George ‘ShroomTheRiver’ Davidson has been playing online poker seriously for close to 10 years now, but he’s been around the game for much longer than that, playing for sweets with his family long before he took it up more competitively.

“I don’t think there was any avoiding it to be honest,” Davidson said of how he got into poker. “My uncle has played live professionally since I was a little one, and as early as four years old I can remember playing cards with my nan for sweets and pocket money. It started out with bingo and rummy but poker wasn’t too far behind.”

Fast forward a whole bunch of years and now poker is how Davidson makes a living. He streams and plays poker on a full-time basis, although he had some other jobs along the way.

“Feels a bit weird saying it still, but yes, alongside streaming poker is what I do full time,” Davidson said. “I worked as a croupier in London for almost five years, dabbled with air-conditioning installation, and even lived in a farmhouse in France training and showing dobermans for a bit. I couldn’t really see a future for myself in any of those and repeatedly hit the same brick wall. Feeling a bit lost, I threw myself into streaming. GGPoker approached me not long after and the rest is history.”

Davidson’s most memorable poker experience involves his family, specifically his uncle, Geoff. His uncle took him to play live poker at Grosvenor Victoria Casino on Edgware Road in London, with buy-ins covered. Davidson remembers losing a handful of stacks at £1-2 and feeling pretty terrible about it.

“The only thing that’s worse than losing your own money in poker is losing someone else’s,” Davidson said.

His uncle didn’t seem to mind, though, and pushed Davidson into the casino’s monthly tournament, a £300 freezeout. Although he got short early, Davidson spiked a jack with pocket jacks against pocket aces to ignite a run to the final table. He finished second in the tournament and ended up taking home a little more than £7,000.

“I’m a cash player at heart, but I think we can all agree that nothing beats that rush of running deep in a big-field MTT,” Davidson said. 

Davidson began streaming in the second half of 2017. He was grinding a $100 bankroll online and playing games with a buy-in of $5. Davidson eventually started playing on GGPoker and within a year had worked his way up to cash games with a buy-in of $100.

“It’s honestly like therapy for me,” Davidson said of the thing he finds most enjoyable about streaming. “Was feeling really lost when I first started. I didn’t know if I’d be any good at it, or even enjoy it. But I was, and I did, and everything just kind of clicked into place. The accountability that comes with streaming forces you to be honest with yourself, which has led to huge improvements both on and off the felt. If I had to narrow it down to one aspect though, it’d be the freedom.”

Like many who have been switched on to poker, the freedom one has when compared to a normal job is often the biggest attraction. Davidson was no different in this sense than others in the community. He mentioned feeling a bit “trapped” at times while working the other jobs he had over the years, as many do. Turning to streaming and poker full time has allowed him to realize that you can take a passion and turn it into a profession, and it’s something he’s done well with. So well that he’s now a member of the GGPoker Stream Team.

“Being able to stream when, where, and for how long I’d like is unparalleled in its worth to me,” Davidson said.

Nowadays, Davidson can be found in the virtual streets of GGPoker playing mostly six-max cash games with a buy-in of $100. He’ll occasionally dabble in multi-table tournaments or play GGPoker’s new Rush & Cash format, but his bread and butter is $100 buy-in No Limit Hold’em cash games. He said he’s taken a few shots at higher limits but feels the need to continue to work on his game in order to move up the stakes.

Davidson said he enjoys playing on GGPoker not only because of the high rakeback, soft games, jackpots, and constant stream of promotions, but also because of the emotes he gets to use while playing.

“They say more than words ever could and I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been left grinning from ear to ear after a classic GGPoker emote exchange,” Davidson said.

Davidson continued with the “fun factor” when asked about why he’d recommend others play on GGPoker.

“First up, the site’s a lot of fun,” Davidson said. “This is something that often gets overlooked but you can’t put a price on actually enjoying yourself whilst you grind. Flopping an open-ended straight flush draw and having approximately 10% to hit a jackpot for $2,000 is exciting. Getting it in with pocket jacks versus seven-deuce preflop for 100 big blinds and then having the guy spam the ‘bad bead’ emote for the next 10 minutes is hilarious. Logging in to find tickets/ or tournament dollars in my account that I didn’t even know I’d won will never get old. The games are crazy soft, the promotions never end and seem to double in size every month. Imagine every time you opened a chest on PokerStars and it was guaranteed to contain $100 to $1,000 – welcome to GGPoker!”

Coming to play on GGPoker is more than just a very enjoyable experience for Davidson, as he’s made it a profitable one, too. He used to play a lot on PokerStars and admits to struggling to move up in stakes. Once he hopped over to GGPoker, he said he built up a bankroll of $10,000 within a year after starting out in $10 games with a bankroll of $150.

“For me, it was the best decision I made as a poker player, my only regret being that I didn’t do it sooner,” Davidson said. “It’s not going to be the same for everyone, of course, but if you don’t try you’ll never know.”