I haven't blogged much lately. I've been pretty caught up in enjoying a ton of poker as well as unemployment fun in general. I've mostly been posting on Twitter under my @BluffMeat account. I wanted to start documenting this experience though and getting all of my thoughts down, because this is something I've been waiting to try for years. Yes, I'm taking a shot at playing poker professionally. Maybe it will only be for a few months, but I'm giving it a shot.
In case anyone else ever reads this blog (besides Johnny - hey bro whats up), here's what happened with me the last 10+ years with poker.
I fucking hated "playing cards" growing up. I never got into it. People would play at parties, or at holidays with the relatives, and I always avoided it. I don't remember a ton of hold 'em being played but people played games like hearts. I didn't play any poker at all until I moved out of Detroit and was in Denver for years. I probably started playing when I was about 26, in 2003-2004.
I played a lot of sports throughout school because my parents put me into them, and I performed on the average to low side. For some reason I didn't have the competitive drive that I do today. That certainly hurt my performance in wrestling and other sports. I simply didn't think strategically enough. I really didn't care about winning the same way I do today. I'd try on the physical side (which isn't my strong suit anyway) but never really got into caring about strategy at a deep level.
I graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a Computer Science degree and immediately moved out to Denver. I had been working remote for a company there for the past year. I had aspirations to do a ton of snowboarding in Denver, but the first time out I blew out my knee and haven't been back since. That made me search for new hobbies.
Next came foosball. That's a whole other story, but I got VERY into the fun underground foosball scene in Denver. That's where my competitive nature started to really come out. I got pretty decent at foosball and traveled around the country playing various tournaments for years. I even met my future wife Beth at a foosball tournament right here in Las Vegas. :-) Foosball was a ton of fun and it ignited a competitive spark in me that carries through to today.
Some of my foosball buddies were playing online poker. Through them I saw some of the Moneymaker WSOP stuff on TV, and I started playing very low stakes on PokerStars. It was a ton of fun and I got REALLY into it. I was still young and irresponsible and my job suffered at times because of it. I would stay up ridiculously late and waking up for the job was rough. I wasn't super successful online by any means, but that's where I learned the game. I bought some poker books and I'd take long lunches and read every day. The Theory of Poker and Hold 'Em for Advanced Players were my first two books. Theory is still one of my favorite books (although I haven't read it in years).
It was really fun and exciting learning to play. I'd drive up to Black Hawk in Colorado to play $2-$5 spread limit hold 'em and buying in for a rack of $100 seemed like the craziest and most exciting thing ever.
I also got into the underground poker scene in Denver a little bit. The first live game I played was with a guy named Big City I knew from foosball. He took me to some ghetto apartments and the person whose apartment I was in had an ankle bracelet on. He killed someone in a DUI accident. We played 5 handed games like Follow the Queen and other random shit. I lost, and I was learning as I went.
Later I met a guy Jeremiah and we got together to play serious poker. He introduced me to a guy named Arthur who was extremely poor but he took poker really seriously. I remember going to his apartment and he had a set of chips made that were super fancy. They had a crown embossed on each chip (King Arthur, get it). I lost a huge (ie. I put maybe 15-20 bucks into it) Omaha hand because I didn't understand how Omaha worked. I also remember playing a hand of Chicago and I wasn't sure if an ace counted as low or high. I lost $60 the first time playing with that guy and it felt like I lost a ton.
One of my earliest and most satisfying poker successes was in that 3 handed home game. One night Arthur came over to Jeremiah's house to play. We were improving, and we simply crushed him. We were no longer the fish in that game. After that, he said he could keep playing but we would have to play at lower stakes. We were maybe playing $1/$2 at the highest, or some kind of spread variation that was really small. I think that's the last time I saw Arthur. I still remember he would always say things when he got dealt shitty cards like "this isn't a hand, its a foot!" Good guy.
At some point I met my future wife Beth. One of the very first things we did was get her into poker. I started by dealing out boards and had her identify the nut hand, 2nd nuts, and so on. It's crazy how fast Beth learned to play really, because I had a year of experience ahead of her and a billion hours online. She got up to speed quick and basically did better than me all through the time we played in Colorado. She played retarded aggressive and would pull off absurd feats like winning $500 in a $2/$4 limit game. Yeah, she would lose record amounts too, but she crushed limit.
At some point we started talking about the dream of moving to Vegas and giving it a shot. Beth is an adventurer and she was into it. And here I am today.
In my next blog I'll write about how my 2nd shot at professional poker is going so far. Hint - results-wise, it's not good. :-) I'm staying positive though.
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