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1/6/09 wed 6:43pm
been meaning to start a blog/journal for over a year now.
im closing in on almost 5 years of playing online poker, two years of which i considered as a true profession. i play small stakes cash games ranging from .50/1 - 2/4(most of my hands are in 1/2) playing up to 24 tables at a time. through pokerstars' incentive programs (vip program) i have been able to make a decent living in the new york city area. last year i was able to achieve pokerstars' supernova elite level on dec 30th(4 months past schedule). in 2009, i plan on doing 2 million vpps as well as scedule some live tournaments/vacations. i am 25 going on 26 in febuary.
my main reasons for keeping a blog ......
no one i know personally is in the same line of work as i am. sitting at a computer for 10-12 hours a day can really mess with your head a bit. this blog is meant to share a connection amongst other fellow poker players who are playing professionally, to players who play recreationally, to my friends and family who never understood what this profession entailed, to people who are bored at work, for all the other players that take time to share a bit of there lives with us, and for anyone who wants to read it. there are many times where it can get lonesome and depressing in this line of work and i would like to show my appreciation for all the poker bloggers (mico to ultra high stakes) out there who share their stories with us, to make me feel like im not the only man on the island.
a quick glimpse into how i ended up playing poker professionally online(ok maybe not that quick):
2001: graduate high school, this close from going to marines cuz i forget to send in my letter of intent to suny binghamton(not to brag but one of the highest regarded state schools in the country, somewhat considered a feat for me seeing as i gave zero effort in high school.....my guidance counselor verbatim...."ill be shocked if you get in" . oldest sister calls school i get in....second chance baby! not going to screw up this time. graduate in 4 maybe even 3 years with a computer programming degree and silicon valley here i come. go to college. find out college is awesome and blacking out becomes a common occurence. broke as usual.
2002: what is a fraternity? ok im in.......guess u cant live with what ifs in your life. it's like wanting something so bad for a moment and completely being disinterested the next. everything in life is about balance. you satisfy one need and you're hungry for another. you rid yourself of everything and emptiness settles. i always look back to this point in life..... what would've happened if i had taken the non-fraternity road in college, but ultimately you have to take a certain road to be where you're at now and if you're not happy you can always change course. i would say that there is no way that i could be where i'm at now if i had done it any other way.
fall semester i move into fraternity house(big mistake lol). more drunkeness/partying
still broke.
2003: i have this crazy ambition to do a greek life bodybuilding show(sort of like the big homecoming fair). i spend insane hours in the gym eat 7000-10000 cals/day. taking questionable supplements, working as a pizza boy(what torture!). i lose showdown within my fraternity the following fall (only 1 person/frat so we have our own competition for the competition....pretty homo erotic, i know). i lose by a vote or two im pretty devestated but i guess if had to lose to anyone it was mike(my big bro, not real life). the better man won and in the end it worked out best for me. had it happened any other way.......well id probably be a shoesaleman.
this experience ulitamtely shed some light on how selffish/selfcentered and narrow minded i was at that time. it also gives me a good lesson on the price payed for self glorification.
my gym days are over.
freshmen standings, no major declared.
drinking becomes therapy.
not only broke but in debt and i'm eating like an animal.
chris moneymaker wins world series main event $2.5 mil
i read phil helmuth's play poker like the pros
2004: i always knew that i would never end up working a 9-5 job for 40 years and retire to a picket
fence home in long island somewheres. just not me. one of my close friend introduced me to a "business idea" (ACN)..........well just put it this way, it was a legal pyrmaid(aka multi level marketing). since i was failing all my classes i decided to take some time off (nicer way of saying dropped out) and focus my attention on ACN. we had some moderate success but kind of hard to do when all your friends are in college. the friend that had introduced me to ACN lived in 3 hours north of my school and i would stay with him often. we watched alot of tv including the chris moneymaker reruns of world series of poker main event. since i had been playing poker for play money on paradise poker i tought him how to play. we eventually got some chips and started playing heads up. the next time i visited he had put money on party poker and was playing sitngo's ranging from 5 - 10 dollars. at this time as im sure many of you'll remember, the games on party poker were incredibly soft. so a few wins here and there and i was hooked. at this time i was still living in binghamton(out of school but still partying in college town), my friend jill put 50 dollars on her credit card(lol back in the days when that was allowed) onto party poker for me. i was broker than ever and was up to my neck in debts. i remember the first week i played i made close to 1000 dollars playing sitngos ranging from 5-50 dollars. life was good for that week, i overspent, and my debts didnt seem so gargantuan. little did i know about how poker truly worked. to make a long story short i ended up going home middle of that summer with a frozen partypoker account (deposit bonus abuse) less than 75 cents on ultimate bet and absolutely no cash. my car had been impounded and for the first time suicide was a thought(although i like myself too much for that, the thought of it was the realest it had ever been to me). til this point i had not told my mother about dropping out and had not told her anything about poker. i would consider it a gambling problem cuz i had only lost the money i won and like anything else i liked in this world i was addicted to it.
with my head down and complete surrender to my mothers wishes i came home and attempted to restablish myself into college..........well not so fast. after all i still had seventy some odd cents left in my ub account. i said to myself......this is it, after this im getting a job a the bagel store or whoever will hire. im very competitive and the bitter taste still lingered from all the money i had won and lost. winner or loser, a man will keep playing rather than concede the fact that they're a losing player. for me it was never about the thrill of winning/losing or action........the bottom line was always about money and ego, the belief that i had an extra edge over most players because i was smarter and better in life and in poker. after long hours of grinding that money at .01/.02 limits into a few bucks i would go play a sitngo for 5 dollars. i repeated this process numerous times until i had enough money to strictly play 5-10 dollar sitngos. after a few months and a few wins at micro multi table tournaments (holdem, stud, omaha, anything u can name) i had made enough money to get my car out of the impound ($25/day adds up!) and money to go back up to school(attending school is a whole another story).
most my money is on pokerstars
i read cloutier and mcvoy's championship nl and pl holdem poker
i have a source of money(not a lot but something) and im still neck high in debt
available funds allows the booze to keep flowing
i also learn alot about the character of people and that you truly are lucky to have made just one really GOOD friend in your lifetime.
2005: i finally move out of my mothers half bed/half storage room into a sorority house(with two other guys there too). i was friends with a lot of them and had no problem living with girls since i was raised by my mother and two older sisters. as far as poker goes i was doing mostly 5-10 dollar 9-27 man sit n gos. im doing anywhere from 50-250 a day and incredibly for about 14 months i never went broke with a bank roll of about 200 dollars(everything above i cashed out) i was also usually playing 4-8 tables at a time. i had no concept of bankroll management or how many people were doing similar things as i was. i was still not enrolled in school and i basically was just hanging out and making enough to hang out. spring 05 was one of my favorite times of my life. i fell in love for a bit(it was one of those where nothing mattered and was run on pure emotions). i know were talking poker here but i felt that it really equipped me with knowledge of understanding from two point of views instead of considering just one opinion(always my opinion that mattered previous to this hehe). by that summer all my friends were graduating and moving on to real jobs in nyc. i moved back to queens,ny (bayside) with my mother again but this time we had a new place that was a significant upgrade to the previous. i still felt really empty inside. i felt like i had left the chapter unfinished in binghamton, i barely had sophomore standings and was still hung up on a girl and decided to move back to 1)solely focus on poker (although i convinced my mother i was going back to school 2) be closer to the girl (al bundy warned me about this). actually i didnt feel so bad going back since 2 of my friends going back were two years older than me and they were still trying to graduate(one of my buddies failed calculus 4 times, which he's very proud of). i ended up living with brian, javi, and jenn(javi's cousin).........perfect because javi and jenn were also there trying to set up a flower import business and this would motivate me to play harder.
of course it just became more college type debauchery, girl didnt work out(all girls are minus EV especially mothers lol jk), and i was playing just enough to get by again.
drinking.......exceptionally heavy
still lot of debts
cash flow is not much but consistent at least
2006: that dec/jan pokerstars announced its vip program. and i started playing cash games exclusively. mostly nl50 and nl100. i started tripling what i did at sit n go games and averaged closer to 300 dollars a day. i was thinking oh great this is like a real world income. i still struggled to actually get on my computer to play though. for the most part i was drinking all the time to wash down sorrows and compensate for a long period of non closure in my life. i made a bit of a mistake in judgement with a different girl and suffered the price. my judgement was all fogged up from the girl the year before and i shoved my chips into a pot that i was never going to see again. u go bust from time to time in life too. after that spring semester ended well all packed up and moved back home. quality of life for me started to get good. i moved up to nl 200 and was taking in somewhere between 500-1500 a session. i spent it as fast as i made it.
at the end of the year i realize this:
itll take a helluva job offer for me to quit poker
bachelor degree is falling lower and lower on priority list(with or without poker)
girls does not = money ironically money does = girls
the 5400 fpp sunday million thing is sweet (hope no one catches on)
2007:
after a pretty emotionally tough couple years i spend half a year just playing hard and playing harder. i play maybe three times a week sparingly just for more play money. im in the big city on average 4 times a week getting drunk. one night i come home drunk and decide giving plo100 a go. i find my new game. im getting a lot more vpp and also killing the game. i move up to plo200 and start killing the game there also. old debts finally come around and debt collectors come looking for 12k in 10 days. ugh.....i grind out 10 12-hour days.......easy right, well no cuz i still have to wait for the money to hit my bank. i make some desperate calls for loans and blah blah it worked out fine, but what a sweat!
in 2007........
im finally getting myself back on my feet from dropping out of college....from this point on focus on career(making money) and being happy
i realize that too many people are good at no limit and im far more profitable at pot limit omaha
i do something around the neighborhood of 250k-270k in vpp for the year....by far the most ever
i promise to make poker a 5 hour/day commitment for 2008
2008:
jan. move out of mom's apartment(bayside,ny) to jill's(college friend) apartment temporarily(astoria,ny). for about a month i stayed on her couch and she had to deal with my wake up at 4pm sleep at 10 am lifestyle. thank you im forever grateful! just to clarify our relationship is completely based on the yankees,sports, drinking, eating, and talking about shitting(or talking to each other while shitting). i actually start the year off financially crushed, after helping my mother move out of her apartment and getting a new one, i have about a thousand bucks left in the bank and 3k in pokerstars. not the ideal bankroll i need to find a place of my own in the nyc area. back in january having 3k in my account is more than safe for me to play 4-8 tables. i just ended up having a fairly bad session one night and end going busto. so i'm in bit of a panic and reload for 500, 1/2 my real life bankroll.....yikes(i still cant believe how much money i made and blew in 2007). but from this point on i actually go on one of my best runs for the whole year. i was orignally working off a westinghouse 22 widescreen monitor (not the best brand but i got it for 200 bucks a bargain in 2007), then i decided to get a second one. this started the mega tabling era for me. i went from running 10 tables at most to adding up to 24 tables(as 24 is the max on pokerstars for cash games). in the first two weeks of the two monitor set up i was able to bank close to 12k and average more than 7k vpp a day (roughly a little less than 1000vpp/hr). at this point i realized i can achieve supernova elite as long as i did around 100k vpp/month. so i was off to the races. my goals are simple this year, dont screw up, manage bankroll, hit supernova elite, stay away from girls until all outstanding debts and taxes are paid, drink less.
during my 1 month stay at jill's i banked close to 20k. brian(my old roomie in college) and i found a place in astoria and moved in febuary. i spent a substantial amount moving in(furniture, tv, basic stufff, ect) and lost about two weeks of play time. i really didnt finish moving in until mid march, i definately went a little overboard with decor and buying utterly useless stuff (ie chop wizard, perfect pushup, anything as seen on tv). it's ironic how i moved so i could be closer to the city (astoria is a 12 minute subway ride to the upper east side of nyc) and i ended up rarely ever going into the city. i was on pretty good schedule to make supernova elite by august, but ultimately achieved it less than 30 hours before the year ended.
setbacks:
i got hooked on call of duty for about 2 straight months( i actually had my roomate hide it on me and then i searched the whole and found it)
spring time is the best time to party and do nothing.
one of my best friends (colby) sublet brians room for a few months and things got debaucherous (most mornings i woke up drunk during this time). she is a female version of me and is excessive in everything she does just like me. she also worked at a local bar here during her stay and i became a regular there (something im definately trying to cut back on in 09).
started off october with 400k to go and had some serious bankroll drawbacks from playing minimal in the previous months. ended up doing close to 200k in november to compensate for my random days/months off. i was also down 20 grand in nov(fortunately bonuses covered).
december.......95 k to go, procrastinated playing til the 19th banged out the rest by dec 30th.
my goals are simple this year, dont screw up, manage bankroll, hit supernova elite, stay away from girls until all outstanding debts and taxes are paid, drink less.
ok so i hit supernova elite 1 out of 5 aint bad
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Critterer United Kingdom. Jan 08 2009 16:36. Posts 5337 | | |
interesting read, grats on SNE and gl with your goals this year! |
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| LudaHid: dam.ned dam.ned dam.ned. LudaHid: dam.ned northwooden as..hole | |
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lachlan Australia. Jan 09 2009 11:36. Posts 6991 | | | |
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