My name is Jon Wiesman; I’m 36 years old, live with my wife and 19-month old son in San Diego, and I love playing poker. January 27th marks the one-year anniversary of my membership at Pocket Fives. It’s been a great experience. Pocket Fives is one of the few websites that I visit each and every day. After checking the front page for any new articles, I immediately click on Poker Discussion and catch up on what’s happening in the poker world. I thought I’d share what Pocket Fives has done for my game. <READMORE>

It all started back in 2004 when I was trying out a new poker strategy. I had read some articles by John Vorhaus about heads up strategy online and was making a run at the heads up Sit and Go matches on Ultimate Bet. After weeks of grinding it out on $31.50 heads up matches, I was showing a nice little profit. With hundreds of these matches played, my spreadsheet clearly showed that I could expect a modest return on investment.

But of course I wanted more. If I could duplicate these results on $52.50 matches, or $105 matches, I could obviously earn more. However, the real goal I had in mind was the $208 heads up matches. Because Ultimate Bet only took 4% instead of 5% on these matches, the break even point was a winning percentage of 52% instead of 52.5%. Coupled with the increased buy-in, this made the potential earnings on these matches very desirable.

So I started working my way up the buy-in amounts. To my surprise, my winning percentage did not drop off dramatically when I played these more expensive matches. It did drop, but the increased stakes more than compensated for it. Finally, I started playing $208 matches.

After a couple dozen matches, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was consistently earning money and my bankroll was steadily growing. I started to recognize a lot of the players and a few would immediately leave when I attempted to play against them. I took this as a sign that I was a dominating player! I just laugh about that now.

That brings me to early January of 2005. One night I logged on and noticed that someone was waiting for a $208 match. He had some weird name: “jsup”. So I sat down. The first thing I noticed about jsup was that he had half a dozen people rooting him on. Any time I showed down a losing hand, I was ridiculed. Any time I won a hand – especially if it was a suckout – I was threatened with castration or worse. It was actually a lot of fun.

Jsup himself was very nice. (He knew when he had a live one and didn’t want to scare me off!) We chatted as we played and finally one of the railbirds said, “Hey jsup, I liked your last blog.” I asked about it, and jsup replied simply, “pocketfives.com.” I said I’d check it out. We ended up playing five matches, and I was able to escape with one win. (I bet jsup can still tell you the suckout that let me win.) I haven’t played jsup heads up since then, except for the end of a $109 10-handed SNG, which he ended up winning even though I had a 3-to-1 chip count when it got down to the two of us.

The next day, I visited pocketfives.com for the first time. Immediately, I was hooked. Here was a site full of people who loved poker as much as I did. I read all of the articles and all the threads on the poker discussion forum. I checked out the player rankings, looking for guys I had actually played against. I checked out the forum on legal and tax issues; it was nice to know that other players had similar questions.

Pocket Fives has definitely improved my game. I have gleaned so much useful information about situational play, bankroll management, avoiding tilt, utilities like poker tracker, books, and links to other sites that offer video training. I’m not a ranked player and will never be one, but since joining Pocket Fives, I am definitely a winning player. One of the biggest concrete benefits that I can attribute to Pocket Fives was that I first learned of Harrington’s books on here. Someone mentioned volume one in a forum thread before it was released, and I immediately went to Amazon and pre-ordered it. Those two volumes have changed my tournament play drastically.

Pocket Fives has helped me see that there are lots of players like me, and that all of them have gone through some horrific bad runs where the cards are terrible, and even when they are good, you get sucked out. Seeing how others deal with this has really helped me deal with it myself.

I have one concept that I would impart to the pocketfivers who are like me – those who love poker, but will probably never be ranked. Learn the difference between good ego and bad ego.
On one hand, I have a tremendous ego. I am an intelligent person, very good at math and calculating probabilities. I have no superstitions, don’t subscribe to tin foil hat conspiracies, and understand that cards are not controlled by the past. I believe I can learn how to play poker for a profit. I am eager to compete with other players who are good so that I can win. I believe this confidence is critical to being a good poker player.

On the other hand, I strive to have no ego at all. If I need to fold a hand because I know I’m beat, I shouldn’t worry if people are going to think I’m scared. I shouldn’t show my cards to people to prove how clever I am. I shouldn’t feel the need to explain myself when I am caught making a questionable play. If I recognize that a player is better than I am, I should seek to learn from that player if I can, even if he is only 22 years old and has an alternate account called “TY4DABJ”. This humility is also critical.

Congratulations to Adam, Cal, and Riley for building a great site. I hope I am able to learn as much in my second year of membership as I did in my first.
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