Intro

well this is kinda sad but.................. i finally broke down and started a poker blog. i don't assume that many people will be interested in it or will even know about but here it is nonetheless.

i've started it for a couple reasons:

1) i spend a lot of time reading poker blogs and find reading about others ups and downs to be quite helpful and inspirational.

2) i want to be able to track my progess and record goals. i have a hard time even remembering what limits or games i was playing a year ago.

thats basically it, if someone does stumble across it i hope they find it entertaining. i won't write about life or shit like that. this is not a diary, it's a record of my poker journey. i will update it after every session w/ results and thoughts.


here's my story.



like most, my first taste of poker was dicking around with friends while drinking. we'd get together and play 5-card triple draw dealers choice w/ all kinds of stupid wild cards and what not. we were so clueless that i remember getting into situations where if one guy had the other guy covered in chips (usually pennies) then the shorter stack had to fold. pretty smart.

i thought at the time that 5-card draw was poker. poker to me had no variants so i laughed when i got hoyle casino for my computer and saw texas holdem and omaha holdem poker. i thought it was a couple of games they invented to go along with slots and roulette games.

fast forward a couple years and i see this dude on letterman one night named moneymaker and letterman is talking to him about how he turned a couple of bucks into winning the world series. i thought it was pretty cool but went on clueless for another year or so.

im not sure of the definitive time but i remember the first time i got hooked was watching the 04 main event. i think i saw every episode and was like woa, they play that game form hoyle casino. i remember just being totally addicted to watching it.

i start talking to one of my buddies one day and he tells me that his brothers and a few of there friends play on weekends. i showed up, played every hand, got killed and got a friendly invite back when they couldn't believe how much fun i had donking my money off.

2 weeks later, we decide to head out to a local casino and play some holdem. most of us didn't know the difference between limit and no-limit, 2/5 and 5/10. we waited for over 4 hours to get a seat at a 2/5 limit table. at 3am we sat down and by 3:45am i busted for my $100 buy-in. i felt like shit, my friends played a little while longer until we left around 5am. the whole way home i was embarassed. i sucked bad!!!!!!!!!! i told myself i would never be the donk at the table again.

the next day i went to chapters, picked up a book and started studying. a month later i discovered party poker and deposited a $100 and took a run at 2/4 limit holdem. i was so frustrated that i was breaking even after 2 days that i tilted it off.

i did this 1 more time before taking 3 months off and buying more books and studying a lot harder. i decided i would take a more serious shot and practice some bankroll management (i originally thought that playing 2/4 limit w/ a $100 roll was plenty)

i deposited $150 into paradise poker ( i had since determined party poker was rigged) and started grinding .25/.50 cent limit. i worked my way up eventually going back to party (because the games were so soft) and was playing 3/6 w/ about a $2200 roll. this was over the course of Feb 05 till about Sep 05.

i then took out the entire $2200 and decided to pay off some debt and start totally fresh. i took about a 2 months away from online and only played live (mostly 2/5 limit)

in Nov 05, i made a $500 deposit back into party and started grinding limit holdem games again. i worked it back up again over the next few months but kind of plateaued. i was getting sick of grinding limit games. i dabbled with sngs and mtts but found them extremely frustrating.

from the summer of 06 to roughly Oct 06 i had struggled a bit and did not play any one game or limit. id go from mtts one week to limit holdem to experimenting w/ nl holdem to trying to donk around pot limit omaha games. my bankroll hovered anywhere from between 1k to 2k hitting a high point of 3.2k before i blew 1k trying to 12 table 3/6 limit on party.

in Sep/Oct i decided to give mtts and sngs a good run. i had been a member of www.pokerxfactor.com for a couple of months but had not really taken advantage of what they were offering. i started grinding away and built up a bit. Then in late Oct 06 i finally won my 1st mtt. i dominated the final table and it was an amazing feeling.

the win shipped me 2.3k and my roll was now at 3.8k. i had just bought a house w/ my girlfriend and we decided it was best to withdrawal most of the win for some house stuff. it kinda sucked because my bankroll was now back down to around 1k. i played more sngs and started killing the 45 and 90 person sngs on ftp. i had the occasional decent cash in mtts but nothing major. i slowly built my roll up to around 3.5k. it was pretty nice run. i was playing the $24 guarantee mtt's, $22 turbo sngs and the $20 45 and 90 person sngs. at this point i had been exclusively playing on ftp.

in Jan 07 i made a goal of winning 2 mtt's by June. i won the 1st (5k guarantee, $24 buy-in) on ftp for 1.8k. i then won the 7pm 18k guarantee 4 days later for 5.5k. it was pretty sick week for me and my roll was now over 10k.

i took a little out and kept playing. i was now playing the $24 and $69 guarantee mtts and $55 turbo sngs. i remember in one weekend taking 4th in a mtt for 1.4k and losing about 1.2k in turbo sngs. i was kinda sick. that was the first time i had lost that much money and it made me quite ill.

i took a step back and played a little lower in sngs but kept grinding the same level mtt's while occasionally taking a shot a few higher buy-ins. by Mar 07 my roll had slid down to around 7k when i shipped a few bucks over to party to play in some mtts there. after a couple days i hit another nice payday winning the 7pm $100 buy-in for 5.6k.

i had gotten my roll over 12k. i decided to haul most of my winnings off party (since i left there site due to fishy reasons of freezing accounts) and left about 1k. i put 1k on stars and took the rest out and blew it on fun stuff like a new computer and dual lcd's, dart board, ping pong table and a nice road bike.

i took a shot at playing $100 buy-in mtts on stars and party. i had a couple final tables but eventually busted on both sites w/ only 10 buy-ins on each. this left me back at ftp. i ran very cold in mtts through May and also started playing nl 6 max cash to subsidize my roll. sngs were getting to be a little frustrating and i truly believe that to be a great poker player you need to know how to play post flop deep stack poker. sngs offer none of this and while i enjoy them, they aren't going to be a part of my bankroll building strategy.

my roll is back down to about 5k but im ready to run it up. no more withdrawals unless its for something poker related (live buy-ins and what not)

im sorry for the long winded post. i tend to ramble.

tg