The story of my poker "career"

When I was 16 years old, I was introduced to Texas Hold'em. That game where you get two down cards and 5 community cards are dealt.

Me and my buddies thought we were the shit. Poker had not yet reached the mainstream and we thought we were like our dads kicking back smoking cigarettes/cigars and playing some cards on a Saturday night.

Moneymaker did the whole ESPN thing for 2.5 million dollars yet nothing changed that quickly. We all thought we were really good players playing $5 buy-in tournaments when in reality we were all quite terrible.

By the time most of us had become 18, we started going out to Casino Morongo out in the desert because it was the only casino we knew of that would let us play at under 21.

I got a lot better playing at Morongo against players who weren't my friends. I would say that from the time I was 18-21, I went to Morongo at least 20-30 times. I would estimate that I probably didn't lose more then 5 times in all those sessions. My guess is that I probably came up $1000-$1500 in that time, but none of my stats were tracked back then. I didn't go more often because I was away at college all during that time except during the summers. My biggest triumph at Morongo was when I took 2nd place in the Saturday morning tournament for $500. It was only a $30 buy-in.

When I was 19, I went through some life-changing events and needed some time to kill because that was the mode that I was in. I had heard friends talking about online poker in the past but I knew nothing about it and for the first time I decided to look into it. Boy was I in trouble.

The first site that I found was Empire Poker which was one of the Party Poker skins. I deposited $50 and made $65 dollars the first day and I thought I was the shit. The next day I lost everything in the account and had to re-deposit. I ended up redepositing at least 10 times. It was then that I realized how bad I was really was. Losing that money made me a much better player. I then read a couple books and my game took off. All those guys who claim that they deposited $50 and never looked back and now have millions in the bank can suck my dick. I have gone through so much because of poker and have had so many ups and downs. Someone only depositing $50 and never looking back tells me that from the moment they deposited, they started running really hot. I even heard somewhere that Brian Townsend had to make numerous deposits when he first started. I already have great respect for Brian but hearing that makes me respect him that much more. Same goes for anyone who wins the first live tournament that they have ever played in. Fuck you. How come I never get that lucky?

I came home from college in the summer of 05 and this was the first time I ever started taking poker seriously. I had my big score on Empire when I took first in the nightly $5000 guarantee for $1350. I took 6th only a couple nights later in the 10K rebuy tournament for another $600. A week later I bought into a $55 two table SNG. I had never played a SNG this high before and played like a champion. I took 1st and $400 prize. My account had grown from $50 to $2000. I was moving to Washington DC in January for school and an internship and I decided to call it quits at around the time. I cashed all of the money out except for $170 and went to school. I had started playing on pokerstars and left all the money in pokerstars.

In DC, my neighbor Josh was playing on Pokerstars everday and I started to get that itch again. I really started having a lot of resentments toward DC and started playing online everyday. I sat down and I had $170 in my account. I decided to play a $55 one table SNG. I took first for $225 and never really looked back. I primarily played $22, $33, and $55 SNG's. I played the occassional MTT but stuck mainly with the SNG's. In about a month or so my $170 was now $2000. I then went on my first bad run and my account was all the way down to $1000. I came home for Spring break and Pokerstars had just started running the $20 180 man SNG's. I got to heads up in one and chopped it for $900. I went back to school determined to build upon my $2000 roll.

When I got back, I kept doing poorly. One night something really crazy happened. I was losing my shirt and it was getting to be late at night. I think I was down to about $1300-$1400 or so. I had been taking bad beats all day and couldn't take it anymore. It was 2 in the morning and I had to be at work at 9 in the morning. I decided to take one last shot but I wanted to play against good players so I bought into a $100+9 buy-in MTT. It only attracted 150 players which seemed perfect for me. I only intended to last about an hour or so before going to bed. I ended up watching the sun come up and made the final table. I ended up taking 6th which was good for about $700. I was extremely elated. I think I went to bed at about 6:30 in the morning and decided to take a "power-nap."I woke up about 45 minutes later and felt like dog-shit. I decided to reward my effort from the previous night by calling in sick and taking the day for myself. I went to back to bed and woke up at about 4:00 in the afternoon. The first thing I did when I woke up was I logged on to pokerstars and saw that the $10 rebuys $35K guaranteed was about to start. So I rolled a joint and got super stoned and started the tournament. I did my double re-buy before the start and never re-bought again. I added on at the break and took a stack of 17K into the break. I really had no idea what I was in for but I ended up getting down to the last 12 players and I was the short-stack. I was desperately short-stacked. Everyone was waiting for me to be the next player out so we could get closer to the final table bubble. I stole blinds a few times and got within 11th place. Then my most legendary hand occurred. I had stolen on the last hand and went for it again when I was dealt 8 8 in MP. The BB went all-in and he was in 11th in chips. I thought he thought I was bluffing so I called and he showed queens. I flopped quads and that is my great suck-out story. Unfortunately, I have many more where I am on the bad side of a bad beat that severe. The very next hand I picked up AA and doubled up again. Another round later I limped in the SB with AA and the BB who was playing extremely aggressively went all-in. I called and knocked him out to complete the final table. I was now chipleader with 1.2 million in chips.

I got heads-up with 5iveofakind and 1st was about $10K with second being $5.4K. With such a great disparity in prize money I decided to negotiate even though I had a 3:2 chip-lead. We chopped it up and I took home $7,600. For some reason I decided to be a pussy and was afraid of losing the money so I pretty much quit playing poker altogether even though I had close to $10K sitting in my poker account. I went home from school that summer and had a lot of fun with my new-found wealth. Stay tuned for part II.