It was April of 2005, and I was playing a $55 dollar tournament in my 12×12 foot double-occupancy dorm room. One of my dorm mates and I decided to split the buy-in, taking a shot in a tournament we had no business playing; our bankrolls were less than $150 each. First place was $3,932, a number so outrageous to me, but at the same time it seemed so close since less than 300 people entered. We hit the money at 27 people, and I distinctively remember a crowd forming in our dorm as the tournament field dwindled. With about 16 players left, I raised UTG with AQ and a player in mid-position shoved about 12 big blinds with AT suited. The flop was: A-T-x, and I failed to re-suckout. I was crippled after the hand (all tournaments on PokerStars started with 1,500 chips at this point, so stacks were very shallow), and went out shortly thereafter.

*Editor's Note: Check out this week's PocketFives Podcast featuring Jonathan Wein:Listen here!

Being the immature 19 year old I was, I began to berate the player’s push with Ace-Ten. He had a pre-packaged avatar from an image included in Windows, and I just assumed he was nothing compared to me. After all, I had made close to sixty bucks playing SnGs over the last four months, I had to be one of the top players in the world! The player finally retorted back and stated that he was Brettgank Jungblut, a winner of a WSOP bracelet in 2004, and a top ten ranked player on PocketFives. He would play eight tournaments at once and did well, while my head would spin if I played more than two. Oops, I had officially put my foot in my mouth.

After profuse backpedaling, I wandered upon PocketFives for the first time. I believe they only ranked the top ten players at this point, and the rankings were subjective. Many of the posts at this point were rail calls and brags, but these players all had amazing results, and were all posting on the boards. After a bit of lurking, I eventually signed up. My first posts were very fanboyish, telling everyone that Eric sheetsHaber and Cliff JohnnyBaxJosephy were at the same table, or to tell people I was at a final table of an $11 rebuy, as if that would somehow make me a player to watch. Shockingly, I distinctively remember Bax, sheets, gank, inissint, slugo05, and leggggggggggy (pictured) all coming to my first final table rail call in May of 2005. It is still probably the proudest moment of my poker career, sadly enough. It was the first time I thought I could “make it” in poker, and boy did I have a lot to learn.

*Archived Feature Article* The Dark Side of Poker by leggggggggggy – Apr 16, 2005

It was very easy to interact with the top players at this point, as you were considered “safe” if you were a member of PocketFives. I became friends with Roothlus, gbmantis, and thorladen, who all have had significant influence on how I play today. Any post about strategy I absorbed as quickly as possible, although it took me years to move up from the $10 games. I also spent a ton of time in Off Topic, mostly because your post stayed on the front page for several days if you posted there, whereas in Poker Discussion it would go away rather quickly. Private Messages did not exist, so people would just have running chat sessions on OT. I probably gathered half of the current post count I have in 2005 alone, just asking how peoples' days were.

Moderators, whom we take for granted so much today, did not exist. Any flame or bad beat stayed until Riley, Cal, or Adam(pictured) found it. When they finally brought on Danand Lenny a bit later on, I remember thanking the heavens that some of the crap on the forums would be cleaned up. Who knew that today there would be 20+ moderators along with the administrators, and unless you have a quick finger, you’ll miss any flame that appears within a few minutes.

Also, the "Report Abuse" feature that's located below each post allows any member to receive quick feedback from a forum moderator regarding inappropriate content on the boards. There is certainly humor in some of the deleted posts that we’ll never see, but in general it makes for a much better environment for everyone.

I also recall watching the big tournaments every week when I first started on the site (back then it was a $350,000 guarantee), and maybe recognizing a name or two. The community was super small and online poker was still in its infancy. Whenever I found out a live pro’s online screen name, I would think it was the coolest thing ever. Now, every final table is packed with names we know and recognize from P5s as well as live television, and most post or at least monitor P5s on a daily basis. When I see a player make a good play, it is really easy to look them up on here and Private Message them. I can’t even count the amount of friends I’ve made simply by doing this. A lot of people think that because the community has expanded, PocketFives is a worse place than it was five years ago. I strongly disagree. While the sense of community may have weakened a bit, there is now a lot more content from great people and players.

The PocketFives Rankingsare now heavily based on a complicated scoring methodthat I haven’t begun to understand, and it has expanded to a Top 100. There is front page content updated every few hours. There is a search feature, the ability to PM, and player Scouting Reports and profiles. I now know where I rank in my city, state, country and the world. There is the PocketFives Podcastand a live reporting crew, with members taking down events at a rapid pace. I can easily access players blogs, and their scores are right on their profile to view. Five years ago, we had none of this.

I owe a ton of my success to P5s, and the members that are a part of it. I hope in 2010 the improvements continue to come, I continue to grow as both a person and a player, and everyone else does well. I just wish I could keep a damn OT post on the front page for more than half an hour these days… –Jonathan Wein

*PocketFives Poker Discussion Forum – January 2005*

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Recent Scores for Wein

$132,297.65

$215 buy-in, Sunday Million [$215 NLHE – $1.5M guaranteed]on PokerStars. 01/17/2010, 3 place for 132,297.65

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$215 buy-in, Sunday Million [$215 NLHE – $1.5M guaranteed]on PokerStars. 11/22/2009, 3 place for 128,805.00

$34,320.00

$109 buy-in, $109+R NL Hold'em [$250,000 guaranteed]on PokerStars. 01/17/2010, 4 place for 34,320.00

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