100 limit sngs (readily available back then – almost impossible to find now), only for most of it to be wiped out in 90 minutes of mayhem at a 10/20 limit cash game – one of my first cruel lessons of the importance of bankroll management. That so sickened me at the time, as $2k was a huge amount to be back then, that I packed in poker for almost a year. When I finally got back to the game in 2004 the whole online poker world had completely changed. Limit holdem was sidelined by No Limit holdem, outside of a few tournaments I hadn’t played No Limit Holdem before. And so I had to learn a whole new game, the learning process never seems to stop when it comes to No Limit Holdem. Over the next few years I gradually became a more serious player. I participated in online poker forums, my poker library became more extensive. In 2006 I discovered the great game of Pot Limit Omaha, although it was the last major Poker game I learned, it has since gone on to be my game of choice. It was also in 2006 that I left the world of computer programming behind and became a writer for Pokerstars. A year later I left that behind too and finally became a full time poker player.
Besides poker, I am of course a web enthusiast. It’s something I’ve long had an interest in and I hope that working on this site will broaden my knowledge in the area. I wouldn’t consider myself a sports fanatic but I enjoy watching big events like the World Cup, I try to watch the Irish soccer Team on the internet when they play also. I also used to be a tennis coach, but these days I don’t even get to play much. I’m also an avid reader, I don’t limit myself to any one genre but I especially read the likes of sci-fi books and spy novels.
