PocketFives had the opportunity to sit down with Scott Sblum2711Blumstein, who plays under the handle Sblast2711on New Jersey regulated sites. He recently finished in first place in the Garden State Super Series Leaderboard, earning himself $3,000. Hailing from Morristown, New Jersey, Blumstein has over $85,000 in recorded online and live cashes combined. He won two GSSS events, both with $20,000 guarantees, within a week’s span for a combined $8,122. Visit PocketFives’ New Jersey poker community today!

PocketFives: Congrats on winning the Garden State Super Series Leaderboard. Tell us how you are feeling.

Scott Blumstein: I had a sweat there on that last Sunday, September 21, as there were a couple of people in both the $95,000 Guaranteed and the $50,000 Guaranteed who could have actually passed me if they had won. Thankfully, none of them got first and I was able to hold.

It feels really good though to have won the GSSS leaderboard and it is kind of the bow on the past two months where my hard work has paid off. It was awesome that PartyPoker, Borgata Poker, and PocketFives came together to hold a contest like that where there is incentive to put in volume and give a little money back to the community that drives the site and I’m thankful to have taken down the top spot.

PocketFives: You won two GSSS events on Borgata Poker within a one-week span. Do any hands stick out from either win?

Scott Blumstein: The first win I don’t really recall any specific hands. I’m pretty sure I just ran really good that whole tournament judging by the needling I got from Tommy Kittens and Tonyloco about me locating the Borgata “God Mode” button. The second one was a six-max and I played a pot where I got it in on the turn on an A-10-4-K board with A-K blind versus blind in a 3bet pot and had four outs somehow (villain had 4-4); one of them came on the river. That was a brutal final table, but again I ran good and was able to get the victory.

PocketFives: Give us your thoughts and experiences of regulated online poker in New Jersey.

Scott Blumstein: I think it’s doing the job that it needs to do for online poker to get back to what it was pre-Black Friday. Before online poker can be open to all 50 states, it had to start with one or two states and there was no better place to start than Nevada and New Jersey. Eventually, the dominoes will fall and we will have a nationally regulated online poker network and the few states that have online poker now will be looked at as the catalysts.

As far as my experiences with online poker so far, I am pleasantly surprised that they have mostly been positive. We need to enjoy that we can play poker at all right now and just hang on tight until the other states start to get on board.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker originally? Why was it appealing?

Scott Blumstein: Chris Moneymaker, TV, home games, etc. I got really into it in high school when I started playing in a home game with a bunch of kids who were older than I was. I quickly grew a passion for the game and then, like everyone else, started watching any video on the internet with poker I could find.

I basically taught myself the game, as I never really played online pre-Black Friday, through videos and forum threads. Poker is appealing to me because it involves three things I enjoy doing; math, gambling, and thinking. In his famous ESPY speech, Jim Valvano said, “There are three things you should do every day: laugh, cry, and think.” I try to live by this mantra, so poker kind of takes care of the thinking part (and the two other parts sometimes too).

PocketFives: What are your favorite New Jersey online poker sites to play and why?

Scott Blumstein: I basically only play on Borgata and WSOP.com. I like Borgata because it’s where I am able to put the most volume in and I like the software for the most part. WSOP also has some good MTTs, but its structures are not as good as Borgata/Party’s. I also am in favor of Borgata adjusting their payout structures, but I understand why they have it the way it is.

PocketFives: To what do you attribute your current online success?

Scott Blumstein: I would attribute my success to a perfect storm of events. I have dedicated numerous hours to the game of poker and taught myself the intricacies of the game from scratch. Now that online poker exists again, I have been able to put in the volume, get more comfortable with spots, and finally use the skills I have developed. I always felt I was at a disadvantage since I never really played online, but the more hands I see, the better I feel like I’m getting.

I also have had a supportive group of poker friends who have helped me improve drastically over the past two years since I turned 21. I also had someone give me a chance and take me under his wing. Not to mention it helps to be ridiculously due all the time.