Poker at My Fingertips

Tags

finger tips, online poker, poker, profitability

Whoa is me it’s happened again. A blog earthquake ripping a gaping hole between my last post and the one you are reading now. Even worse, the last post came with a cliffhanger. Your eyes which were previously grasping for a computer screen El Capitan, are long gone with no memory of written words past. If you are just reading my dream derailment post and have moved immediately to this post, let’s just say I found the discipline and the fortitude to go forward. The fear of corporate america served as the brutal whip I needed to get my fragile game into profitability submission.

But here we stand today with Covid crashing down on America’s social way of life. Live poker rooms, also, have been damaged by the wreckage. While a room here and there have started to reopen I have yet to go regularly. The mask and plexiglass precautions are just not conducive to the sociality of the game. And that, my friends, is one key component that makes the games so fascinating. And the risk of catching Covid is still abundant, even if more muted in the last few weeks. Yes I am looking forward to going back to live poker but I am biding my time. I am patiently waiting for the Coronavirus storm to dissipate even move.

And so online poker has become my most current reality. The hurdles of online poker profitability are like skyscaping high bars that require spring loaded power boots to propel yourself over. Unlike before with my live poker challenges, I have the confidence, discipline, and necessary perseverance to prevail. But having poker available 24/7 at my fingertips has led me down a path of game play absorption. And it certainly doesn’t help when there is really no place to go socialize, nowhere to go, and no place to be. Especially when the media, and rightfully so, blasts a bullhorn in our ears about the increased safety obtained by just staying at home. So here we are from March to August, my sole poker existence relegated to staring at a screen. I have been so entrenched in the game that I only just recently found the fortitude to take necessary brief breaks to be more attentive to my family and other various interests. Ok, maybe I have more work to do on this front but I am crawling like a baby down the path that ultimately winds its way to a teenager driving a car. A certainly wordy and shitty metaphor but hopefully you get the idea.

The jewel in the crown of this whole online poker situation is that I have played infinitely more hands online these last few months than I would have playing live. The speed and multi tabling aspect of the online game just allows for exponentially more hands to be played. So my game has taken a massive leap in development. I won’t say that my new found online poker self would crush my previously live pokerself. But if I was a betting man, which of course you know that I am, I would certainly slap down a few hundos on my online poker self. Especially once online poker self gets back to the proverbial live poker streets. So I stand here today very eager to get back to the physical felt. My new, freshly polished, game theory eyes are going to fatten up my wallet like a torch filled hot air balloon.

I hope you will stick around for next post, ideally to occur before we ring in the new year. We could certainly use a new calendar after the shit stained year we have lived through thus far. Until then, Smile Big and Dream Bigger.

Advertisement

On The Brink of Failure

Tags

brink, dream, failure, losing, poker

It’s strange but I have been meaning to write this blog post for quite a few weeks now. Weeks turned into two months so it feels good tapping my thumb prints onto the smooth keyboard keys.

Let’s wind back the clock a few months to August 31st of this year. It was technically the first of September but the derailment had started late in the evening of the 31st. It was now the first of a new month after a fairly regular all night poker session. The worst session of my poker life to be exact. I had a really nasty start to my cash session and was much more than 1k deep into the game. After some nasty pot holes earlier in the session I had kicked the tires back onto the smooth roads of a beautifully scenic comeback. That’s when the car was set to crash into a gigantic oak that was two very overplayed monster hands. To make the long story short I basically gave away all the money I had gained back and then some. I was felted twice in two major hands and the table fur had swallowed me like a green hole of death. But in the end it was really my play, not the felt nor the cards, that was my unraveling. I should have played two hands much safer which was totally prudent considering both game theory and logical deductions from these villain player behaviors.

In the end I found myself at home, after the biggest losing session of my life, on the brink of failure which was my professional poker career. After coming home at 6am I couldn’t sleep and felt compelled, although mentally kicking and screaming like a tantrum infused child, to search for a disgusting corporate job to slam me back into the wall of reality.

When my wife awoke and asked what I was doing my tear ducts began to flow like a steady dripping spigot. I explained what I was doing and we had a short discussion. It was brief as she was preparing to get ready for work, as she always has for years on Sunday morning. The gist of the conversation was that I was coming to the realization I just might not have the patience and discipline to make consistently what I knew were strategically proper decisions day in and day out, hand after hand. Poker, if you let it, can be like a long standing stretch in the hole of solitary confinement. Only you and your thoughts agonizing about what went wrong and wondering how you can survive each forthcoming minute, hour, day, week, and month.

Forgive me for leaving a little cliff hanger here, like buttery hands digging into a steep cliff’s crevice, but the post has already become too lengthy. You will just have to stick around and anticipate my next post which will reveal much more about how I moved forward from this fulcrum of fear.

Until next time, Smile Big and Dream Bigger!

All In or All Out!

Tags

All In, dream, Dream Big, poker, poker pro, professional poker player

So maybe you are wondering where I have been. No I have not disappeared off the face of the earth like an incinerated alien. I have been working my ass off to be successful at my dream job.

When I first started officially living my dream of playing poker full time I foolishly believed I could work on other business endeavors to make money during my poker downswings. I found out the hard way that during a downswing it’s a must to double down on your efforts when things are not going your way. No we are not truly doubling down as we are talking poker not blackjack. If you want to be truly successful at any endeavor, especially one that has a certain percentage of luck, you need to be willing to work even harder to learn your craft and grow through study and practice. In other words, to move forward with your dream without backsliding down the muddy hill of adversity, you have to go All In! You have to be willing to commit every ounce of effort you have to the task at hand. You have to be willing to stick every chip you have into the center of the felt.

The task at hand for me, is my dream of supporting myself and my family through poker income. You can’t go half ass at something as difficult as the high variance career of a professional poker player. Heck, they should probably change the name to professional poker worker. Who are we kidding, this in’t playing this is working! Despite all that, this is the work I truly love. This profession is going to test you like a AP Calculus exam. You better be prepared or your plan is going to be demolished. Like the famous Mike Tyson said… “Everybody has a plan until they are punched in the face!”

My plan has taken some hair pin twist and turns but I have gone ALL IN on my efforts to becoming a successful poker pro. It’s no cruise control for me as that undoubtedly leads to failure. I have a death grip on the wheel and my palms are sweating but I’m not going to let the winding road get the best of me. I don’t want to backslide and have to go back to the corporate world with my tail between my legs. I want to be standing proud on the dream stage when they open the curtain. So it is time to end this post as I have much more poker study to do and many more hours to work on the felt. While I will try to post more often here I can’t make any guarantees. Do you want to be a success at that one thing you have been dreaming about doing? Then you have to make a choice… you can be ALL IN or ALL OUT! As for me, I think you know which one I choose. Until then, I will see you at the final dream table. Smile Big and Dream Bigger!!

I finally did it! I quit my job to pursue my dream!!

Tags

dream, dream bigger, freedom, living the dream, poker

April 2nd was my last day in corporate America. On my first day walking through the rarely traveled dream path, I posted the following on my Facebook page:

I’ve always been fond of the Latin phrase Carpe Diem. My affection for the phrase, however, for a very long time now felt mostly like this utopian idea to aspire to.
Yesterday, however, I put that idea into action. After working in Corporate America for over 20 years, I have decided to step away to pursue other endeavors I have been dreaming about for a very long time. I am extremely grateful that I was able to work for such an amazing company over the last 20 years. I learned a lot while working there and it shaped who I am today. While I will miss regularly seeing many of the friends I have made over the years in corporate America I am very excited about the opportunity before me to try working my dream job.

Some may question my choice, but I am lucky to have the love and support of my closest friends and family. My wife’s faith in me and my ideas for a future career of self-employment have been instrumental in me building up the necessary courage to move forward. Outside of her love for me and the children she gave birth to for us, it is the greatest gift I could have ever asked for. Sure, I have some fears about taking this leap of faith, but these fears are much less than the fear of future regret. Without me moving forward with this decision, my elderly self may have looked back on my life with disappointment for not taking this opportunity to try to succeed at this specific dream of mine.
For those of you who may be worried for me and my family… Don’t Be! I have been planning for yesterday’s developments for many years now and I have taken all the necessary steps to provide financial stability for me and my family as I pursue my dream.

I believe it was Wayne Gretzky who said… “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Well the time has come for me to take my shot. I feel I have developed the skills and done the necessary planning to score many goals moving forward.

My last boss was a huge fan of Steve Jobs’ quotes, so I will leave you with this… “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Carpe Diem!!

Going forward, my blog posts on this page will detail the journey of staying on the dream path, hopefully without having to u-turn back to Corporate America. I hope to post more as I share my future success in the poker world. When people ask me how I am doing, and I say… “living the dream,” I can now say it with confidence that I truly mean it. Untill the next post, Smile big and dream bigger. I know I am!!

One Baby Step Closer to Living My Dream

Tags

daily tournaments, dream, Main Event, poker, poker tournament, professional poker player, Rio, The Hendon Mob, The One Drop, World Series of Poker

In case you forgot, one of my main dreams is to become a professional poker player. Last weekend I traveled to Las Vegas during the World Series of Poker. Most individuals that don’t really know much about poker don’t realize, depending on the year, there can be up to 60 bracelet events. When the layman thinks of the World Series of Poker, the only event that usually comes to mind is the $10,000 Main Event. This year, there are actually 65 bracelet events. For almost all amateur poker players, winning a bracelet event is a lifelong dream. I went to Vegas hoping to fulfill this same dream although I knew it was quite a long shot.

My plan for this trip was to win my way into Event #8, which is also known as the “Millionaire Maker Event.” As you can guess, it is titled this because the winner is guaranteed $1 Million. This is one of only three events that the winner will become a millionaire if they are not already. The other two are the “One Drop” which costs a Million Dollars just to enter and the Main Event. You must be thinking, who has a Million Dollars just to enter an event. The top 25 professional poker players in the world, that’s who. The buy in to Event #8 is $1,500. I could have just bought into it as anybody can, but I have not been playing as regularly as I should for somebody who wants to win a World Series of Poker bracelet. Because of this, winning my way in was the plan. Yes, as much as I hate to say it, life sometimes gets in the way of chasing our dreams. For me, this should only be temporary.

I flew into Vegas after work on Thursday night and by Friday evening the cash games were not treating me well. I was actually playing okay, but just wasn’t getting the cards and it is hard to bluff unwise amateurs in a low level cash game. So by about 9pm Friday night I only had a few hundred dollars in my bankroll and was worried I wouldn’t have enough funds to finish play a lot more hours without visiting the one machine in Vegas which always pays out… The ATM machine.

The Rio has daily deep stack tournaments and at about 9:30pm I decided to enter the 10pm tournament and figured at least I would get a few good hours of play without having to lose more than $135, since that was the entry fee. By 9:50pm I had my entry in hand and was getting prepared for the trite call to “shuffle up and deal.” So there are was, grinding it out and continuing my streak of almost no cards but picking up about 1 big hand every 1.5 hours. Pocket Aces, win a nice pot. Ace King, win a nice pot. Pocket Queens, win a nice pot. Almost 5 hours into the tournament I had a larger than average chip stack and all the players left (about 30) were getting closer to cashing in the event. The event had 204 entries and the top 21 got paid. I wont get into all the gory details but at about 5am, we were still playing and I was at the final table. There were no TV cameras, the poker room of over 200 tables was almost empty due to the late hour, and most of the people in the room were only the staff and a few cash game players. Despite that, to me this was important. I was already guaranteed to make money since the person out in 10th place would get $387 but I was shooting for the $5,306 first prize. This would guarantee my ability to enter the Millionaire Maker event. Like I was running all tournament, I was card dead except for 1 hand an hour. Despite being short stacked, I was able to outlast a few of the big stacks at the final table. Believe it or not, I can’t even remember how I was knocked out of the tournament. Maybe it had to do with the late hour or the multiple games I had played after the tournament since I was in Vegas until Monday afternoon. I was, however, proud to ultimately go out in 5th place and win $1,298.

This wasn’t really the big time but I did outlast 200 players. Nobody would know but me, my friends, and my family. The rest of the trip, the games went pretty similar but I did go deep in two other daily events I played. 37th out of 220 at the daily Aria tourney and 328 out of 1560 at the 3pm Rio Daily. So I cashed in 1 of 3 tournaments I entered and for the first time in awhile felt really good about my ability to play solid tournament poker.

Tuesday morning, I arrive at work feeling good about my game but realizing nobody else really knew that I cashed. With the exception, of course, of my friends and family. That is until a friend of mine at work, who also plays a lot of poker and knew about my cash, sent me a hyperlink starting with the important http://www.wsop. That’s right, they track and report who cashes in each of the three daily tournaments. And there I was, my 5th place finish listed on a PDF from the WSOP Site that shows the daily winners for May 30th. I felt like Navin R. Johnson from the movie “The Jerk” when he finds out his name is listed for the first time in the phone book. In the wide poker world, I was somebody. To everybody else in means nothing, but to me it definitely means something. It is the first of many upcoming cashes in my poker career. Its the first baby step to living my dream. The cherry on top was when “The Hendon Mob” site also reported out my tournament cash. The Hendon Mob is a group of professional poker players that decided a long time ago to create a poker database of all poker players that have cashed in reportable events. They also keep a running total of each poker players life long earnings. Here I was for the first time, listed on their site with my winning totals. In addition, their database will be tracking me for years to come. Assuming this isn’t my only cash… which it won’t be. I won’t let it be. I won’t stop until playing poker is my main job and I am smiling at the final table with a World Series of Poker bracelet in hand.

Until you see me on ESPN… Smile Big and Dream Bigger!

Watching Somebody Else Live My Dream

Tags

dream, las vegas, november 9, poker, world series of poker main event

Do you ever wonder what it may feel like to watch somebody else live your dream? For many, that may never happen. It’s mostly due to a lack of other people’s dreams being televised. From being a writer to making a million dollars to becoming a successful business man, many people have done it yet most of it will not be televised.

Starting tonight, I will be watching 9 and only 9 different people live my dream. To make it even more difficult, only 9 people once a year live my dream. That dream is to play in the World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table. Don’t feel bad for me though because some people’s dream is to win a Gold Medal in the Olympics which only happens once every four years. Or some people dream of becoming President of the United States which only happens once every four years. Only one sole person every four years will get to fulfill this dream.

So this evening and the evening after, my eyes will be super glued to the TV. Not only is the event televised live but there is a set point where they need to get to each evening. Tonight they need to whittle down the field from 9 players to 3 players. Tomorrow they need to reduce the field from 3 players to One Sole World Series of Poker champion. With caffeine in hand, I could be watching for a few hours each night or for the entire night until dawn. There is not a deadline but only a player count they need to get down to. The previous 7 days’ worth of coverage took place in July and only showed a select number of hands. In addition, each selected hand was shown much later than the hand actually occurred. The next two nights, however, they will show every hand when it actually happens. The only difference in live coverage of this versus the live coverage of a sporting event is a short 15 minute delay. The delay ensures that somebody watching can’t relay valuable hand information to somebody playing. This live format may seem like no big deal, but it is the only time on television that live poker is shown.

The next two evenings will be very exciting for me. It’s my mixed up version of a Professional Football hopeful watching the Super Bowl. It will help me visualize the experience in my head like a broken records’ version of a movie. And when it’s all said in done, I will feel the tactile hallucination of that heavy gold bracelet on MY wrist. I look forward to a future blog when I achieve it and can write about what it means to me.

Until that time, smile big and dream bigger.

Failure the Litmus Test

Tags

Abraham Lincoln, attempt, Bill Gates, determined, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., dream, dream bigger, failure, litmus test, poker, smile big, success, The Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison

There’s an old saying that goes… “What would you attempt if you knew you would not fail?” Initially, I liked that saying until I really started thinking about it. You would attempt everything you wanted to achieve and more. You would be like Bill Gates in a dollar store trying to decide which items to buy. In fact you may even under value your achievements because they were so easy to accomplish. Okay, it’s just a saying and maybe I am over-thinking it.

But then I got to thinking even deeper. How would I rearrange this saying if it was mine? Well I would change it to the following:

“What would you attempt even if you knew you would fail?”

Your initial thought to this was probably like mine… “Why would I attempt something if I knew I would fail?” Because the things that you truly value the most, you would attempt even if you knew there was a large chance of failure. You would go to the ends of the earth to chase down what you truly dream of achieving. Some of the most successful people in our history attempted things that they knew they were likely to fail at. Examples include the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The most difficult and awe inspiring dreams wouldn’t be true dreams without a large barrier to success. That doesn’t mean, however, that you give up on them. You keep trying and trying until you ultimately succeed. Like a turtle trying to climb Mount Everest in a snowstorm. In fact, you can even use this re-arranged saying as a litmus test. Would you chase down your dream if you knew you would mostly likely fail, and would need to make a multitude of attempts, over multiple years?

Let me share with you a personal example. When I was younger, about eight if I remember correctly, my dad taught me how to play poker. At the time it was just a game I enjoyed that brought us to the table as a family to have fun and interact with one another. As I grew older throughout high school and college I would play regularly scheduled games with my friends. I remember one of my best friends and me coming home after a game. We would lay out all the coins on the floor with a few one and five dollar bills covering the coins like a warm blanket. We were amazed that we could amass, sometimes as much as $75 from just a few close friends of ours. I didn’t think anything of it at the time as it was just a game that allowed me to have fun with some friends and make a little cash as a consolation prize. I continued this endeavor into college with different friends. The games were tougher, the money was larger, but it was still enjoyable and I still managed to regularly make money.

After college, I pretty much forgot about poker. Sure I knew how to play it and even played it well from a home gamer’s perspective. But it wasn’t until 2003 that I really started to gain a deep love and understanding of the game. See I was on a business trip in Las Vegas and the relationship manger of the vendor product we utilized was a poker player. He wasn’t playing the home style poker I had experienced throughout my childhood. Instead, he was playing the casino style poker with real clay chips and even a professional dealer. This wasn’t the old school cowboy style of poker in which the dealer calls their own game. This was an extremely structured poker like a professional organizers closet. There were clear betting amounts, blinds, and other unknown players. He encouraged me to try and play in one of those casino poker games with him. It was like I was an adult learning how to ride a motorcycle after much earlier years of only riding a bicycle. The games were fast, the strategy more intense, and the thinking much deeper. To truly understand the edges, you had to dig deep through every puzzle box. You had to try and guess what your opponent was thinking you were thinking so you could play the opposite. Coincidentally this was the same year that an amateur and unknown player Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker to start the explosion of the poker craze.

From that moment forward, I was completely hooked. I become so enamored with the game of poker that it became my lifelong dream to make my sole income from this game. I loved that every table seemed like the Harvard of recreation. I loved that you could see the soul of a man when he took a bad beat. And finally, I truly loved both the social aspect as well as the competition.

To this day, after years of moderate success and more frequent failures, I have not given up on the pursuit of this dream. I continue to attempt to fulfill a dream that I have failed at countless times in the past. So keep watching those poker events on ESPN. Just one day you could see me front and center of the poker world stage.

With that example hanging out there, I will close with this… don’t attempt those things that you would attempt if you could not fail… attempt those things that you would attempt in spite of failure. If you do that, when you ultimately succeed, you will be smiling big and you will have dreamed bigger.