Online Poker Tournament Rankings

Well, this past week was probably one of the worst for me in a few years.  Poker wise just hit some rough spots.  I managed to have a few really crappy cash game sessions, dragging myself down around $460.  The tournament this weekend didn't go as I was hoping.  I made a mistake that cost me about 1/3 of my stack then got it in the next hand JJ v AA and went from an above average stack to out the door.  These things happen though and part of playing this game is learning how and when to roll with the punches, but I was smashed in the face by something I just never saw coming.  My girlfriend of 5 years, someone who I was openly talking about marrying in the next year or so, called me over the phone and told me she did not want to live with a poker player and ended our relationship.

Before you read any further I will warn you, this is going to be a sob story blog and I'm really depressed so levity should not be expected.  This has been a conflict for a few years now.  I've been trying to become a professional poker player since I was 16 years old.  Even further back than that I was playing cards on the kitchen table with my mother just passing time as she did with her sisters when she was growing up.  I met my now ex-girlfriend in highschool.  We were in a ton of the same classes together and eventually started going out during Junior year.  In a somewhat embarassing admission, she is as of this blog post the only woman I've ever slept with (had to throw you guys at least one bone here).  We had been going out pretty steadily since then, with some troubles freshman year of college but we ended up back together sortly there after.  She has been around to see my struggles playing cards, to see me grinding $2.25 SNGs and flipping out over bad beats.  I've grown up a lot since then but my poker ambitions have only grown since our relationship began.  I've been studying the game, logging the hours, asking for poker books for Christmas, everything you could imagine.

She has been around for all of that, but only until recently there was no serious consideration to turning pro.  I was not able to even pay rent on a regular basis during this time period so earning a living was simply not possible.  Then came the big score, chooping the $400NLHE HU for $50,272.  She was stunned and thrilled to hear the news.  I drove back to Boston to see her and we went out with some friends to celebrate.  I was on cloud nine, it was everything I wanted.  I could now graduate, live with my girlfriend, play poker both online and live, and "live happily ever after."  Ok so I may be going a little overboard but I felt absolutely invincible.  A week later she brought up the question about job searching and I said I had no intention to.  We started to fight on and off about this over the next few weeks culminating when we were out to dinner.

I brought up the idea of wanting to buy a condo rather than rent an apartment to my ex before and her sentiment was, "I'm not buying property with you unless we get married."  That wasn't a deal breaker for me.  I know I'm only 22 but I'm very confident in what I want, and I knew I wanted to be with her.  To me the condo was only an investment to be made, not a lock down future home.  I just wanted to buy a place so that when I'm done making payments I own the property, investing rather than renting was how I looked at it.  Flash forward to that night at dinner I brought up the idea of my buying the place and having roommates, looking back wasn't that well thought out but I didn't mean anything by this.  She said, "You'd rather get roommates than just man up."  I understand her point but again it's not what I meant.  My responce was, "I have no problem manning up, but you have to understand that I'm a poker player and that 5 years down the line there can't be an ultimatum where you tell me I need to stop playing poker or you'll leave me."

I made that statement with a very specific scenario in mind.  I was thinking that if I am successful and I win several hundreds of thousands I don't want to be put into a shitty spot where my now wife says I have to quit or we would get a divorce and suddenly 1/2 of my winnings are gone along with my house and custody of any children at that point.  Apparently that statement stuck with her and on Friday this past week I got a phone call saying she couldn't be with a poker player and that it was over.  After 5 years of being with this woman, all the effort and sacrafice, I was dumped over the phone because I won $50K.

I've spent the past couple of nights drinking and buying random people drinks at bars.  This is a new low point for me personally since my grandparents passed away in 2007.  I know a lot of you are thinking something along the lines of, "She's not worth it man, she doesn't accept who you are and that's not going to change.  Better it happens now than later."  While sound logic, that doesn't offer much consolation.  I always thought that once I proved her wrong, everything else would just fall back into place but sadly it just doesn't work like that.  I was hit completely by surprise here and it hurts, badly.  That being said there's nothing left to do accept keep moving forward and working on my new list of poker goals.  I can't change her mind, but I can certainly prove to her and everyone else that doesn't believe in me that I can and will do this.  When I'm on ESPN, Leno, Letterman, hell even Larry King Live (I know I'm reaching here) they'll all know how big a mistake they made to doubt me.  They should have stuck by me and given me the chance.  Nothing left to do now but put my head down and move on.  This will get worse before it gets better, but I'll do what I have to to move on.

 Poker can be a brutal game sometimes.  Variance is not our friend, just a mistress that rips our hearts out with a two outer on the river deep in one of your nightlies.  Weeks and weeks of work can produce little more than a few hours pay at the local McDonald's and leave you questioning why exactly it is you enjoy this stupid fucking game.  Then when you finally break the streak, the stars align, the doom switch is turned off, you have no idea what to do with yourself.  When that score is a massive increase in your BR, it's very easy to get lazy and just not play cards at all.  Well, it happened to me, and to break out of my funk I found myself in the audience of the WPT $10K TV FT at Foxwoods.

Yes for those of you that forgot during the WSOP ME, there was poker being played on this coast as well.  I drove down to Mohegan on Tuesday afternoon to sign myself up for the $400NLHE event this weekend.  It was my first time there since about 5 weeks after the room was reopened.  I figured to get my feel for playing a new environment I would play some 1/2NL for a few hours.  I left at around 9:30PM stuck $255 after taking some shots to the balls at the table (JJ<66, AA<Q9, the usual suspects).  I decided I wanted to head over to Foxwoods to see if the WPT FT was still playing.  By the time I arrived it was already down to HU play and the cash was already on the table.  It was the first time I had seen that kind of money in person (yeah I've heard some are ones but don't ruin it for me).  It was certainly a turning point.

The was an older woman their who seemed to be related to one of the players at the table.  Since I wanted to get myself shamelessly on TV I started a conversation with her, sadly finding out that she was just someone who enjoyed cards and was watching the FT play out.  She was a very interesting person to talk to and during play she just kept saying the same thing, "Boy is that a sweet moment."  I have no idea who this woman is but she really put it in perspective for me.  Playing poker is quite possibly the coolest profession out there.  You have guys like Ivey and Negreanu that are celebs to the biggest Hollywood stars, poker players in general being not too far removed from professional athletes in terms of a level of fame and TV time.  Watching that TV FT, seeing the set, the cameras, the cash in play, the people in the stands, it all just made me want to really push myself to get to that point.

For anyone who has serious poker aspirations, I highly recommendgoing and watching a televised event live.  I know on some level it is a little lame to be the fan boy, but it's so humbling to see the stage set for the first time.  Reading about it on the web, seeing it on TV, hell even playing in a prelim and making a deep run, nothing compares to seeing $910K on the table and realize what's at stake.  I can truly say it helped me get myself focused up.  Any gloating from winning my $50K is long past me at this point.  Time to push the BR a bit and push the limits of my comfort zone.  Maybe next time I won't need a seat in the stands.

 After planning out my new schedule I realized that I've been very nitty with my BR to date.  This is at least partly because I haven't really been paying attention.  I've just played MTTs and cash games based on how a I feel and where I think my edge lies.  I have no problem taking a few bigger shots now and then, so long as it was in something I felt I had an edge in.  The other part has just been sheer laziness.  I've been so comfortable with the stakes I've been playing in for so long that I never saw the need to change things up.  All that is going to change a little over the next few weeks.

This has all been spurred on in the last couple of days.  I found myself at Barnes and Noble browsing around and killing some time before my table was ready at the Chili's next door.  I went to my usual stomping grounds, the Poker section, to see is anything good was on the shelves.  I saw Deal Me In, the new book from Phil's House Publishing detailing how 20 pro poker players got their start.  I immediately picked up the book, as it was something I wanted to read anyway, and skipped right to the chapter about Phil Ivey.  The E:60 report still fresh in my mind, I finished the chapter in about 20 mins (not long and not tough reading) and the gravity of what he was saying hit me.

Phil talked about being a kid growing up and wanting to play poker from a very young age.  He recalled the days just after high school when he would take the 2 hour bus ride to Atlantic City, blow his paycheck in a weekend, then go back to his telemarketing job back home.  Phil mentions how he was never too proud to simply move back down and grind his way back up if he needed to.  In the early days he would just go back to his telemarketing job and bring the paycheck back with him to AC.  That confidence and discipline to take the shots, and if they miss just work your way back, never really hit me until I read that section and read Ivey talking about it.

I've been very focused on planning out schedules, finding the hours to put into the game, keeping my risks low so I could continue to grow in this industry.  Yet every story I have heard from a poker pro starts with them going broke, working, going broke again, working more, and repeating this cycle for years until they got it right.  Now in today's world there is the distinct advantage of online poker.  I don't need to take a 2 hour bus ride to go play cards for 15 hours a day and that is a huge edge for my own development.  Long story short, I plan on putting a little bit more of my BR on the line and trustung in my abilities to win in the long run.  Much like all the others that did this before me, I have the confidence that I can put things together and get this done.  Now all I need to do is figure out what shots I feel like taking.

 It's a bit strange to think that at the beginning of this year I had a BR of only $65 bucks.  Grinding out $2.25 9 man turbo and 180 man SNGs on FTP to build myself up while using up my FPPs on Stars to win enough $T to take a few shots in some $4.40s.  To go from that to finally breaking through and getting my first $1K+ score, then doing it two more times in a 6 week period, coupled with my first ever live FT and first major cash for $50K at Foxwoods, let's just say it's been a pretty good year.  That being said we're now into November and 2009 has nearly come to a close.  In the next 8 weeks I will have 3 full weeks off from school as well so I plan on going out strong in 2009.

Cash game grinding I'm trying to get in 10+ hours a week.  Win, lose, or draw I think it's important to log in the hours and improve.  I do need to get used to playing 25+ hours a week at some point, that way I can grind out the cash games and rely more heavily on them for income.  If I can get 10+/week right now, I can maybe bump that up to 15+/week by the year's end and maybe get myself into the $100NL level.  Ideally that would be the result, to move up to playing for some decent money by year's end.  The process of moving up isn't a quick one for me though.  Usually what ends up happening is I'll make the jump, take an initial hit, move back down, grind up again, and try another jump to the next level.  It takes a few weeks normally but I find that it is certainly doable and the transition usually takes about 2 weeks.  That would give me about enough time to make the jump to $100NL by Christmas this year, which would be a great way to start off 2010.

As far as MTTs are concerned I'm still tinkering with my schedule right now.  Right now I'm looking at a nightly rotation of:

$26 $35K Guaranteed @ 20:00

$3.30 $10.5K Guaranteed Rebuy @ 20:35

$12 Daily Double A @ 21:00

$12 Daily Double B @ 21:02

$26 $5K Guaranteed PLO @ 21:15

$26 $28K Guaranteed @ 22:00

$26 $4K Guaranteed HORSE @ 22:15

There are a few holes in the schdule right now.  First off I need to add in at least one more MTT in the schedule.  I try to play 8-10MTTs/night when I do play so I'd like to find at least one more MTT to get myself into.  Preferably one that starts before 22:30 server time.  I thought about the $55 Fifty Fifty @ 21:30 but I don't think mixing that in and bringing my average buy in up that much is a good idea just yet.  I maye end up still adding it in anyway, but for now I'd like to keep the buy in's more around $26 than $55.  I have been playing in the $26 $2K Guaranteed Razz @ 20:15 but I don't think that is an MTT with a whole lot of value to it.  I could be VERY wrong but regardless my Razz game is a little rusty anyway ATM so I'd like to mix in something else.  I thought about maybe just putting some satties back into the mix and trying to win my way into some $55 and $109 buy ins, still on the fence about that.  For right now my MTT schedule stands at 7/night, but I'll be playing more cash games in the next week so I'll have some time to think of what I'd like to do.

The year 2009 will be my last full year as a student and 2010 will be my first as a poker pro.  I've had a great year so far and moving forward I can make more trips to Foxwoods and Mohegan for live cash and some more $400 buy in events that they will be running.  For arguably the first time in my young poker career, I have plenty of options moving forward.  Right now I just have to plan out my next few moves and really get after it.  Would be nice to hit another $50K sooner rather than later.