A little about me and my poker habits – Rick Braddy

Hello there.  My name is Rick Braddy.  In case you don’t know me, let me introduce myself briefly…

Texas Hold’em poker is a hobby and pasttime that has continued to hold my interest for many years now.  I’m a software developer by background.  More recently, I’ve been employed by some of the largest software companies around, including BMC Software (in the systems management market) and Citrix Systems (in the application delivery market).  At the time of this writing, my day job is as Chief Technology Officer of a $1 billion software division of Citrix Systems (the original Citrix group that develops Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix Desktop Server products).

Earlier in 2003, I had taken a keen interest in Texas Hold’em, as a member of a local poker club there in south Florida where I lived at the time.  A group of Citrix employees had banded together to form the Citrix Poker Club, a group of around 50 of us.  This poker club later became known as the South Florida Poker Club and its membership grew even more.

As a member, I somehow managed to rise to the top (for a brief period) at our poker club, becoming the annual poker champion at our club (not the most popular thing to be, as you quickly become everyone’s top target).

By early 2004, I was hopelessly hooked on Texas Hold’em, and the game was in full swing everywhere – on TV, in local home games and casinos, even on cruise ships - everywhere anyone could get a game going with a few people.  At the same time, I decided that I really needed to do something to keep my programming skills sharp (I hadn’t worked on any programming projects since the 1990’s, when I invented some products related to Internet load balancing of Web requests… but that’s another story).

At the time, I played primarily on Poker Stars (still do today).  I wanted a software program that would monitor my online play, calculating all of the possible hands that I could draw, along with all the hands my opponents could potentially draw at a given point in time.  So I set to work prototyping what later became known as “Poker Sidekick”.

In August 2004, I published the first prototype version of Poker Sidekick.  By October, I was beginning to sell Poker Sidekick under the company I had formed, Royal Flush Club, Inc.  I originally formed the corporation as a way to limit any potential liability that might arise from selling Poker Sidekick to gamblers (which seemed a bit risky in those days).

As of today (3 years later), many thousands of poker players from all over the world are using my Poker Sidekick program.  I originally wrote it for me… and used it to both sharpen my programming skills a bit, and to really hone my poker skills (both of which were achieved).  What I didn’t count on was what happened next… I needed to figure out how to sell it online (something I did not yet know how to do very well back then).

In late 2004, another interesting event took place.  I was starting to make money with Poker Sidekick and my little online business (hobby, really) was making a profit – several thousand dollars a month.  I started buying every poker product I could get my hands on.  What the heck – it was all legitimately tax deductable!

Since I played mostly at Poker Stars, I was more interested in having a system that would work well at Poker Stars.  I started experimenting with this system, and pretty soon found other similar systems that were available at the time.  I began taking notes about what I was learning and what worked (avoiding what didn’t).  I was winning sit and go tournaments on a regular basis using what I had learned from a number of different products, along with my own experience from the poker club I’d been in for around 18 months at that time.

Over the 2004 Holidays, I bought a little e-book product called “How to Beat Party Poker” (I think that’s what it was called).  It was a poorly-written, but interesting little e-book, that discussed a fledgling system for winning sit and go tournaments at Party Poker.  It was fairly specific to Party Poker.  It’s author provided the absolutely worst support (basically non-existant) I’d ever experienced.  This turned out to be a “defining moment” for me… (more than I knew at the time)

I was so aggravated by the bad support that this author provided me and my Royal Flush Club customers (who I had introduced to his product), that I decided enough was enough.  Right there, right then, I decided that I would always do my absolute best to ensure my customers were taken excellent care of, and got personal attention from me on anything they needed.

I also decided to compete with his product!  I remember it very clearly.  I woke up on New Year’s Eve day with the idea of creating a new Sit and Go e-book product.  By 9:30 I had my 2nd cup of coffee, and was on my PC in front of the TV in my easy chair, creating an outline of my new e-book.

By around 2:30 that afternoon, I had compiled a number of articles that I’d been sending to my subscribers (via email autoresponder), along with documenting everything I was doing regularly to profit at sit and go tournaments.  By around 6:30 that evening, I had located an e-book reader product that would allow me to publish my new e-book and protect it from piracy (a huge problem on the Internet).  By around 8:30, I had created a draft sales letter and had it posted.  By 10:00 p.m., I had the first version of my e-book published on the Internet!

By 11:30, it was growing close to New Year, 2005 and I had completed writing, publishing and selling my first poker e-book!  You know, when I look back on that day, I’m still somewhat amazed at what can be done when someone is highly-motivated and capable of executing.  In around 14 hours, I had gone from zero to selling a new poker product…

Of course, that was version 1 of what today is known as “The Secrets of Winning Sit and Go Tournaments”.  If you’re interested, you can find it here.

At this point, I was beginning to learn a little more about Internet Marketing.  As it turned out, I had a whole lot more to learn (as is often the case, I didn’t know what I didn’t know yet about selling over the Internet).  I spent most of 2005 learning how to market my two products better, adding support for more poker rooms to Poker Sidekick, enhancing Poker Sidekick greatly to include “expert advice” and other unique capabilities to it, and refining my sit and go e-book product.

By the time New Year’s 2006 rolled around, I had become somewhat of an expert at Internet Marketing, having invested all of my poker product revenues into every kind of marketing course and e-book I could get my hands on (and just about every waking moment experimeting with everything I was learning – deciding for myself what really worked and what didn’t).

So, why am I telling you all of this?  Well, I want you to know me, how I got started in this whole poker thing, and how it’s changed my life.  Once you understand this, I think you’ll be a step closer to knowing me and understanding how I think and operate…

At this same time, I was in a couple of different roles at Citrix.  I was Vice-President of Product Management back in those days – responsible for all of our products – products that were generating something north of $600 million in revenues as I recall (today it’s closer to $1 billion for those same products).  There was a brief period where I also took on the role of VP, Product Marketing – what a blast that was!  (again, a great story for another day)

So, poker continued to be my hobby (still is today) – the only hobby I’ve ever had that actually paid for itself.

I’m also an oil painter and avid fisherman.  I’m attaching pics of a couple of my paintings, in case those are of any interest.  I haven’t painted in a few years, but I do love it (it’s very time-consuming, and my time has been consumed lately by my poker activities). 

While I lived in Florida, I routinly fished in the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee for my favorite prey – largemouth bass (I catch and release them, it’s just for sport).

Back to the poker story… I began to realize that making money on the Internet was easier when you had a larger base of subscribers.  So, I decided to create a new kind of poker site – one that’s free and that people would WANT to subscribe to – and one that they would get a lot of value out of.

I figured that many people really didn’t have an objective way to gauge their own poker skills.  Judging your poker skills by winning and losing against a wide range of players makes it tough really understand your skill level across the range of most important skills in the game:  betting, bluffing, trapping, reading players, etc.

So I went to work defining something that never before existed – a “poker skills testing” site.  I call it the “Poker Tester” (not very creative, but it gets the point across).  You can find it at www.PokerTester.com .  This site serves a number of purposes:  1) it provides people with a free tool for testing their own poker skills objectively, 2) it shows a player their areas of strength and weakness on a skill-by-skill basis, and 3) it offers players “skills training courses” for each poker skill they may need help with.

www.PokerTester.com was quickly a big hit.  Hundreds of people a day visit PokerTester.com for a poker skills checkup.  As a result, I also now have access to many thousands of poker players who are interested in improving their game.

This leads us closer to today.  I recently decided to survey my customers and subscribers (around 22,000 of them) to truly understand what they want most in their poker lives.  I organized a drawing and contest as an incentive to get people to tell me what was on their mind.  I offered to give away my Poker Sidekick software and SNG tournament e-book products to the first 300 people who responded to my survey.

In less than 24 hours, I had 540 responses to my survey and shut the survey down.  I was very happy to give away my products for free, because I got so much value in return – everyone told me what was on their mind and what they wanted most to help them achieve their poker goals.

And that leads us up to now.  I’m now in the process of doing the following:

  1) Having the survey results professionally analyzed and prioritized

  2) I have defined a brand new poker club site (actually, three of them in one)

  3) I have defined several new poker products, in addition to the club site

  4) I have hired people to develop content for the poker club and products (I’m estimating the initial site content will cost around $10,000 to $15,000 to develop, and we’ll be adding $5,000 to $10,000 worth of new content to it each quarter).

  5) I am in the process of getting bids on developing the new club site (I’m estimating this new site will cost around $10,000 to develop initially)

So, I hope you stay tuned in for what’s coming next…. all I can say for sure at this point is that “it’s what you asked for”, as it’s based on what the survey respondents said they wanted most…

• 1-on-1 poker coaching
• Poker mentoring
• Focused poker training
• Videos
• Unique articles and tips
• A safe place to meet other poker players

Guess what I’ve decided to call the new poker club?

Royal Flush Club

This blog is dedicated to the development and launch of my member’s new poker club site.