Hey Leggo and other noble blog readers,

So some time has elapsed and things have seriously started to sink in. Of course, we don't know what the near future holds for us. However, I do know what is going on NOW and that is what I will talk about in this entry.

Rewind almost 2 years. I was an up-and-coming player taking my first shots at mid-stakes NLHE. A lot of people get to this level, but I was determined I'd not be another that remains there in mediocrity. I grinded MSNL throughout the summer after graduating from high school, and had great success. I had also decided just a few days earlier I'd be attending college at Washington University in St. Louis. I had a lot of ambition and a lot to be proud of.

Enter college. My regular game is 5/10, and I've been playing this game for about 9 months. I started at The Deuce. One cent two cent NLHE, the very base of online poker; a level that is cringe-worthy even to a casual donk. By the end of my first year of college, I was regularly playing in 10/20 and 25/50 games, and still playing a sizable amount of 5/10. I had a very good year in poker; I had started 17 months earlier in the lowliest of games, and came out as being a mid-high stakes regular. It didn't come without sacrifice. I put a lot of time into getting good at poker, and it showed in my schoolwork. I had never gotten a B in my life, but I was okay with it all of a sudden. I had poker; that shit didn't matter because top-notch entry level jobs pay less than I made in my first year playing poker having started at The Deuce. I also got mononucleosis in my 2nd semester, which is like the ultimate "Fuck you" from God for a college student/poker player. It is unbelievably hard to get anything done when you feel completely languid 24 hours a day for 6 weeks of a 14 weeks semester. My results suffered in poker and school, but I came up on the other side breathing.

I relaxed a lot in the summer, and didn't get the kind of volume I wanted. I also failed on other goals. Basically, I wasted a ton of time basically doing nothing. I had wanted to be productive. That didn't mean grinding till my eyes bled, but I did want to make money and improve, I did want to have a good time with my friends from home, and I did want to do other things to find meaning and improve my life as a whole. It wasn't a complete failure but I look back on it as a huge opportunity wasted. I don't get that kind of free time, and I just let it pass me by. I felt like I was just settling in, and all of a sudden I was packing for school.

First semester of sophomore year was the year it all changed. This was by far my best semester in poker, and was also my best academically. Sounds like a success, right? I wouldn't describe it that way. I had a falling out with someone important to me, made up, only to eventually have a worse falling out. I suppressed my thoughts about this, and used poker as a distraction. Life didn't go the way I wanted, but in poker I [largely] controlled my own destiny. Don't get me wrong, I've run a shit-fuck-ton under EV, but I've also done extremely well in spite of that. If you work hard and have a certain skill set, you will get somewhere in this game. I believed that and I still do. I put all I had into poker. I tried to get my schoolwork done as fast as possible, and then it would just be grind grind grind. Review hands. Sweat HSNL contacts. Talk poker with someone smarter than me. At this point it wasn't a burning desire to break through at high stakes. I truly needed it because I put so much into it. I couldn't take that kind of discouragement.

And the results came. I cleaned up the games. Tough table? Who cares. I would win because I knew the small things these people did wrong, and I knew how to exploit them. There was a period of almost 5 months where I hardly lost. I had double digit downswings above 50k and some above 100k, but I was often playing big and that's just how it goes. I'd recover instantly because I was playing my A game in games I had a nice edge. The semester ends and winter break starts. I have 25 days with nothing on my plate. And the girl from before sent me a message saying how sorry she was about everything that happened, and hoped we could see each other soon.

And so I grind some more. Games were very good. I made about $300,000 in under 4 weeks and under 50,000 hands. Life couldn't be better. Things had been looking up poker-wise and personal life wise. I crushed the games for 2 more months at a similar rate. I was on an absolute tear.

I'm nearing the end of my sophomore year, and things really take a turn for the worse. In early March the 2nd fallout happens, and I'm very distracted. It shows in my poker game, mainly through my frustration. Every beat gets to me. Every time someone plays bad and wins I just go off. I let my emotions into the game, something I thought I had completely escaped. I went on a downswing, which was put on hold my *gasp* Black Friday. I am happy for the break from poker, as I wasn't doing well and have never in my life had so much to do for school. The last two weeks, I have been just a student, and I have to say, it will never be the same. Once you've ridden the roller coaster of high stakes poker, working for 10 hours straight on an empirical original research international trade paper just doesn't do it for you. I put so much into getting to the top, and sacrificed being on top academically, only to have poker completely cut out from under me by this fine country of ours. For some people, this is their livelihood. Others, their passion. For me, it's just gone. Everything I did is gone. Now I'm just a college student. I'm 99.9% not dropping out. I realized I can't play poker and be a great student. It just isn't feasible. To [mis?]quote a great man,"To be the best at poker, you have to be poker." The game evolves so fast that you can't just be a casual player. The true poker player is haunted by the game. It is impossible to keep it from drifting up the iceberg into your conscience.

I have to decide if I am a poker player. Since I said I'm 99.9% not dropping out, I guess that means I'm not. But maybe not. Maybe I think the expected utility of staying in school and only playing poker in the summers is greater than that of dropping out, moving out of the country, and becoming a poker pro. Let's go with that. I never wanted to be a poker player forever; I only wanted it through college or maybe a few years after. Deep down, my goal has always been to work in financial services on Wall Street. I want to work towards that goal; being a poker professional would never be satisfying because it is too stigmatized. Few actually respect a pro poker player, and while that may not matter to a lot of you, it does to me. The bottom line is I couldn't do it forever and from now on will just be a summer player. I'm getting a job when I graduate and I'm getting stellar grades from now on. No more distractions. April 15th, 2011 is a day I will never forget. It is a day I went from a poker player to a student who had his time in poker. I feel like it was premature and I had more to do in the game, but I can still see myself reading HSNL posts on 2+2 as a micro stakes player. That me would be very, very proud of where I am. The current me is just disappointed. I could have done so many things differently that would make me feel more happy than I currently feel.

I just feel lost to an extent; I don't know how to be a normal student anymore. I have the urge to gamble and make money. I couldn't delay gratification in the past; I had to put a lot of eggs into the poker basket instead of graduating at the top of my class. Could I learn my lesson from this? Is it too late? I don't know the answers to these questions, but right now, I just retrospectively dread the decision to put so much into poker given Black Friday would happen midway through college. The plan is to stay in school and put most of my focus into it, and go from there. I have no idea if that's the right decision. For the first time in a long time, I just have no idea what to do. Everything seems like a bad option.

Thanks,
Evan