My Story as a Poker Player

Poker ages 6-18

I grew up playing 7 card stud with my family for nickels and quarters during vacations and weekend getaways at my lake house.  I was always very aggressive and even though I was 8 years old, I found a way to make a few bucks.

Poker around 1999-2002 (Rounders)

I had seen the movie Rounders and all I wanted to do was to play Texas Holdem and check raise my friends with strong hands.  We played home games once a month never for more than $20.

Poker 2003 (Chris Money Maker and Ultimate Bet)

Late 2003  I say Chris Moneymaker win the World Series of Poker on TV and when I realized that you could play online tournaments and potentially earn a living at it… well, wow, I was hooked.  I found Ultimate Bet and deposited $50!  Looking back now, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, however, I turned the $50 into $2,000 in about 2 weeks.  I was the BEST POKER PLAYER in the world.  I quit my job and decided to do poker full time.  Total Luck Box!

Poker 2004 (Moved to Vegas)

Packed 2 suitcases and drove to Las Vegas on Jan 11th, 2004, my birthday, my gift of a new challenge and adventure.  No limit didn’t exist in Vegas in early 2004, so I stuck to play some 4/8 limit and grinded it out for a while.  This wasn’t pretty.  I barely made enough to eat, instead of nightly hotels, I ended up sleeping in my car to save my bankroll.  After a couple of months of this I ended up getting an opportunity to play baseball in Belgium, Europe.

I took the all expense trip with an extra 400 euro a month.  I spent 7  months playing baseball and learning as much about poker as I could, occasionally making the trip up to Amsterdam to play in Holland Casino’s 10/20 euro limit game.  The summer came to an end, I had earned a few thousand euro playing live poker and it was back to Vegas to attempt to do it again.

I arrived back in Vegas to find no limit was EVERYWHERE.  I was reborn and actually crushed the 1/2 $100 buyin live games at the Excalibur enough to rent a room and start saving money.

Poker 2005-2006 (Rent a big 4 bedroom House)

After a few months of live poker, I made the transition to online poker and in January of 2005 I somehow donked my way into crushing Party Poker for almost $10,000 in which I used to lease a big 4 bedroom house , furnish it, and rent some of the rooms to other poker players.  I made a lot through rakeback and the next two years I continued to play cash games with most of my action on the Prima Network.  Until the worst thing in the world happened.  September, 30th 2006,  most of the sites were BANNED by the US and I couldn’t play on my main sites anymore.

Poker 2007-2008 (Pokerstars and a New Country)

I started playing on Poker Stars and found new baseball teams to pay for my expenses over the course of a few years.  Spent 2007 in Sweden, the Winter playing in South Africa, then 2008 in Amsterdam (got released) then Sweden.   I mass tables 24 cash games and while I only beat the games for about $10 an hour over those 2 years, I made a killing from Super Nova bonuses and FPP’s.  While 2007 was an extremely profitable year, 2008 had a great start, but games started to get tougher near the end of 2008.  Graph below tracks cash game stats since late 2008.

Tracked from late 2008

Poker 2009-2010 (9 Bedroom Vegas Grind House)

After gaining trust back in the US and missing the States, I returned to Vegas in December 2008 and found the perfect new house to move into.  It was a 6,300 sqft beast of a house with 9 bedrooms only 5 miles east of the strip.  I signed a 2 year lease, furnished it, and rented out all of the rooms to poker players from around the world.  With the house full, I was able to live rent free and slowly started playing less and less poker as my expenses were at a min.    Online poker became a thing of the past and a few times a month I’d play live cash games which were more fun and could walk away with the occasional $2,000 score.  The coolest part about the house was getting to meet and live with a crowd of really good poker players, most notable Joe Cada who stayed at our house and won the 2009 World Series of Poker.

Poker 2011 ( Online grinding got tough!)

Left Vegas for reasons describe in another post,  (link here)  and decided to travel the world and just play online poker.  What I found out… wow, online poker has gotten a lot tougher.  Currently playing tournaments between 18 mans, 180 mans and MTTs at low stakes trying to grind enough to keep living the way I would like.

Here is my sharkscope graph from 2010 (mostly game from the end of the year) and 2011.

2010 Poker Graph

Through August 2011.

2011 Poker Results

Obviously this isn’t much money and its been kind of a struggle the last couple of years having to budget everything when you were  used to making this money in just one month playing.   Its the life of a gambler and I’m just hoping for that big tournament score to help spice everything up.