I'm going to do this in multiple parts. It's definitely too long; do not read, so skim if you want or read if you want, it's mostly for myself, but you might learn something too. I'm likely quitting poker again sometime in the near-future, maybe for good, so it's nice to get the raw impressions of this ride down while they are still fresh.


My Poker Story One: High School Degeneracy

I played my first hand of poker in the fall of my sophmore year of high school, so 2003. Before that I never really knew poker existed, or how it was played, but my whole life I had grown up with cards. My parents met in Boston at a bridge club. I never actually learned how to play bridge for whatever reason, mostly the fact it's complicated and I'm an only child- no partners! However, all my early memories are filled with an endless stream of card games- barbu, hearts, go fish, spades, cribbage, bull****, *******, war, and of course the ever popular Egyptian Rat-Screw. Poker was sort of a sideshow, I had heard of it vaguely but besides the cliches of seedy backrooms and the accompanying mental picture of the dogs around a table slipping the ace of spades I had no clue other than the fact I knew there was betting involved.

So my friend Cy invited me over to his house for a poker tournament. At this point I had never heard the word Moneymaker either, but this lazy country afternoon and 5$ poker tourney action was a direct result of his win. Thanks, Chris. Considering myself somewhat of a card-shark from my upbringing I jumped right in. Said Cy, "So you get two cards, then there's a flop, turn and a river......". I was instantly hooked. At this point it wasn't the intellectual challenge of getting good at poker which was interesting, a lightbulb just went off realizing that it was possible to get good. That here was a strategy game where through practice and degeneracy I was going to effectively pick-pocket my friends. Free blunts here I come! I had 10$ in my wallet that first day. I don't remember any actual hands, only the fact that after making it to the final table (there were three to start with I think) I lost on what at the time I considered a preposterous, soul-crushing beat. Rick spiked a flush, then donked the river I paid off with top pair no kicker. And I knew I was beat, too. In my first taste of tilt I bleerily donked off my last 5$ in a hu freezeout against another of my busto friends. And home I went.

That sophmore year was more of the same. I'd occasionally have some extra cash and go play a poker tournament Cy would know about. Each time I'd mysteriously lose, and I quickly grew discouraged. I had no access to books or 2p2 at this point, and with basketball, school and friends everywhere I didn't go looking too hard. Thinking back I told my friends I was "breaking about even," so I guess I don't remember how much I lost. Then my junior year I went to live with a host family in Sevilla Spain for a year and forgot about poker for a few months before discovering pokerroom.com's Java program for play money one lazy sunday afternoon. This was mostly because I was forced to leave my Diablo 2 obsession back in the states, but poker was a game I could recognize and I figured I'd get my fix that way. Loaded with 1000 play money chips I sat in a 5/10 game and busted. Reload. Bust. Reload. Two weeks later I had run my 1k up to 10k. Bust. Reload. Up. Down. Finally I learned to nit it up and ran my 1k up to 275k, eventually playing the highest games on the site, 1500/3000 limit. Then I got bored, I figured as a play money God it was time to take my game to the mean streets of real money. But my internet was spotty at best in Spain so I had to wait.

My senior year in the USA poker was a full-fledged fad at my highschool. Between classes my friends Cy, Jeff and Bobby would be having NLH flips in the hallways, which somehow got the name F my T's or longhand "**** my Titties". To suckout was to F a T, but I didn't flip, as I knew it was a neutral sum game (I hadn't gotten degen yet I guess) and there was always the possibility of the deck being rigged (Bobs had quick hands). Kids were running up astronomical 2 and 3 hundred dollar flipping debts, grinding out minimum wage jobs to keep pace with their budding gambling addictions. I frequented the almost daily homegames now going on all across town, sometimes winning 20 bucks, but usually 10 or so. I took my first 50 dollars in profit and gave it to Cy who sent me a 50 dollar transfer on Party Poker.

My love affair with Party was brief and tumultuous. For those of you who didn't play then, it was just radically different. Literally no one knew what they were doing, it was madness. I was able to stay afloat with almost zero poker experience based on zeroth level thinking alone. This initial poker epiphany came when I was playing 100nl (my conception of bankroll management at the time was to play 100nl with my 50 dollar roll, thanks Cy). I had called a raise to 3 preflop with A3. Flop came A99r. I check called the pre flop raiser who made 3 bets and put me all in on the river. I think this was actually the first day I'd played online and so necessarily adrenaline was coursing throughout my body. My exact thoughts were "I can't beat anything, he has ak" and so I timed down and clicked the call button, exactly as I was about to do countless more times for progressively larger amounts of money. He flipped a bluff, I shipped the HUGE pot, and my poker instincts since have been indelibly stamped with a hatred of folding.

During the next few weeks my fortunes on Party shot up and down. I calmed down slightly and dropped down to mostly 25nl, where I continued to flop top pair and check/ call down regardless of the action. This yielded a steady profit which I decided I needed to cash out immediately in order to buy liquor and blunts. So one afternoon I sat down at the dining room table and asked my mom if she would perhaps be willing to set up a Neteller account using her Visa and fix my cashout troubles. I conveniently did not hint about quitting my job; as she loved my job. Brief aside: pre-poker, I was a roofer in the summers, and worked at Market Basket supermarkets during the year. In all of these I was an awful employee. On the surface I just looked slightly angry which caused my bosses slight annoyance but never got me fired cause I was one of about a zillion angsty teenagers at the supermarket. However, I'd always been kind of a gourmet, so during my breaks I'd relentlessly steal pesto, sundried tomatoes and other pricy food items and bring them home for dinner to supplement my paycheck.

So somehow she agreed, at 17 I had Neteller and from that point forward I began to grind in earnest. I kept cashing out 50 bucks or so at a time and continued teetering on the edge of being busto for the next 5 months. At this point I was still a losing player or probably close to breakeven (I don't know for sure as I have no records and don't know how many hands I played), but I managed to stay afloat by discovering bonus whoring. Usually single tabling I would cash into the sites one by one and play my required 500 hands or something to get a 100$ bonus. Bout half the time I'd bust before the bonus, but that was fine. I think some of the sites actually gave you 50 bucks for signing up at that time, so I did that too. Around three months into this journey I had cashed out maybe 200 bucks and had 100 left online. I was running out of the premium bonuses, but I stumbled on a site- I think Titan? that had a 100$ bonus for playing I believe 200 hands, but with the added danger that the lowest offered limit was 200nl. After my brief initial flirtation with 100$ nl I had slunk back to .10/.25, but I decided this bonus was too good to miss. So I sat half-stacked at a full ring table determined to fold 200 hands in a row barring AA, KK, QQ, AKs maaaaybe. I had a vague understanding this would be extremely +ev, though during this period of high school I was smoking so much I could barely tie my shoes. I got through 100 hands. Then 150. All folds. Then just shy of 200 I managed to get it in and lose my stack, I forget the gritty details. Devastated, I vowed to quit poker forever, but then I saw that through my 100 hands I had somehow qualified for a VIP club offer for a 20,000 dollar freeroll starting on the third of next month, which happed to be in a few days. It was my last chance.

4300 people started the tourney, half of them shoving in blind every few hands and monkeying around, but I would have none of it. Patiently waiting for AK, AQ, TT+ I started folding. But I didn't have to fold very long because for the course of the tournament I got a premium about every 15 hands. I was also jittering from concentration and adrenaline, playing completely on timing tells which I picked up because I was staring at the screen unblinkingly. It's f4cked up I remember every big hand from this tournament which was 3.5 years ago but whatever. The first turning point came with around 1000 left, I was maybe top 60 in chips and the chip leader was at my table. He opened UTG, I flatted with 22 in MP and we saw the flop hu. A82r. He bet I called. Turn 2. He bet I shipped he snapped AA. And so I took the chiplead. I built up my stack picking up timing tells and making steals with literally ATC, 32o type sh1t, but then I started folding to 3bets and got whittled down to the pack. Then I got moved to another table where a super-aggro (read:good) player was to my left 3betting me constantly. I continued opening, he'd 3bet, I'd psych myself up to bluff-jam, then fold. Finally I resolved not to open again till I had the nuts, cause he was sure to pay me off. I got AK in the CO, opened, he 3bet as planned, I 4bet, he snap-folded. It's hard for me to even describe the intense hatred I felt for this a$$hole at this point. My entire financial future was attatched to winning these blinds and antes which had been keeping me afloat, and this f1cker was the only thing separating them from my stack. Even worse, I could tell that he knew this, and that stealing my precious opens from me was causing him immense pleasure. I basically picture him looking back as Stealthmunk, sitting in a giant recliner built on my suffering. As if to add to my inadequacy, he continued to 3bet me 100% of the time, as if he knew I could not summon up to balls to ship in my tournament life on a bluff though I would literally tank and curse at the screen every time, repeating his name under my breath like some kind of evil mantra. When he didn't even have the courtesy to pay off my AK 4bet, after all my emotional turmoil, I was sure my tournament life and perhaps real life, was over.

Luckily someone coolered him for stacks and I picked up AA to double up and make the final table with an average stack. This then was my longest poker session by faaaar, 12 hours to the final table, and I was mentally drained, sitting at my chair making toddler-noises. With seven left I managed to get it in as a dog, I think AJo to KK and bricked, leaving myself just a few BB. Before my next blind I picked up JJ and KK, doubling twice, then busted another guy 3-handed and went to hu with a 4 to 1 chiplead. First was 6k, 2nd 4100. The amount of money at stake was completely surreal and I was a complete mess by this point, I think the other guy was too. We managed to monkey stacks in every couple of hands when anyone flopped anything and I came out the worst of it. I did not give a sh1t, I won $4100, an astronomical sum, and quit my job immediately, leaving 2000 online to grind with.

The next month or so is kind of a blur, I played maybe three times a week, usually 50 and 100nl. I'd run my roll up a bit, take a shot at 200nl, get brutally, depressingly outplayed and jump back down. This cycle continued without me getting particularly better at poker, though to my friends I was now the second or third best player in our town, and a legendary luckbox for my freeroll win. Then one night I remember losing on a series of nondescript beats, one after another, and I stayed up chasing my losses. Looking back I'm sure I played worse than my already poor standard, and during the course of the night I dropped I think 600$, maybe 900$. I sat down for breakfast with my mom in the morning and vowed never to play poker again, and cashed out my bankroll the next day. I didn't play again all summer and fall, even going so far as to get a sh1tty job painting, where I surpassed my lofty standards of mediocrity by actually drinking on the job, as opposed to immediately before and after it.


(I'm going to end this entry here, just clicked "preview" and it was looking ridiculously long)