The time in which I wasn't working I exhausted all of my expenses. When I finally found a job, I was basically starting from scratch. The $10K I made in school was long gone and the $9K+ I made playing live was gone as well. I played a little poker during this time. I played in 6 events during the Mini Series at the Bike. Overall, I broke even for the series with two cashes. The first was 10/195 and the second was 25/295. In the second one I got jewed really hard which is really standard for me. In the first one, I was card-dead the entire tournament which is also pretty standard for me as well.
I eventually found a new job and started working in early July. Unfortunately, I was making very little at my job, so the thought of going back into poker was a little far-fetched. By this time, I was living with that crazy tweaker bitch Megan.
I got an offer from my buddy Omar to help him cater at a wedding. He told me that it was suppose to be quite lucrative so I decided to take him up on his offer. I played hookie from work on a Saturday night and went with Omar to do the wedding. Omar wasn't lying. I made over $200 under the table for just a few hours of work, got wasted, got stoned, and had a blast. To this day, it is the most money I have ever made at a job. Omar will probably never read this, but thank you so much for that opportunity because it led into what happened next.
I suddenly had a little bit of extra cash and I decided that I was going to take one shot at poker. At Commerce, they have a $40 buy-in NL game which is a huge joke but you have to start somewhere. On September 11 2007, I went back to Commerce and bought into the $40 game and came up $144. I went back the very next day and came up $101. Although it wasn't much I was finally starting to have a little bit of a cash-flow after being totally broke for most of the last 6 months. I thought it was going to be easy money from here on out. I was wrong.
The $40 NL game at Commerce is unbeatable over the long term. For one, the rake is atrocious. I believe it's $3 a hand with the jackpot drop. Not only that, but you are always dealing with people being all-in, so most of the time you are at the mercy of the cards. When I am at the mercy of the cards, they usually show me their wrath. I put in 18 sessions over the next 3 weeks and booked 7 wins against 11 losses. I was practically even give or take a half buy-in. I was so tired of getting constantly drawn out on by people going all in with 2 5 and shit like that I decided I was going to go back downstairs where I belonged. I told myself that the next time I had a decent session, I was going to go downstairs and try and make something out of my profit.
It was around this time that I had moved in with Johnny in Highland Park. He kept telling me to take a shot in the $200 and I eventually did.
In the very next session it happened. I ended up getting all-in on the flop with J J against two other players and actually held up for a pretty large pot. Those two players went bust and that broke the table. I had exactly $200 and went downstairs to play in the $200. In the $200 I doubled my money which was a come up of $360. It was the best day I had in months. I started to feel like me again. For some reason I played two more times in the $40 and lost both times. I decided that I was going to stay downstairs and see what kind of damage I could do. I started off real slow but I was winning and thats all that matters. My first 4 sessions of regular $200 play were all wins of the following: $131, $16, $176, and $10. On the 5th session I broke out and this session alone enabled me to play the $200 for a while.
I was sitting on a stack of about $500-$600 and I flopped a set with 5 5. The idiot sitting to my left was a huge sucker and called me all the way with a gut-shot. I filled up on the turn and he was drawing dead. I got lucky because he actually hit his gut-shot on the river and he went all-in and had me covered. The end result was that I came up $880 for the session. It is still the 2nd biggest 1 table come up I have ever had in the $200. I kept winning and in only 2 weeks of playing the $200 I ended finishing the month up $1900.
I steamrolled into November and I am waiting for another month like this to come. There isn't really much to describe so I will show the graph. Altogether I came up a little bit short of $4000.
Even before November I had established a bunch of poker goals.
1. I wanted to play in the multiple events at the LAPC.
2. Going into the LAPC I wanted to have at least $10K behind.
November came and went and everything was going perfectly to plan. In the beginning of the month I had a falling out at work with management. I didn't like how they treated me and how they went about certain things and I completely lost all respect for them. It was only a couple weeks later that I ended up just not showing up one night. Although it wasn't planned I was now playing poker for living.
December was right on the horizon and I could not be more excited. I decided that I was going to put in more hours then I ever had in the past.
Unfortunately, December was one of the most frustrating months of my life. I put in 117 hours of play and here is my graph.
I really don't know what to say about that graph, but everything in my life was falling apart at this point. The whole episode with Johnny came and went and I moved into that shit-hole in San Gabriel and was hating every minute of living there. January came and went and it was equally as frustrating. For most of the first half of the month I couldn't even play because my car had been taken by the cops. I was extremely demoralized and saw my tournament dreams slowly slipping away. I made money in January playing in the cash games but I lost even more money then that playing in Mo's Deep Stack tournaments at the bike and satellites at Commerce.
I have learned something very important about playing in tournaments. Do not play in tournaments if you are running bad. You will get fucked in some way shape or form. At one point during the tournaments and satellites I lost 12 out of 13 all in pre-flop coin-flips. The result was that I finished 3rd 3 times and 4th twice in satellites when you need to finish in the top 2 to get paid. Here is my January graph:
I rolled into February and by now I had been kicked out of the San Gabriel apartment due to "excessive" noise and was now living with my mom. Of course things just got much worse. The bad running months are heavily talked about in emails to Melissa which are going to posted very soon. In the meantime here are some more graphs.
This is my all time graph. This is current as of February 20th.
This is my graph from when I started playing poker again.
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