PocketFives had the opportunity to chat with one of our longtime Nevada members, Elliot iamtheflowerLa Fleur. He lives in Nevada and has been successfully grinding on WSOP.com and Ultimate Poker, two of the regulated online poker sites in the state. His combined winnings on both sites are $25,000 for those events that we follow.

A Nevada resident since 2012, La Fleur chose his member name from the English translation of his last name La Fleur, “the flower.” Visit PocketFives’ Nevada poker community for the latest news and discussion from Nevada players.

PocketFives: What do you base your current successes online?

Elliot La Fleur: I’ve been playing for a living for roughly five years. When I moved to Las Vegas back in July 2012, I hit a rough patch in luck and game selection and was forced to move to my Plan B for life, which was blackjack and craps dealing. The plan was to get to a specific comfortable amount of money and move back to poker full-time, but I got fired.

I had about 10% of my desired monetary goal, but with 14 weeks of unemployment and a little luck and determination, I grinded the few hundred dollars in my account back up to a much more comfortable position. I’ve played over 70,000 tournaments combined for all stakes between free and $10,000. I had nearly $66,000 on PokerStars with a rough average buy-in of around $20.

PocketFives: Do you play cash games as well? What formats?

Elliot La Fleur: I’ve played nearly every game with money on the line, but I prefer to keep other formats more for fun. I’ve naturally been good at games, so it’s more fun for me to play Omaha, Stud, and Razz without putting in the massive amounts of studying. I like the challenge and seeing the game closer to the average player’s point of view.

PocketFives: What are some of your memorable cashes?

Elliot La Fleur: I played a $1,500 WSOP event right after Black Friday. I was sitting in Wisconsin and was bored, so I booked a flight about five days out and went. The trip didn’t go well, but back then it was less about logic and more about chasing the dream.

The best poker experience of my life was the PCA. It’s one of the few big tournaments that has a great silver lining. If you get knocked out before the money, you’re stuck at a beautiful resort with great people and some great food for a whole seven days. I busted on the middle of Day 2, boat-over-boat, 70-ish before the money, but it was fun playing with all of the top pros that before that I’d only seen digitally.

Subsequently, my best 24-hour period of poker was when I was in Texas. I saw these $33 3X Turbo Rebuy satellites to the PCA and even though I knew the average buy-in would be greater than it should, I was looking at the lobby, and remember thinking, “If I play this, I’m going to be a top five player,” which should not have been the case for my skill level at the time in relation to the buy-in and experience.

It was about to go off so I said, “What the hell, I’ll give it a try.” I won it, beating a player who was slightly more skilled than I was at the time, and I was planning on taking tournament dollars because my bankroll was really puny for me to take a $5,000 vacation and play one $10,000 tournament. However, I found out afterward that wasn’t allowed until your second win, so the next day, feeling slightly slighted but still very happy, I gave it a go for a second time and went 2/2 on back-to-back days.

PocketFives Is there anything else you want to add?

Elliot La Fleur: The best decision of my life: I was in my third trimester of college when I became 100% certain I didn’t want to be working for anyone. With the inspiration of the book “Bringing Down the House,” the main lesson I took away was college is a place where different amazing opportunities open up.

The first week or two into the third trimester, I took second in a Limit tournament for about $1,000 and the following day, I took top three in a $5 Rebuy on PokerStars for about $6,000. Then, I started thinking seriously about poker. Right after that talking to some other students about the win, we got a game together. Over the next six weeks, I would skip class to play this one guy three-handed with the guy’s roommate and sometimes with a few extra people.

I found out later that I sucked at poker at that point in time, but I knew enough to destroy this one kid and with those stakes. I took $2,000 off him and took a one-day trip to Canterbury Park in Minnesota with my friends and top-threed another tournament for $3,000. At the time, I thought I was pretty damn good, but not good enough or had enough money to play for a living or to say, “Hey mom dad, I’m going to drop out of this good engineering college to play poker!”

So, to mitigate the negative reaction I eventually got, I got myself into the dealer training program at the local Indian casino. Eighteen months later, I won an $11 Rebuy and decided now was the time. I was still barely above breakeven, six months out on my own, and expenses started to eat my roll. So, I made one last determined effort. My dad had saved $5,000 for each of my brothers for college. I had only used $2,500, but instead of college, I rationally reasoned why giving me the $2,500 to go to some random stranger’s house in Texas to coach me was better than putting that into a college degree.

Over the next three months playing the games bfizz11 coached me in, I won about $30,000 and never looked back, despite the stumbles. Poker is the hardest easy living ever and I love the challenge and freedom to be my own boss. Poker is a great game that teaches us so many lessons about life that are hard for people to get anywhere else. I love promoting the game with one goal in mind to help people understand it and consequently improve their life!

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