The poker world runs through Twitter in 2017 and the majority of the players use Twitter to stay connected, among many other things, as they grind their way through life. Twitter allows players to develop their own voice away from whatever table they are on and Edwin Roman, who plays in New Jersey under the name ‘GiantGenius‘, is a primary example of that.

Roman’s 50,000 tweets speak loudly among the voices that populate New Jersey and compliment his tall frame. He calls himself ‘El Grandote’ and even before he started playing poker full-time, Roman was already a seasoned Twitter veteran.

“Twitter has been in my life for quite a bit of years before I played poker with any type of seriousness I would be on there sending random tweets to A-list celebs and rappers. I then moved on to updating a lot about my day-to-day grind especially after finding a little success in NJ online. Now I feel like it’s a great tool to sell action, buy the occasional action and stay connected to some really cool pros I have met in the little traveling I have done.”

Outside of the inherent social interaction that it provides, #PokerTwitter is used as a means to sweat a player when they make a deep tournament run. Tournament updates only provide so much information given the limitation of a single person or team can do, but Twitter allows players to give their fans in-depth details about hands or just merely update their chip count at the end of a level.

The Borgata Spring Poker Open Main Event far exceeded its $1,000,000 guarantee as 670 players turned out for the last major tournament in the United States before the World Series of Poker. Roman made his way to Day 3 of the event and navigated his way to a 24th place finish, all while feeling the social media love while making his run at the $390,000 first place prize.

“I feed into the good luck tweets and messages on Facebook a lot more than I let show. Borgata does feel like our backyard as cliche as that sounds but it’s definitely relative. The random [good luck] messages and support I received on Facebook from non-family members were awesome and I must say, the NJ MTT regs really get behind you with motivational phrases or just by taking the time to say GLGL. I know we all follow these events closely, fun to actually be a part of it.”

The community cultivated by New Jersey’s online players can be seen every day on social media. Roman says he keeps tabs on the majority of the immediate community and his desire to match the feats of those who run deep in both areas of poker.

“The NJ community is pretty active on Twitter. It consists of some pretty funny and witty dudes. I follow mostly all of the regs on there but most of them just thumb thru the timeline occasionally double tapping a heart. Whenever there is an event in our area it’s definitely interesting to follow some of the players who battle it out in MTTs on all sites making runs in huge guarantees. [It is a ] huge motivation to see some of them finding big scores in the live scene, some even making the switch to be the dreaded ‘live pro.’”

Becoming a ‘live pro’ is not at the top of Roman’s agenda in the immediate future. The family man of two pre-teen children is more than content to play upwards of five days a week with his “toes out” as he moves up the charts of the New Jersey Online Poker Rankings. With PokerStarsNJ NJSCOOP in full swing, it is doubtful that Roman will play live poker anytime soon outside of perhaps this weekend’s Parx Big Stax Main Event.

Whether it is an online or live sweat, Roman will surely keep the Twitter community abreast of any deep runs as he clicks and scrolls his way from one score to the next.