I recently reconnected with my previous backer and old friend from Vancouver, and we are going to give it another run. I've fully recovered any confidence lost during the last beating I suffered. It was truly the worst downswing of my career, and I never saw it coming. Why?

After having great months from February to May, I lulled myself to sleep. I was in overdrive, playing 5 hours a week, having friends over every night, lavish dinners, picking up bar tabs, and feeling like a true boss. I earned admiration from degenerates and professionals alike, and at the end of May I contemplated moving to Spain for 6 months by the beginning of August.

I don't think I could have been any more careless or irresponsible. I wasn't putting in volume, wasn't studying, but carried by the illusion that money would just continue to pour in electronically to my Bank of America checking account, I didn't worry. I'm sure many of us have been there.

And then I started to run bad, which has happened several times in my 1.5 year professional career, some times worse than others, but I always eventually played through it. This time it was accompanied by playing bad since the doom switch caught me completely off guard. If you look at my HEM over the past 3 months you'll see that I'm running 30 BI below EV at 2/4 and 3/6, but I consider it irrelevant because I know I was C gaming as a result of me not mentally preparing myself for the next downswing.

Yet I continued to spend money as if I was still earning 10k+ a month until I bled myself nearly dry. Until I sit typing here with only $650 to my name. But I am strangely optimistic. I suppose the romantic in me has always been attracted to epic underdog, from the ground up, stories. I have always been the nemesis to inherited wealth, handouts, and free prizes, so I don't mind working hard from scratch as long as I did it.

I changed my major twice in college. In the beginning it was piano performance, but when I realized I didn't have the determination to compete in such an unforgiving industry, I changed over to journalism because I love to write. However, as I submerged deeper into it, the faces of parasitic reporters and bleeding heart liberals gave me nightmares at night. I didn't want to be that guy that swam in a sea of reporters outside a courthouse like a school of carp hopelessly fighting amongst themselves for a single bread crumb that a little child casually tossed down from a bridge. I pictured guys behind closed doors, who discussed the real issues after throwing a few bread crumbs to the reporters outside.

I wanted to be the guy behind closed doors. I wanted to be the guy with power and influence, not a fish fighting for bread.

And so I'm here now with a political science degree and not doing much with it yet except playing professional poker. But now I find myself at the other end of a downswing, almost busto, wondering how I could perform so listlessly after a few good months. Playing the C game, spewing money in real life, and losing focus on the important things in general - this is the price of carelessness, and I am paying it now.

Yet, I am still optimistic. Why? Because I was told by a professor I am the most magnanimous young man he has ever met. Because another told me in class through some silly Chinese numbers game that I am a sleeping dragon that will one day wake and do powerful and awesome things. How can this not be fate? How can this not be my destiny?

The truth is I'm optimistic because I have no other choice. I don't believe in fate or destiny for any individual, and although I believe in God, I have hesitations if he really cares whether or not I become a janitor on the west side or a CEO. I think such beliefs are silly, unfounded, and childishly egocentric. But rather, to be optimistic for the sake of being optimistic, well that is one service everyone can do for themselves.

I am a middle stakes online grinder who plays 100NL at the moment lackadaisically. I'll be back though, and I hope the start of this blog will help me out with that.