Alright, this is kinda new to me. I’ve tried to do a blog before but just never kept up with it. But seeing as I am playing poker on a regular basis, I will actually have something to write about. I will try to keep it mostly poker related, but I do have a life outside of poker that will probably be mentioned too. Here it goes…
My name is C.J. and I am 26 years old. I am a staff accountant for an IT distributor in Northern Virginia. I have my BS in Accounting from Strayer University (2007), in which the last couple years were finished while working full time. I went school hopping for a few years after high school that included stops in Salisbury University on the Eastern Shore of MD, George Mason University, and Morehead State in Kentucky. I went to MSU on a bowling scholarship so that was pretty cool for a year. So basically I wasted a bunch of time but had some great experiences along the way. After 7 years of school, I finally finished!
Anyway, I got into poker when I was in high school back in 1998-99ish when Rounders came out. My friends saw the movie first and told me I had to see it. So of course we watched it like 75 brazilian times because it is so great. I used to work at a bowling proshop after school but on the weekends we would either go to someone’s house or play in the back room at the shop. My paychecks were like $150 after taxes and that was a lot of money for me at the time, but I had no bills either. We would play ridiculous wild card games and match the pot games which would swell the pots up to insane amounts of money at the time. We had IOU’s being put in the pot for $1,500 from some of these games. It’s basically where I first got into gambling. There was no skill in these games, just luck of the draw. I would lose a lot and win a lot but I think the losing part is what has helped me so much. Yeah I was scared to lose the money but once you get used to the swings, the sting of losing didn’t hurt too bad and you quit being scared to lose because it is inevitable. You just gotta get your money in good and in the long run, you should win.
We had these games for a few years every single weekend it seemed. Whenever I was home on break after I started college, I would be able to play. By about 2004, I think, we would start to play hold’em more often because it was always dealer’s choice and hold’em was getting huge because of the ESPN coverage and Mobneymaker. I still remember my first hold’em tournaments I played which I think was in January of 2005. It was a $50 buy in and there was about 40-45 people there. I was pretty nervous because I really didn’t know how to play hold’em at all. Looking back, I really sucked, but I played so super tight nitty. Somehow I got a good rush of cards and I learned the art of the check-raise to perfection. Anytime someone had a big stack at these games, they would bet at every pot no matter what and people would fold. It’s not hard to catch on to this, even as a terrible player, so I did work and ended up winning the tournament. I went back the next month and I did the same thing. In 2 months, I played my first 2 hold’em tournaments and won them both for a total of around $1,700. I would continue to play these every month for the next 2 years and I only missed cashing a few times. This is when I knew I could be good at this game, but it would require a lot of hard work and study.
During the past few years, I have deposited a lot of money online. Overall I am ahead as far as money goes, but I have nothing to show for it. I remember being on Full Tilt and taking my $100 up to about $2,000 in a few hours. So I did what any smart person would do and jumped in a HU match with JDags at 50/100 limit. I dominated him early on and had gotten up to just about $7,000 before I went on a horrible run of cards and sucky playing to end up losing it all. I was so depressed about it but not as much as you’d think. It still never felt like real money but I knew I could hold my own in this game if I could just tighten up a bit and be smart. I’ve just never had a proper bankroll, per say, and would just play whatever I felt like if I had extra cash. If I won, I’d just cash some out. If I lost, I’d just save money up and redeposit. However, a lot of my deposits were on credit cards, so when I’d cash out, I wouldn’t pay off my card. This has come back to bite me in the ass, but it is what it is. Chalk it up to life lesson.
Usually I’d deposit a couple hundred bucks, play cash games to build it up and play tournaments with the profits. In a 3 day span back in March of 2007, I took 2nd in a $75 tournament for $4,500 and then placed 4th in a $163 for $2,850. I cashed most of this out because I didn’t trust myself.
In September of 2007 I did something pretty amazing I think. I put $50 on Pokerstars and jumped into a 50plo game. In like 20 mins I got up to about $300 and got into a 2/4 nl game. Check out the graph below.
I cashed out about $5,500 and donked off the rest.
Then in March of 2008 I won my first big tournament, the $26 $18K guarantee on FTP for just under $5k. I think I cashed about $3K after I bought into a 10/20nl game for $2k, played one hand, and lost it all. I had QQ and got it all in on a QTx flop vs KK, A turn, J river FTL.
I’ve been to Vegas about 7-8 times now and always play in a 2/5 game at MGM or Venetian. I have profited close to $6K combined on my trips there and have only come home a loser one time. As long as I stay away from the pit games, I am good to go.
But anyway, this is getting way too long and I doubt many will read this anyway. Recently I just got backed for $1,000 to play 25nl to see how I can do. I think this is great because I can refocus on the fundamentals and work my way up the proper way and learn bankroll management along the way. It is definitely a weird feeling playing with someone else’s money, but it will keep me more disciplined. I am playing on texasholdem.com and started around the 1st of October. So far I am down 7 buy ins from a combination of playing too loose and getting sucked out on in huge pots (relatively speaking). A friend of mine got me to tighten up a bunch and that has helped a lot. I was just overthinking for the level of play here and I have to realize that most of the players here just play their own cards and are not thinking players. I’ve only logged about 5k hands so far and this is only the beginning. I can’t wait to see how I do.
Later bitches…