I'm an avid gamer and I love the gaming experience, so that much is obvious. As for the other stuff...

I'm currently located near metro New York City/central New Jersey/eastern Pennsylvania areas. I grew up in NYC as a kid where I was seduced very early on by playing many types of games including Parker Bros., Milton Bradley, Avalon Hill and other American titles. Throughout my junior HS thru post-college years, I evolved into a handful of wargames and also a great deal more of RPG's (beginning early with basic D&D before graduating & migrating to several other systems). To this day, I no longer play RPGs though as the effects of that genre has worn off on me (replaced with "RPG-like" games, like Descent for example). With a 7-year hiatus (because life gets in the way), I missed most of the "German Games Invasion" until a friend introduced me to Settlers and Carcassonne. Needless to say, I got super severely hooked again and have been heavily back in the boardgaming scene for many years now...

I attend several large gaming conventions (both public & invitational ones) throughout the year, and I have several local game groups to choose from on a weekly basis. With game groups in the areas of NJ, NYC & eastern PA areas, I thoroughly enjoy socializing with many diverse gamers with the main course being: Designer/German-style board games & card games with a sprinkling of a few wargames on occasion. The game club I some times visit EPGS (Eastern Penn. Gaming Society) currently located at Oxford Valley mall.

I typically enjoy a broad variety of newly published games, while occasionally revisiting many favorites. But, this is always balanced by my mood and compatibility of whatever game group I'm involved with. I also enjoy playtesting and developing prototypes and offer my humble two cents (a.k.a. constructive comments) should I have any (but obviously I cannot discuss this publicly and sometimes not at all unless given permission to do so).

Why I game? To simply have fun. I primarily enjoy the social interactions, friendly competition and learning from diverse people using games as the central medium. As in Life, I try to treat others humanely and respectfully, I like to have fun, learn, and compete with fairness for all involved. If I had to choose from extremes, I'd rather play a mediocre game with great gamer friends than to get into a "highly-rated" game with incompatible, annoying or selfish gamers. The bottom line is, as good as any game is, it is essentially the people that you play with that optimizes the gaming experience.