*My* story - One year as a pro!

[Equal]

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my first day as a poker professional. Amazing considering next month will be two-years since I actually learned how to play poker.

After spending a day last May running around a government building getting all the paperwork finalized to leave my job, I was more than happy to start my new poker career that night.

After reading bicyclekick’s story and with my one-year anniversary now here, I decided to write my story, and here it is:

Four words from two friends were the critical advice I needed to succeed at poker if you can believe it.

In the summer of 2003, I was spending some time at a friend’s house in Toronto. Poker had been something I had just started hearing about and my friend had actually been playing online poker and making a decent amount of money at it. I remember lying on his couch watching him play mid-limits at Pokerstars. Over the weekend he seemed to win a lot of money, I remember him, after one hand, exclaim, “That was my first $1,000 pot!” It seemed so surreal to me.

Over the weekend I met some of his friends who played poker, and just before I left to go back to Vancouver I asked him one question, and he gave me a one-word answer:

“Sklansky”. That was the first of four words that would be instrumental in my success at poker.

Back home in Vancouver, I decided to give online poker a try. I popped by my local library and took out a couple random poker books. I also received in email a text copy of Sklansky’s HEFAP. Lol I know, don’t give me a hard time about it.

I deposited $200 at Stars, getting a $40 bonus, and of I went to the micro limit tables, poker books in hand. I remember a chart in one of the books I borrowed listing out the top 50 hands in hold em. I would get dealt a hand, and then quickly scour the chart to see where it was on the list. If it was on the list I would call or raise. “This hand is number 17! I should raise this!” I tried to digest HEFAP but other than the starting chart, and some of the pre-flop concepts, it was way over my head. Also, the writing made it really hard to understand.

Over the summer, I lost all of my deposit plus the bonus $40. I wasn’t focusing too much on poker anyway, as I was really into martial arts and hockey at the time.

Towards the end of August I was training full time in martial arts, specifically ultimate fighting – you know the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It’s a combination of kickboxing wrestling and judo basically. I was also going to gym and playing in a hockey league.

In early September, I was sparring with a training partner. He had me in a bearhug and was trying to throw me to the ground. I was defending. He twisted one way, then quickly twisted the other way and we fell to the ground with me on the bottom on my back. All of a sudden intense pain shot through my ribs. My partner stopped and we tried to figure out what happened. I couldn’t move without extreme sharp pain. My instructor came over and we iced my rib.

I tried to drive to the hospital, but I couldn’t even change gears in my manual without huge pain. It was getting worse and worse. The compound matters, my car had bucket racing seats and it took me literally 20 minutes to even get out of my car. I just couldn’t flex any muscles in my torso without crying in pain.

At the hospital I was relieved that x-rays revealed that no ribs were broken, like everyone suspected. It turned out a broken rib would have been much better than the torn muscle I did have.

End result: 4 months of no activity. No going to the gym, no hockey, no martial arts. All of a sudden I had 20 extra hours a week.

I decided now was the time to really give poker a try. I deposited another $50 at Stars and started again. I really started to study at this point getting deep into HEFAP. I was still playing the low limits, and around this time the importance of position really hit me. Also, I was starting to understand why Sklansky hand rankings were the way they were.

About a month later I quit limit and started playing the NL games at Stars since the chasers really frustrated me at limit. I was certainly weak-tight at this point, and I probably didn’t raise pre-flop with anything but the best starting hands. I remember a good day for me was being at $59 at both my NL $50 tables. Yes, I was multi-tabling the NL. One table was just too boring.

Soon after, I got to the point were I had won my $240 back. What a day to finally be breaking even! Man that was huge.

I plugged away and later deposited soon money on Party Poker. I started playing the $25 NL tables, and couldn’t win. I dropped my initial deposit. I moved some more money over from Stars and stuck to the low limits on Party the $0.50/$1, and $1/$2 tables. I also got Sklansky’s Texas Hold Em and this book really helped me figure out HEFAP, which I had read front to back about a dozen times by now. Various section of HEFAP were starting to make sense to me now.

I spent most of the fall being a break-even player at the low limits at Party. And then I received the next crucial piece of advice, three words from my friend Terry:

“Play one table.”

It was like a light bulb went of in my head. One table was boring I thought, that’s why I played 2 or even 3 sometimes. I could learn twice or three times as fast I thought!

But taking Terry’s advice I played only one table. I tried to focus on only the one table, without distractions. Everything was made so much clearer! I didn’t realize how much info I was losing. What was a correct decision multi-tabling, was oftentimes the WRONG decision when you actually had reads on people!

After those simple three words, I went from a break-even player to having results that just soared sky-high. My first three days playing a single table of 2/4 I won $327, $170, and $197! This was amazing considering I had only played 2/4 for the first time 4 days before that. Three days later I had my best day ever in terms of BB, $727 at 2/4! 180 BB! No doubt I was still playing too many hands and going too far with them but finally I was winning.

That was near the end of November 2003. In December I continued to stick to 2/4 and even gave 3/6 a shot, still at Party. I dropped $840 one day at 3/6 and that hit me hard as it was the first time I had ever lost more than a day’s wage at poker. I still was winning at a good clip.

In January 2004 a few friends told me about Pacific Poker and how loose the players were. I popped in $500 there and was amazed at the Flop %’s in the lobby. I didn’t know at the time that Pacific basically inflated the %’s.

I started playing the $8/$16 game they had at the time, and the players were bad. This was the highest I had ever played at that point. Over January I started to play more at Pacific than Party and was slowly making a profit, and I ended up about $1700 for the month between the two sites.

Over the next couple months my game really started to improve (still single-tabling). My reads were getting better, I was punishing the bad players more, and I was getting more comfortable with the swings. Although I lost money in February I was improving quickly.

In March I took my first shot at 15/30. I had about $4,00 in my bankroll, so this was clearly enough. : )

I did well, winning $2,000 in one day in my first week. I made my first poker withdrawal, $1000, on March 11, 2004 and boy was that nice. I actually had real money deposited in my bank account from online poker! Little did I know that only two months after my first ever withdrawal would I quit my job and turn pro.

I was putting in a ton of hours now, and really studying. March ended up being my first month where I earned more at poker than I did at my high paying legal research job. I made a rookie bankroll mistake however near the end of March, and withdrew too much money, and was down to a bankroll of $386 for 15/30 at one point. I had to rebuy in. That was the last time I played under-bankrolled. : )

I went into overdrive in April making over $11,000. Even though I had only two months of very good results, and a sorely insignificant sample size of hands, I knew I was beating the game as I could identify a ton of horrible players.

So in early May I gave my notice and quit my job. I had an $11,000 bankroll, and because I got paid in arrears, had two and a half months of wages still coming. Also, since I worked on contract, I also had the ability to go back to my job since there was lots of turnover and they were always looking for experienced researchers. This safety net was relieving since as soon as I quit my job I stopped winning.

Looking back, I’m sure I felt more pressure because I quit my job and was now depending 100% on poker, and also my bankroll contributed to the stress since it wasn’t insanely large like 2+2ers recommend. My first week as a pro I dropped $1,000. It wasn’t a big deal because the next couple days I won $1,700 on party and $2,000 on Pacific. Then I went card dead.

Over the rest of May I lost $2,000. Almost every day I lost, except for a couple monster wins, which kept me alive. June was more of same, lots of losing interspersed with monster wins. I was up $900 in June thanks to two days in which I won almost $5,000 – including my biggest ever day $2,823.

So now we are talking being down money for the first 6 weeks being pro. I think it was around this time I posted thread on 2+2 whining about my tough luck and asking for advice. I received great advice telling me what an idiot I was, telling me to sell my car, telling me to go back to my job and telling me to give up poker. : )

I dropped down in limits and just kept plugging away. July was basically my make-it or break-it month. I couldn’t stand another month with no income. Fortunately my first large downswing ended and I banked over $11,000.

August and September were good as well, and in the fall my friend and I started our local community/affiliate poker site. I knew zip all about HTML, so it was very useful to me as I learned about web site design as we got our site up and running.

I didn’t put as many hours in the next couple months as I was spending time of the site, but I had an absolute monster of a December – the best month of my career by far. This month enabled me to really expand my bankroll.

January was great from a tournament standpoint as well as in ring games. I won $5k in a MTT and my spot in the Party Poker Millions WPT event.

February was a “bad” month, only cashing in about $3,000 and March wasn’t great either, but I spent a ton of time playing at my local casino getting in hours playing live to prepare for the PPM.

The PPM was awesome. It was my first ever cruise and first ever WPT. I felt very confident going into the event as limit is my strength and I had prepared well by putting in a ton of hours live, and playing a lot of limit tournaments. Just before I left for the PPM, I finished 2nd at a local 140 player limit event for $2,000. Also, for whatever reasons, poker professionals don’t intimidate me. I ended up in 32nd place out of 280 going into Day 2, and busting in 121st for $10,426. Although I of course would have liked to finish higher but I was happy with my result. You can check out my reports on the PPM here: PPM Part 1,
PPM Part 2.

Back home I continued to play in the $15/$30 and $30/$60 games online. I ended up running into my biggest downswing in my poker career in the next 6 weeks or so, dropping about $15,000, approximately 400bb. Honestly I did not think it was possible to run so incredibly bad for so long. The veteran 2+2ers were right. I did, however, refrain from posting an “Online Poker is Rigged” thread which hopefully is a sign of maturity as a poker player heh. I guess I was due for a down streak anyway.

I spent a lot of April studying my game and reading a lot of 2+2 trying to plug some leaks. Consequently or not, my results started to improve, and I soon started trying out big time multi-tabling. Previously I played 1 or 2 tables usually, sometimes 3. I gave 6 tables a try and it seemed to work okay. So I put in a lot of hours 6-tabling.

Any now he we are! One year later and as a great anniversary gift, I qualified for the World Series of Poker!
How I qualified for the WSOP

Anyway, thanks Gary for setting me on the right path with that single word “Sklansky” and to Terry for telling me to “Play one table”. Those four words were absolutely crucial to my success. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.

[smartalecc5]

sounds exciting man. nice job. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[pokerstudAA]

Really an interesting story...good luck in the future.

After reading that I was wondering where are you now? What games are you playing on a regular basis? Tournaments? Cash games? What sites? How large is your playing bankroll? What is the level of difficulty of these games? What kind of income can you generate playing at this point? What games/levels are you looking to move to?

Sorry for all the ?'s - just curious.

[zombies kill]

since you mentioned a lot of specific $ amounts in your post, i assume youd be comfortable saying how much you made for the year? how about your hourly?

dont answer if you think the question is too specific, im just curious cause im in a very similar situation to you, and am wondering how im stacking up against others.

[Redd]

Pacific inflates their flop %s? I knew those numbers were too high!

[imported_exelius]

Congratulations on going Pro!! Your story inspires as I hope to be there one day also. I'm currently at the stage where I'm reading books and learning position too and stuff. I wonder if you could help me, I've been reading books like SS2 and Harrington on holdem (maybe Im reading the wrong books hehe, I hear Theory of poker is good I havent read that one? ), but i find that I'll read for several days then play and when I play after I read my game goes to dump, dead. So I wonder if Im trying to cram too much at once. Did you read outright than play, or read about one aspect than played then read another, etc. Also, whci games helped teach you more, Limit or NL. I've played NL mainly but just tried Limit out this week at .5/1.

Thanks and gratz,
Exelius

[dozer]

Great story, very inspiring. I have had thoughts about doing this for a living. But I am not going to plunge head first into it. I'm going to take my time and find out if this is right for me. I have been playing the micro limits to build a bankroll and also to gain experience while it is still cheap. I will join your site 604poker, I like hearing how other local poker players are doing.

[diebitter]

That's a great story - good luck and good cards in the future!

[Equal]

[ QUOTE ]
After reading that I was wondering where are you now? What games are you playing on a regular basis? Tournaments? Cash games? What sites? How large is your playing bankroll? What is the level of difficulty of these games? What kind of income can you generate playing at this point? What games/levels are you looking to move to?

Sorry for all the ?'s - just curious.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm playing 15/30 and 30/60 on Party, Pacific and Stars. Well I avoid the 30 on Stars. I play mostly cas games to pay the bills, but I'm playing a ton of NL MTT's now because there fun and to prep for the WSOP. My playing bankroll is about 400bb plus I can Neteller more should I need it. I'm not sure how to guage the difficulty of the games. What do you mean? I am looking to continue to move up, as I have kind of stalled at this level. I took a good quick shot at the Paradise 40/80 and dropped 4k. Looking to try that again.

[Equal]

[ QUOTE ]
since you mentioned a lot of specific $ amounts in your post, i assume youd be comfortable saying how much you made for the year? how about your hourly?

dont answer if you think the question is too specific, im just curious cause im in a very similar situation to you, and am wondering how im stacking up against others.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know, I'm not sure exactly how much I made for the year. I think it would have been over 100 had I not hit that 400bb downstreak.

I do know I'm at 2.5bb/100 at the Party 15 (too small sample size, un-sustainable win-rate, yadda yadda yadda, all the 2p2 caveats apply). That being said, I know there's lots of room to improvement that.