I wanted to write this blog post to get this stuff out of the way. I think for the past few years I’ve spent too much time harping on things from the past that I can’t change. So as sort of a theraputic release, I’m going to post all the things I wish I’d done differently in my poker career and put it all behind me and move on.
1) I wish I would have started out with a bigger bankroll. When I first started playing for a living three years ago after graduating college, I had no more than 3k to my name.
2) I wish I started playing online fulltime a lot sooner. I was basically a live 1/2 NL grinder for somewhere around 2 1/2 years. I missed out on sooo much money and soo many opportunities by playing live. I think my game has gotten 1000 times better in the past 7 or 8 months that I’ve been playing online. I feel like I sort of stunted my growth.
3) I wish I would have put in a lot more hours and spent less money in those 2 1/2 years of live play. During this time period, I had every opportunity to build a big bankroll and put money away to pay for bills. I lived rent free and had little to no financial worries. Instead of building a nice roll, I’d spend my money on lots of stupid things and actually ended up in a ton of debt somehow. I’d play like 15 hours a week or less sometimes and make just enough to get by and keep my BR at 3k. When I had a bad streak here and there I’d borrow money which is debt that I am still repaying now.
4) I wish that in December of 2006 when I chopped the Trump Classic tournament for 15k, I didn’t go out and pretty much spend it all. I bought a brand new car which I put 5k down on. Had to pay back about 3k to friends and then went to Chicago, Vegas for the Five Diamond, and Tampa Bay all in a two week span, buying my plane tickets as I went. By the end of January 07 I was borrowing money again.
5) I covered this already a bit but I wish I didn’t make so many poor financial situations in the past 5-6 years. I put myself in pretty steep credit card debt throughout college never really thinking about the future. I have a ridiculous amount of monthly bills that I pay now and hope to be debt free (besides big purchases like a house) within the next 5 years. These poor financial decisions have caused me to have to be staked and give away half my winnings which makes it pretty much impossible to build a bankroll or put away money for future months bills.
6) I wish I had won a big race where I had AK vs. JJ for a big pot with 7 people left in the Harrahs’ WSOP circuit prelim event in December 2007. That hand is probably the hand I remember most vividly from the past three years and I believe it to be the hand that cost me the most $ equity wise. It was particularly painful because 1) the remaining players were pretty weak and I feel like if I had won that pot I’d likely finish first or second which would mean an additonal 35 or 48k. 2) The door card was an Ace and the flop came AKJ which was a little brutal. This is one where there is nothing I could have done to change the result but it is still one of those things that I think about too much.
7) Last but not least, I wish I had started playing HUNL online a lot sooner than I did. I like where I am at now and I have a ton of room to improve. I also wish I had starting watching training videos a lot sooner and really discussing important hands with some of my poker friends. I think I am now a student of the game and I work really hard on my game much more than I ever have before.
Now that I got all that off my chest, I feel like I can move on and put all of it behind me. I can’t change what has happened in the past but I can make sure I don’t repeat the same mistakes.
Tre