I'll be starting a blog to keep track of my poker "career" or whatever you want to call it. It's 4:40 AM right now and I've been up all night and my sleeping schedule is fucked up as usual. Sigh.
I've come a long way from when I first saw poker on TV at my aunt's house. It was during the WSOP and I watched the players and learned the game slowly. Eventually over time I began to think that I was capable of beating the game (lol srsly right?) and my interest in poker slowly began. I had no source of learning the game and I was just watching poker "instructional" videos off of youtube and playing full tilt play chip money. I would have my play chip bankroll and I grew it up so fast that my confidence grew as fast as my play chip BR did.
One fateful day, Pokerstars handed out all play money accounts $5 real money. I never even played a freeroll before so I had absolutely no experience whatsoever regarding any form of real money. Of course I was ecstatic to have something to start with. I remember posting on the beginner's circle of FTR (flopturnriver.com) about what I should do with my $5, and the unanimous decision was to play 2NL and hope for the best with only 2.5 buyins. Sure enough, I beat 2NL... Actually, I destroyed the limit and ran way above expectation. I didn't know it at the time but the poker gods were definitely on my side back when I started, because without my ridiculous run-good I probably would not be playing poker today. That was my start; and what a glorious start it was.
With my newly funded bankroll slowly increasing, I started upping my table count and reading TONS more about poker on flopturnriver. The regs there helped me immensely with my ABC game and as my bankroll kept moving up, I kept moving up. I went to 2NL, 5NL, 10NL, 25NL with not a single major downswing. Those were the golden days. Play tight, play solid, win money. It felt like I never had a losing session.
When I got to 50NL, thats when things got a bit more complicated. Of course the players were still not very good, but they were much more competent. My steals got 3bet a lot. There was a ton of restealing going on, and also a ton of CO/BTN warring going on. I definitely did not expect that level of difficulty and along with cards not going my way anymore, 50NL was a struggle. I could barely stay above even over a sample of 30k+ hands. I sort of hit a brick wall until one fateful day, some random person messaged me on 2+2. I post a lot of strategy threads on there and he read them and asked if I was interested in staking/coaching. I was a pokerstars player at the time but after snap-calling this staking deal, my new home was at Full Tilt. The tables were a bit softer, the software was nicer (imo), and the rakeback was awesome.
Jared was my coach and he crushed the SSNL stakes. He played 1/2 up to 5/10 and had 4+ ptbb spread across all those limits, so his advice was definitely working for him. He taught me to think deeper about the game, he taught me to widen up my game from 11/8 to 18/16, and thanks to him I absolutely destroyed 50NL and up to 100NL. I was so confident of my ability at the time and I was flying high again... but what goes up must come down. For whatever reason, I cut off the staking deal with him and lost contact with him. A few things came into play such as him IMing me a bit too much (kind of like a parent), his odd approach to the game (limp-calling AA utg), and his hatred of me being "robotic". He also played 1-2 tables at a time, which was definitely not my style. I'm from the young internet generation that wants to beat the game at 8-12 tables at a time, implement sophisticated HUD statistics into my game, and pick up a higher hourly earn. Jared was a live player. More importantly, Jared was a "feel" player. A "feel" that never made sense to me because it wasn't backed with numbers and defined ranges.
With all those internal issues, along with school and fraternity pledging, I stopped playing poker. I didn't stop immediately, I kept grinding here and there but my winrate was no where near as good as it was before since I had no coach with me. It eventually became less enjoyable and then it became a chore, and eventually I just couldn't do it anymore. I quit the game cold turkey for more than a year and enjoyed the college life.
Fast forward to the present, Albert Peng is responsible for my return to poker. When I quit playing the game, I was at his skill level and actually a bit better than him (imo) due to the coaching. But after my break from the game, Albert finally moved up to 100NL and absolutely crushed the games. He has a huge sample at the game and has one of the most impressive winrates of all the regulars I've ever seen. As of right now, I'm getting back to the grind. But I'm starting at the lower stakes with a humble beginning. I'm doing 25NL for one month to get into the groove before moving up back to 50NL and seeing how things go there. Hopefully in a month or two I'll be able to hop onto the 100NL tables and start 6bet shoving light against Albert. Albert and I will be doing volume prop bets each month to help me stay motivated. Hopefully these end up working out for me because I was able to log 6k hands in like two days which is unbelievable considering how terrible my work ethic is.
Well that's how my poker career got started. Hopefully this blog keeps me in check and keeps me motivated to continue playing the game.
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