My Story of Time Travel [eSports and Poker Pro]

Preface.

 1995. Summer. A boy is playing Rock N' Roll Racing video game on Sega Mega Drive (read Lion King, if you are a girl). His Granny tells him: "Go out and play, do breath some fresh air at last." Back at those days, the boy didnt know yet how big and wonderful the world was outside the window. He kept on playing, he did not listen to his parents’ reproaches and he could not imagine that his current interest would turn him into one the best gamers and provide opportunity for him to travel free at such an early age. He didn't know that traveling is something that people pursued so much  for when they grow up and earn money. Then he could not see the future, for him the whole world was a game, he lived by the game, completely devoted himself to his passion and didn't see anything around.

 The boy believed he would be able to pass all the games in the world. He was young enough to dream the impossible.

 Moreover, when his granny was telling him off, he could not understand why he would need to go and play outside if he had console at home, and it was the coolest thing he had ever seen before. In those days, it was the high-tech future in all its glory. Such passion for video games on his part and indignation on the part of adults caused him to feel controversial emotions. One day, he made a promise to himself to become the most 'modern' adult ever.

 Furthermore, he has managed to achieve it. It is not because he pursued the future but because he wanted to keep up with all the novelties happening in the world.

‘The future is what will happen in the time after the present.’ - Wikipedia

 2017. Summer. 22 years later. I have been eSports progamer for nine years. Today, finally, you can confidently pronounce this word. It is the future that has become the present. For the last six years, I have been a professional poker player. 

 During all these years, I have been travelling a lot, meeting new people, found many friends around the world, and all of that owing to my passion for game. 

 Before now, I had no any blogs and shared none of my thoughts, ideas and feelings with a broad audience. I avoided mass media due to my own convictions. The reason was the following - as I was achieving results, I got some fans, and they were around my age – I did not consider it comfortable to stand out of the crowd among my fellows. ‘Hey, look, this is the same guy who goes to our school, he plays games for that clan, they’re the best in the internet-cafe, and they say he did not lose a single duel!’ It was definitely not what I wanted; I liked the game itself. When I entered a University, I did not tell anybody about my hobby because it was difficult to understand what you are loved for, for what you are  person or for your achievements. I did not have a desire to prove anything to anyone, I just moved forward.

Era of Blockchain Technology and Steemit Social Media Platform 

 Apart from a store of knowledge my life gave to me, I still have the same desire for everything new. When I came across blockchain technology and new social platform uniting many people from all over the world, and I saw that it was constantly developing, I just could not pass by. As the current state of things was that real social networks (apart from Facebook with all its ads and the only innovation of smile "angry"). We had social network platform VK.com. It was loved by millions of people from ex-USSR countries but it fell into the hands of the government, they redesigned the web site, introduced quite many restrictions, including playing music, and people started to abandon it. Search for new things on subconsciousness level happened simply because it was meant to happen, the world was awaiting for it. Blockchain together is a technology where there is no single control center, where all together develop and improve the system.

 This is the way I dived into studying the platform Steemit.com, figured out how it works, and at that very moment my associative thinking brought back those memories of my distant childhood, I told you about at the beginning of this story. I am 30 y.o. now, and, just as if in 1995, I still want to be the most up-to-date adult ever because I have reached the future I have been dreaming of. So, now and here, I am ready to tell you my story.

Moscow City 2017

#Introduceyouself

 ‘Hello, everyone! My name is Ivan, I'm from Russia.’ Just simple as that. It is like the first couple of phrases everyone learns at an English lesson – the language most part of the world communicates in, transfers one’s knowledge, and shares one’s impressions. A civilization was created owing to a language (not Sid Meier's, but the real one). Your and my personal growth as well as development of civilization in general depends on what kind of information we transfer with the help of a language. Team play helped me to understand essence of value of information, its transfer within a group and moving forward together.

Game theory. 

 I played PC game –  Counter-Strike. To be honest, the game fancied me because I could defeat not only one player but also several rivals at once. Later I realized that the greatest reward of a sportsman is to show the audience things that beyond their imagination. The task of a game is to win at any cost, while its only limits are rules.

 I will definitely tell about tournaments and provide fascinating stories about trips to different part of the world but, for now, I would like to introduce you briefly into my world not to tire you up with profound reading from the very beginning of my blog.

National Professional Cybersport League 2005 (Begrip vs Virtus.pro) 

I played for these teams: forZe, Begrip and Virtus.pro. Later, from eSports I switched to online poker, because it was exactly the future at that time, and again, I came across the opponents I had to defeat. I studied math a lot and found the section of Game Theory describing all the essence of what I was engaged into.

Moscow's Student poker tournament 2008

Zero sum-games 

In every game and con there's always an opponent, and there's always a victim. The trick is to know when you're the latter, so you can become the former. - Revolver

 This is the point of the game, you win in the mathematics equivalent just as much as the opponent loses. I did it not because of hatred for opponents or out of sport anger, I liked the process itself, I was constantly growth myself just as we are growth in real life – that is how a game process is going on. We are moving forward. Thus, namely experience of playing games and doing mathematics gave me the opportunity to look at the world in a different way.

‘Take the world from another point of view.’ Richard Feynman.

Life. 

 In a game, we grow by winning over the opponent and facing a more powerful rival to overcome new difficulties. There are no rivals in real life, the only rival, if it exists, lives in a head of everyone of us. As it was already noted, namely finding a common language and creating a civilization have become the crown of humankind – that is our joining up together. The bigger distance is, the more difficult it is to transfer this kind of information; and  the main problem of mankind has become the speed of its transmission. 

 Today, we have achieved such level of technological process when phones turn into TV sets, messenger pigeons can only be seen at wedding ceremonies, while memories of messengers with letters can only be found on pages of classic novels. These days, we communicate via a network along which a computer code is flowing, like water in aqueducts; innumerable 0s and 1s turn into information that you and I can transfer to other people. And what we convey in it, it's up to us to decide.

 The speed of development of all of us together, as a society, depends on depth of our ideas and height of our feelings, on the way we can understand the other person. Well, the most crucial is to stay happy amongst all of that. That is the core of our communication at steemit.com. 

Non-zero sum games.

 It is impossible to explain happiness in terms of mathematics, but how to build our development without exploiting another person? In Game Theory there is such thing that your opponents can develop themselves not causing any harm to you but along with you at the same time, it is a kind of game where everyone wins. And imagine how mathematics describes what we can call the meaning of life. Moving forward together and helping your neighbor. Well, namely mathematics and its development enabled to create such technology as blockchain for that purpose.

 Who could imagine centuries ago that modern technologies would reach such a level so that communicating and information exchange can receive rewards that can be used in the material world. Authors create content, curators take upvote to them and support their creations, people leave their comments and exchange their pieces of knowledge – it turns out that whole society develops together because of infinite interaction. It is like a super system. And, the main thing is that you do not invest anything but your imagination. As an author, you can write a story of your life, share news from a real world or cryptocurrency world, write a poem or upload beautiful pictures from your journeys. It all depends on you, because your imagination is unlimited.

‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.’ Albert Einstein.

 When I was very young, I simply believed in my hobby when I started playing video games; then, I got a PC on Intel 80286 processor, and I passed all and every game and was looking forward to new ones; but when I found out that there are internet-cafes where you can face with real people in game, my happiness there was no limit. 

 There, I met my rivals for that time and friend for today. I have been associating with them up to this day, yet it was more than seventeen years ago. I liked the process itself, I wanted to get into more and more complex situations to show results none had ever presented before. We had no coaches because Counter-Strike was only emerging, and we were pioneers. It is an incredible feeling when you are at the very origins of something no one has ever done before you.

  I travelled a lot while making no investment on my part owing to cyber sports and my passion for games. One of the trips that stuck in my memory – 15 years ago, I visited Seoul (I know there are many Koreans here, they write hieroglyphs unreadable for me, and I, of course, upvote them). Believe me, they are incredible people – back at those days, eSports got as developed in their country as footfall in other countries. In the airport, both cleaners and passport control officers asked for our autographs. Well, the city itself was on the edge of technologies. Today, I felt the same way when I went to Singapore – the city looks like a place from science fiction stories, btw blockchain technologies are actively developed there. 

Singapore 2017

Back to the future

 The future is not just skyscrapers we used to see in sci-fi movies of the past, and which are gradually turning into the presentwere not just a flight of fantasy belonging to sci-fi novelists. The future is in our minds, we create it in our imagination, and you can become a part of it as participant, only surfing through steemit.com, but investing into it as an author, leaving you trace on the pages of the very future that will become a history one day. You and I write it.

PS

 Nowadays, I am a professional poker player, I play both online and offline. The last place where I played live - was the PokerStars Sochi Main event (but my main discipline is cash games). Here is best photo so far from this tournament:

Now I'm happy to say that I finally got that fresh air

I have much to tell you and I hope all the fun is yet to come.

Follow my blog if you liked it.