I’m a poker player. Above anything else that I could identify as, no single label could better describe my life, my personality, my outlook, my desires. In no community do I feel more at home, and I only have a handful of friends who don’t come from the poker world. Reality, and life in general is just…different with poker as your foundation. Our culture, our norms and our experiences as professional poker players are unique, and to various degrees, define us as individuals. I don’t shy away from that label of “poker player” at all – I love the game, and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to play poker – a game! – for a living, and being able to compete on the highest levels in tournaments is something I’ve derived a ton of pleasure and pride from in my life.

One of the things that I think is universally liked about poker is that the game is open to anyone. If you’ve got the cash, we’ve got a seat open. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, Christian, Jewish, a woman, physically disabled, a foreigner, a felon, or smell terrible, we’ll make room for you at the not-necessarily-proverbial table and let you play. Everyone comes in on an equal playing field, getting the same cards, the same chips, and left alone to make their own decisions. It’s a cutthroat world, but the waters are open to anyone who wants to swim. This universal acceptance/open invitation is sort of the centerpiece of poker – it’s a major reason we had a boom in 2003 after Moneymaker’s win at the WSOP ‘proved’ “anyone can do it, all you have to do is play.” Maybe it’s because of that cornerstone of acceptance, maybe it isn’t, but our community is pretty tolerant overall (maybe it’s more indifferent than tolerant). Bottom line, it really doesn’t matter who you are, or what you do; barring some truly awful behavior that usually has to do with a long-time abuse of the community’s trust, you’ll be accepted, or at worst, begrudgingly allowed in. It takes something pretty messed up to be truly ostracized from the poker community as a whole (the only person I can think of is Russ Hamilton of UB superuser fame, and the Full Tilt top guys will definitely make the list if players don’t get repaid).

Of all the diversity and variety that the poker world contains, though, there is a noticeable lack of openly gay poker professionals. Vanessa Selbst is a top tier player, a brilliant woman and an amazing person, but other than her, I’ve never met a single gay professional poker player, nevermind a high profile one. There’s plenty of speculation – Daniel Negreanu, Tom Dwan, and a few other big name players who are actually very straight have received plenty of attention from the gossip forums as being potentially gay for having a few mannerisms simply perceived that way.

They’re not gay, though, and no man who is a well-known pro in poker is open about it. I’m not quite sure why exactly that is, and of course everyone is entitled to be as open as they want to be about their personal lives, but for there to be zero high-profile openly not-straight men in poker seems…bad. Archaic. Reflective of a community that isn’t open to all, when we actually are one of the most open communities in existence. Maybe it’s not because of something unique to poker, and it’s just a relic of the old-school mentality when the world’s default mindset was at best “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but, come on, it’s 2012. Whatever the reason… zero??

I’ve struggled with how to discuss this, with how to balance my desire for privacy with the fact that I do want to be myself publicly – and the fact that I think it’s overdue for a guy to be open about it in poker. I’m no Daniel Negreanu, the royalty of real talk, but I do pride myself on saying what I think and simply being who I am; but I suppose you could say in the past being “truly myself” has come with a bit of an asterisk. Privately, amongst friends, I can say I’ve been doing that for some amount of time – but publicly, and in poker, that hasn’t completely been the case. I haven’t exactly always been where I am now, though, and haven’t really been ready to share my story publicly. Privacy reasons excepted, that won’t be the case any more.

2011 was an amazing year for me. Although I was fortunate enough to win an event at WSOP, 2011 was key for me because it was transformative. At 24, I finally came to embrace the seemingly basic concept that happiness should come before most other priorities, an idea it seems many of us poker players struggle with for some reason. Ever since I left college at 19 to pursue poker professionally, pretty much every morning (read : afternoon) I woke up and said “how can I make the most money possible today?” – and that’s what I did. When I felt lonely, or unhappy, or depressed, I did what I could to feel better; but for the most part, I made few actual changes and mostly just returned to the status quo of the grind. After Black Friday (my birthday, by the way) and the shutdown of online poker, I suddenly wasn’t able to do that any more. Being unable to tunnel-vision focus on making money, real-life things finally kind of caught up with me.

By the time WSOP 2011 came around, I had already begun to want real change, and once WSOP passed I had a few important heart-to-hearts with some very close friends and my mindset finally started to actually change. I decided I wasn’t going to focus on making decisions that were in my best financial interest, I was going to focus on making decisions based on how they’d impact my happiness – without making excuses. The obstacles that I had always created for myself – what if this, what if that – I put aside, and began making changes instead.

I had put it off for a long time. I always knew I wasn’t straight, but I never spoke a word of it for twenty two years, and nobody really ever knew otherwise. I dated women exclusively through my teens and early 20s, doing my best to convince myself that it wasn’t something I had to pursue, that maybe I’d grow out of it, that I’d be happier with women anyway, that I just should focus on other things. After a lot of struggling and a lot of anxiety, I eventually came out to one of my close friends when I was 22. That same year, the second and third people I came out to were my parents (probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done), from which I basically received the not-exactly-what-I-needed reaction of “keep it to yourself, don’t tell anyone.” I told very few people from then until I was 24 (by the way, my parents are way better now).

I was lucky enough to come out to a few close friends who were very encouraging. My closest friends are amazing people that I all love dearly and they were crucial in my growth from then til now. I remember, two years ago, accidentally verbalizing “that guy [on tv] is pretty cute” to one of my friends. Even though I had already come out to him, I was instantly petrified – it was the first time I had really said something like that out loud (at 22!) – and although I remember the anxiety very well I also clearly recall the flood of relief I felt when he simply laughed afterwards. Whether serious or lighthearted, that sort of positive encouragement from my friends over the past two years helped me greatly along my path to finding myself and “living my truth,” as a (slightly overly) philosophical friend likes to put it.

I didn’t actually make a gay friend until June of 2011, when I was 24. That helped a lot with being able to understand/express myself and not quite feeling so…isolated. Before then, I never really tried to make any gay friends or relationships. I would consider taking action, but before anything actually happened, I’d find or fabricate excuses to not be open or aggressive about it. I told myself to be afraid of the poker world finding out somehow and outing me and having some “disaster” roll out because of it. I was worried that no matter what I ever accomplished or did, I’d be labeled “that gay poker player” above all else, and it would be a title of shame. I feared that I’d lose friendships that meant a lot to me, that I’d ring a bell that could never be unrung and I’d be miserable, somehow. It took me a long time to mostly get over all those somewhat irrational anxieties (fingers crossed!) and to truly start being myself, regardless of what that might mean or look like to others.

As 2011 continued on, and my mindset became more focused on being happy, I pushed myself to make the changes I wanted. I started being more and more open, telling more and more people, and eventually started dating. I became more empowered by the growing personal freedoms I felt as I increasingly was just myself by default, less and less often censoring my thoughts, desires, and feelings. The small personal ‘victories’ piled up, I gained a lot of forward momentum, and the positive changes started to snowball…and here we are now, writing this post. I’m totally open in my personal life, in an amazing relationship that means a great deal to me, and bottom line, I’m honestly happier now than I’ve ever been.

I’m not planning on being much different. If you’ve interacted with me before, you pretty much know who I am, and there probably won’t be many differences in the future. Like I said, I’m just a poker player, after all, and being attracted to guys doesn’t change that. Still, though, for myself and as a member of the poker community, I felt this was important to share – to both allow me to openly/completely be myself in the poker world and maybe to make it easier for others to be themselves, too, if they want to be. Real talk.

edited to add : a lot of people have been trying to get in touch with me in various ways, best way by a mile is on twitter @JasonSomerville.

The past three years I’ve been very lucky to have visited a ton of cool places with a lot of awesome people.  Browsing through some of my old folders, inspired by BJ Nemeth’s awesome photography work, I felt like it would be cool to share some of my personal photos and memories in a post. All these were taken by me with my iPhone.

Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure, Nassau, Bahamas, January 2009. My first time there, I went with some longtime friends prior to the actual tournament and had a great time. One of my favorite stops on the tour.

Monte Carlo, Monaco, May 2009. Absolutely the most gorgeous place I’ve ever been. Me and Eric “Sheets” Haber flew in to Nice, France, and then took a helicopter across the Mediterranean over to Monte Carlo. Ridiculously cool experience. The walk from the hotel to the casino itself was absolutely beautiful. The first picture is from the helicopter, the second one right off the helipad, the third from the room, the fourth from the walk to the tournament area. I had my biggest live cash to date in the main event here, a 19th for $67,600, losing AQ vs AT for a pile, ten in the window

E3 Expo, Los Angeles, California, June 2nd, 2009. During the WSOP, me, Andrew “wayrin” Hart, and Davis “StefanProdan” Bowen went to visit our friend Andres “evang” Odella, a developer for Naughty Dog of Uncharted fame. Although we were promised a hookup initially, getting in ended up costing $500 apiece to enter. Nice scam, evang.

Chipstack on Day 2 of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in the 5K NLHE event on June 9th, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV. I would go on to finish 45th in this event for my first 5-figure WSOP score, and later in this WSOP finish 2nd and 5th in two other events.

July 11th, 2009, Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV for UFC 100. An amazingly sick card and a super fun night with the freshly crowned WSOP HU Champion Leo Wolpert, the one and only Scott “mastrblastr” Seiver, and my good friend JC Alvarado. We all had tons of money on Brock, and upon his victory were probably the only ones within 25 feet really celebrating his win. At some point in the night, Scott got a brofist from Lyoto Machida and was insanely giddy for just about the next eleven months because of it.

October 24th, 2009, Bellagio, Las Vegas, NV. Pretty amazing view. It is here that I would finally be bold enough to win the Blue Diamond Almond Player of the day…

…resulting in that, about a month later. One of my favorite blogs I’ve ever written was about the whole almonds thing. Check it out.

January 12th, 2010, back at PCA in Bahamas. The second picture is the view from Daniel’s balcony, who was kind enough to let me and my friend stay with him for the latter half of our trip.

April 6th, 2010, at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT. My good friend Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy would go on to get 7th here, that’s really all I remember about that trip.

June 12th, 2010, South Point Casino in Las Vegas, NV. Bowled with PumpyTudors. Best day of my life. That is all.

My chip stack on July 12th, 2010, at the Rio in Las Vegas in the WSOP Main Event. I had a good WSOP overall, getting a 3rd in the heads-up and a 4th in the 25K 6max. I made it on ESPN for busting Barry Greenstein in the main, but wasn’t able to make it past 300th or so.

August 7th, 2010 at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California for Silva vs Sonnen, UFC 117. Front row seats to an awesome card. Also had the fun experience of being patted down rougher than I’ve ever been in my life, including being checked for an ankle holster. Stay classy, Oakland. I got a high five from the future heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos after his win which was pretty damn awesome.

November 2nd, 2010, Foxwoods, CT. My good friend Jeff Forrest shipped a WPT with me, his dad, and Joey Fatone of NSYNC fame cheering him on. Such an awesome day. There is I believe only just one short clip on the internet of me and Joey Fatone doing the flop-a-set-of-fours dance. Enjoy.

December 1st, 2010, Turning Stone Casino, Verona, NY. Went with some friends, got snowed in, lost a bunch online. Good times.

January 12th, 2011, Bahamas. Apparently that’s the most photogenic of places I visit.

April 1st, 2011, Dallas, Texas. Sweating my good friend Andre “Gretorp” Hengchua playing his match in a Major League Gaming Starcraft 2 tournament. Really crazy atmosphere, SC2 has such an awesome fanbase. I’m jealous.

May 12th, 2011, Aria Casino, Las Vegas, NV. Daniel was nice enough to let me sweat him as he played some mixed games in Ivey’s room.

May 26th, 2011, Aria Casino, Las Vegas, NV. This was my seat for the 25K WSOP Fantasy Draft. I’ve never been in room of such sick, sick action junkies before. Felt right at home

May 27th, 2011, north shore of Long Island, somewhere. Just thought it was a really nice view. If there was only a lighthouse in the distance it would pretty much be Long Island in a photograph.

Rio Hotel and Casino, June 15th, 2011, I won my first WSOP bracelet. Good times

Apparently I need to be taking more photos since this was pretty cool to go through. Hope you guys enjoyed!

While at the WSOP, I had several opportunities to play in some rather interesting home games. Over the summer, I played holdem, plo, pineapple, three-card holdem, 5 and 6 card plo, pot limit badugi double draw, pot limit stud (starting with 4 cards), chinese, and a few other even stranger games for just an orbit here and there. Being that I surround myself with a group of truly sick gamblers, I feel it’s likely that I’ve played in some of the biggest games ever spread of the more rare variants listed (at one point in the summer I opened to $5000 utg with KxKs5s in pineapple, no joke). I’m absolutely not even close to rolled for games that big and never really have before.  I broke a few personal records over the summer in these games, including some bad ones like  playing my longest non-break session ever (only 20hrish), biggest losing day ever (first time I lost 6-figures in a day), almost following that up by almost losing almost the same amount a few days later before pulling back to even.

Of all the games we played, one game was played by far most frequently and it might not be one you are familiar with – Taiwanese poker.  Although many people on twitter have taken credit for creating it, these various claims are all so unconnected that I have no idea who to believe.  All I know is over the course of the summer we developed the game from the rough outline we had learned about into a pretty concrete format with a bunch of alternative deviations and things that I thought would be cool to share.

The basics of the game are easy. Everyone is dealt 7 cards, and from those cards, sets a 1-card (highcard), 2-card (holdem), and a 4-card omaha hand (similar to chinese in this way). You can either slowroll your opponents or table your hand pre-flop, but in any case, a board is run out.  Initially, we kept the scoring like chinese – everyone matching up to everyone else – but it really, really slows the game down, especially 4+handed, and eventually we decided to just let whatever hand that reigned supreme over the same-game hands would simply scoop. We also added a tiered payout base – 1unit for the front, 2units for the middle, 3units for the back hand, a 2unit scoop bonus (2 tier-2 holdem level points) and a royalty system (these are additional, not total payouts):

A quick example hand:

At this point, a board would be run out…

For the front hand, the pair of jacks wins 1 point (let’s say the base unit is $100) so $100 apiece to player 2.
For the middle hand, the dueces full wins for player 3, and he also wins the FH bonus for an 2 points.  The holdem hand is worth a base of $200, with a 2unit bonus, netting that player $600 from each opponent.
For the back hand, the full house from player 1 wins ($300 base unit payout) and a 1-point bonus for $600 apiece paid to him.

We tested some other variants – doing it all even payouts (1unit for all 3) but that makes it too easy to play optimally, running multiple boards (fun, more action, we do 2x or 3x almost always), adding a 4th badugi hand that wasn’t affected by the board (to appease certain similarly-named-to-me ).  I think there’s potential for adding natural hands (7-straight, 5flush-2flush, maybe 3pair?) and the royalty system probably still needs more tweaks to be balanced, but even as is, I highly recommend it as it’s a lot of fun gambling game to add into a shorthanded home game.  Try it out and let me know if anyone develops any cool tweaks/variants!

P.S. thanks to Derk for the editing help!

With my personal WSOP at its end, only one big sweat remains : the conclusion of the 25K fantasy draft (alternatively here, and official standings here).  I’ve never participated in any sort of draft before this one and was worried that I’d make a bunch of dumb mistakes so I tried my best to prepare by doing a lot of research on players before the draft began.  The best decision made may have been splitting the team with my rungood and name brother Jason Mercier as we successfully powered a red-hot freight train of 8 people (well, 7 people), taking a sizeable lead with just one tournament left.

With just the main event remaining, here is the potential scoring to be won per finisher (tiny caveat: I’ve been wrong before, and remember, the draft pays out points based on the chips at the final table, not on the actual November Nine finishes):

1st: 236pts
2nd: 226pts
3rd: 216pts
4th: 206pts
5th: 196pts
6th: 186pts
7th: 176pts
8th: (15+68)*2 = 166pts
9th: (10pts+68pts)*2 = 156pts
10th-18th : (5pts+68pts (field bonus)) *2 = 146pts
19th-693rd : 2 pts

Huge, 144 point bubble here between 19th and 18th (the average team right now has 324.5 points total).  Taking a look at the current leaderboard (courtesy of www.25Kfantasy.com),

Theoretically, nobody is out, as even Shchemelev could win with enough multiple final table finishes from his team, but more reasonably, let’s look at what it would take for a single enemy draft member to push us from the lead (assuming our team bricks).  Erick’s team is 199 points behind and needs a 4th or better, Todd’s is 211 points behind, needing a 3rd or better, and Bord’s is 232 behind and would need a 1st to win.  All other teams would need at least two top 18 finishes, which would net a minimum of 292 points (although two 10th-18ths alone would only be enough to push mastr/ZJ’s team into 1st).  There are a ton of sidebets, and with a total of 4 spots officially paying ($225k/$93.75k/$37.5k/$18.75k), plenty of the other teams might have a sweat if someone in the middle of the pack starts a deep run.

Being that I don’t have much else to do these days and with no online poker on the horizon I have very little gambling to look forward to for awhile, so I’ll be enjoying my last decent-sized sweat by keeping a close eye on this.  I’ll update this again with chip standings and a clearer picture of any potential close calls as the WSOP main event progresses.

The last few months have been pretty unusual.  Typically, I fill my time with poker, both online cash and live tournaments – but this hasn’t been the case at all in 2011.  Since PCA, I haven’t played much poker or traveled, staying outside the whole poker scene in general.  I needed a break after the super grind of late 2010 and this blog was a neglected victim of that break.  I’m happy I finally finished the origins post and I’m glad it seems to have turned out pretty well as a whole project.

In 2011, I’ve turned my attention towards a few different new projects outside of poker, one of which is taking up a heavy focus on UFC sportsbetting.  I really enjoy it and feel like I have a pretty big edge (an important part of the equation, I hear).  I have finally got the equipment here that I can do videoblogs with fight breakdowns a day or so before events with my picks, which would be great if not for the fact that there’s only one UFC event in the next 6 weeks.  March was a great month for sportsbets -  I broke a bunch of personal records for how much action I had on both single events and single fights and was lucky enough to scoop many of them, going 17-5 and winning 13.5u overall, putting me at 49-19 and +29.2u since I started keeping track at UFC 117 in August.  Not enough to have a significant sample, but a good start.

In addition to UFC sportsbetting, my other new project that I’ve been gladly pouring time into is my first venture into e-sports.  I’ve been a longtime fan of Starcraft and have been active in Starcraft 2 since beta, spending many nights in the past year watching GSLs and such enjoying the skills and talents displayed by the top-end players.  In trying to learn to be a better player myself, I found the lack of comprehensive resources somewhat frustrating and realized how awesome it would be to gather not just the best players in the game but also the best instructors in a one-stop top of the line site for Starcraft training, a la Cardrunners or PokerVT.  From this idea, Six Pool Gaming (SPG) was born.  The plans took flight as I was quickly able to put together an amazing team of administrators and players who shared in this vision which is rapidly approaching reality.

Between conception to now, I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting a variety of players and leaders in the e-sports industry.  I’m lucky to have a few of these people onboard or in a partnership with Team SPG, dedicating their time and energy to a project that we are working hard on to produce the best possible product for the ultimate benefit and enjoyment of the community and hopefully the entire e-sports scene.  The staff and instructors are intelligent, well-spoken and motivated individuals and I’m honored to work beside them and beyond that to call a few of them friends.  It’s definitely surreal to go from a fanboy on the internet to being in partnership with some of my SC2 heroes, and seeing the SPG patches and hats out and about at MLG came with a pretty strong feeling of pride and accomplishment – it’s pretty atypical in my line of work to be able to find such a neat project that you actually have a passion for and building it has been amazing.

MLG Dallas was my first chance to meet many of the people I’d been working with for months now online.  After being shocked at how few flights flew from New York to Dallas nonstop (and it was like 2k, admittedly last minute but still), I ended up on a mediocre airtran flight and got in early Thursday morning.  That evening, I met up with some of the SPG team for our second photoshoot.  Some of the SPG team members there included Team Dignitas’ Sjow, Select, and Zaccubus, Team Fnatic’s Gretorp and Xeris, and Team Liquid’s Ret.  Here’s a video and some photos from the shoot:

The photoshoot went great, it took awhile but in the end we had something north of 1000 photos taken.  After we finished, everyone was pretty exhausted and called it a night to rest for MLG day 1 on Friday.

This was my first MLG and I wasn’t really sure how it would be.  Once I got to the convention center, the best way I can describe it is like a mix between a poker tournament and E3, with all the organization of neither.  I’m pretty sure nobody knew exactly how the brackets worked, people just played their matches and waited to hear their name get called hopefully at some point not too far in the future.  Also at MLG were Halo and Call of Duty matches which really only influenced the event as far as I was concerned by lowering the average age to high teens instead of the 20something crowd that the Starcraft field most consisted of.  It also felt very strange to be on the business side of a tournament for once and not a player.  Pretty major role reversal for me.

One thing that struck me as odd were how many spectators there were, even on day 1.  It was a pretty impressive turnout all in all.   Another surprise was that in all my years being friends and all with Daniel Negreanu and watching him get approached by fans every so often did not come close to the amount of fan interaction that I witnessed some of the SC pros experience.  It was pretty cool to see the fanbase so passionate and that the pros were almost all down-to-earth people who had no problem engaging with the fans.

I met a ton of awesome people over the days at MLG.  I quickly realized I had to switch from my 7-year long default greeting in poker of “Hey I’m Jason/JCarver,” to “Hey I’m Jason Somerville from Six Pool Gaming,” which felt admittedly uncomfortably professional for a little while.

Our team pro Select ended up getting 3rd, a great finish, and there were several other impressive runs and great games played by our pros.

Here are a few photos from MLG :

It was definitely a unique trip and it was a ton of fun.  It felt like I was visiting a cousin’s house or something, like some sort of bizarro poker world – same sort of age range, same sort of fluent specific-to-the-game language, same super competitive game and personalities, and I was a businessman almost nobody knew instead of a player, haha.  I had a great time and wish all my SC2 friends weren’t so far flung across the world since a lot of them are pretty awesome people (another unfortunate similarity with poker).  Anyway, I’ll have the chance to see everyone again soon enough – I’m going to be next on the road again for a few poker tournaments but there is some cool real-life SPG business to be done soon enough

P.S.  If you want to follow SPG for updates and stuff :

Six Pool Gaming

http://www.facebook.com/#!/SixPoolGaming

http://twitter.com/sixpoolgaming

and to complete my whoredom, my own twitter is http://twitter.com/#!/JasonSomerville

Well, it’s obviously been more than a few weeks to finish this.  Sorry for the wait!  I’ve wanted to get this finally revised, updated, and published and just got around to it today.  If you’re just joining me, these origin posts are a slightly updated series of posts I wrote originally for SomethingAwful chronicling my first two years starting out in poker back in 2006 when I was 19.

Hope you guys enjoy…

Parts 1-3
Parts 4 and 5
Parts 6 and 7

Part VIII : In Sickness…

September 2005 through the middle of October was relatively boring and not very memorable. My tournament dry spell continued, losing a total of a few grand there.  I did manage to win nearly $8000 playing 3/6 NLHE during this period though, so it wasn’t all bad. My first WCOOP came and went with no success. Tournaments didn’t really go well for me for a decent amount of my early career [honestly, not until after I wrote this originally in 2006].  Also in September of ‘05 I started my first semester at a second college which distracted me from playing too much poker.

Chuck and I divorced our roll completely in the beginning of September when he moved to Cornell. There was absolutely no ill will towards eachother, but I remember feeling like we had sort of different priorities and he wasn’t really working as much as I was on his game [in the past years, I've stayed friendly with Chuck as he has pursued his academic career - but he never really returned to poker].  Between the split of the bankroll and the lack of winning in the summer my roll was under 10k for the first time since the spring.

When I got back from Turning Stone, I checked out Bodog’s games. The shorthanded games looked soft, but I had no idea how to play shorthanded at the time – and they were mostly $5/$10 games. I didn’t have the roll at that point to play $5/$10 [but I did apparently have some bankroll management, surprise surprise].  I decided to wait on Bodog for the time being.

My pokerhands from the period (and before, as I skipped it last time) are pretty much just large pots I won as ridiculous favorites or got sucked out on in dramatic fashion and don’t really contain much in the way of strategy.

Hand 1
http://www.pokerhand.org/?134207

This hand is pretty standard, looking back, but was probably the beginning of me consciously realizing that one of the biggest ways to make money in NL cash games was to crack big pairs when people couldn’t fold them [being that I never folded them either, I'm pretty sure reciprocality had the last laugh here]. Preflop hand strength just wouldn’t matter if you flopped two pair and took the guy on the busto trolley to frown town when he couldn’t lay it down.

Hand 2
http://www.pokerhand.org/?121865

Coolers are awesome. I remember this hand specifically [still do, but holy hell how bad is that hand played], and I especially recall how bothered I was by losing this hand at the time for some reason.  I remember there was a railbird asking me for five dollars who I was for some reason chatting with even though I surely had no intention of giving money to.  “Her” affections immediately swung to the KK guy after I lost the hand OH HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN INDEED.

The other oh so earthshattering event to happen between 9/1 and 10/30 is that I started writing the “legendary” Spicy System ( http://archives.somethingawful.com/…hreadid=1687006 ) which can now be found on http://spicebox.badbeatscrew.com/ although that only has the REDUX version from months later.  [I moved the link from thespicebox.net to the newer one, but I'm sure if the file is up it is probably only good for laughs at this point]

In the middle of October, I came down with a very bad illness which the doctor only referred to as a “highly contagious bacterial infection” in my throat.  Great. I couldn’t eat, drink, swallow, or breathe, without my throat hurting so bad it was similar to swallowing razor blades.   Cool, right?!  I came down with this on a Monday and with the doctor’s promise that I wouldn’t be contagious with quick antibiotics decided that it was still worth driving 6+ hours (in the pouring rain, even!) to go to Turning Stone for the East Coast Championships on a Wednesday.   I bet my parents wished back then I had that sort of dedication to anything “constructive”.  I went to TS, picking up my one and only live cash there to date (other than the 2k satellite win in the summer), putting me in the LIVE AWESOME INTERNET DATABASE OF HUGE WINNERS ! [I only have one live cash for $451 in a $200 event until Nov of 06.  this link is obviously more a brag than a beat at this point ]

While I was at Turning Stone, going through literally shot glasses of Tylenol, 20+ lozenges per 3 hours of tournament play, and only eating hot dogs, my throat slowly got better. The antibiotic I was on was extremely powerful and did a good job, maybe even too good of a job, and I was better within a few weeks.

When I got back from Turning Stone, memories of my August trip resurfaced and I went back and checked out Bodog one more time. I threw a few thousand there on a whim and within 15 days of playing there, ran my balance up to over $10000 thanks to cash games. I didn’t play shorthanded, really – I stuck with the full games.  Eventually, though, as the full games broke into shorter games, I started staying.  I began to gain experience playing 2-4 handed, something I never got at Pacific or Party, and found myself enjoying the ability to be a little more creative and put more pressure on opponents.  I won nearly $10,000 in the last 15 days of October (compared to a the $4.5k from the 45 days before that) and had started pulling out of my summer stagnation. I began to settle into Bodog as the new home of most of my play.

Some graphs from the period (9/1-10/30):
Total Earnings

Earnings By Location

Total Earnings to Date – August 04 – Oct 05

I had not, in fact, forgotten about my $100k goal by the end of the year.   At this point, quite honestly, I thought it was pretty unattainable, especially with the volume I’d been playing.  I thought there was a better chance of me reaching my goal by my birthday in April, which honestly probably was still fairly unreasonable.  But with Bodog quickly working out so well for me, maybe there would be a shot for the last 2 months…

Part IX : …and In More Sickness…

I continued playing primarily Bodog cash games in November.   I moved up to playing $5-$10 NL games as much as I could – even during my breaks at school, and eventually, in class. I earned all my profit for this segment of my career on Bodog. The first half of November was pretty good – I was winning money, enjoying life, and happy all around.

I went shopping with a friend of mine and his younger brother in early-mid November.  This is the first day I remember feeling gastrointestinal problems. I’m going to glaze over most of the details here. If you’re a close friend of mine, you probably know already, or had the opportunity to know, all the details.  If you’re not a close friend of mine, trust me, you don’t want to know anyway.   As November moved on, I rapidly developed moderate gastrointestinal issues, rendering me unable to eat normally, sleep, or do anything really but deal with awful digestive system problems.

After I first got sick and realized that it wasn’t simple food poisoning, I go back to see the general doctor. This doctor told me that my symptoms that had developed were simply a reaction to the strong antibiotics from my infection in October.   I took anti-antibiotics for a week or so which did me no good.  My condition worsened. Thanksgiving passed with me eating a bagel up in my bed – that’s just all I could digest without massive pain.  With all the scheduling issues because of the holiday, I was forced to wait a decent while to see the specialist doctor.  Not a fun time.

I finally end up seeing the second doctor, a coldhearted bastard with no sense of sympathy or passion about him (but an effective gastroenterologist).  He saw me for maybe ten minutes before telling me I’d have to get a colonoscopy.  Awesome. I began to prep for the colonoscopy that weekend (the worst part of the whole procedure, by far.   Imagine having to drink shots of the most foul saline solution ever on a stomach that can’t digest anything. I spent two days miserable) and eventually, the day of the colonoscopy came – the Monday after in early December.

I am leaving out most of the gory details, but I don’t want to understate just how sick I was in November and December.  It’s not like I was at death’s door or anything – maybe just the front lawn, if I was trying to be really dramatic.  Even so, I felt extremely awful, and really, truly appreciate everyone who showed me support during the time I was sick. It’s funny how your priorities change when you feel unsure when or if you’ll be able to live a normal life again. The smallest gestures of kindness, compassion, and concern were amplified a hundredfold in my eyes while I was sick.   It still means a lot to me, looking back.

Poker was the last thing on my mind. I played, very rarely (I couldn’t sit – or sleep – for more than an hour without having to go to the bathroom), but I played poker more than I went to school, that’s for sure. I had very understanding teachers who somehow helped me still get a ridiculously good grade for the semester (one of the teachers even had UC – talk about understanding).

The day of the colonoscopy I was feverish, hallucinating, unable to stand on my own two feet for more than 10 seconds, famished (I was 130 pounds at the time of the procedure, down from 155, in under a month of sickness), and extremely worried that something would go wrong.  Fast forward a few hours and I was positively diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. Ulcers had developed in my colon that were causing fairly major bleeding and irregular digestion. There’s no known cause for UC, unless it’s hereditary (mine isn’t).  I was prescribed Prednizone, 8 of them (40mg), a day. It’s some sort of anti-inflammatory steroid that I stopped taking as soon as the active symptoms stopped.  Eventually, by mid-December, I had mostly recovered.  The doctor added a second drug, Asacol, which is basically time-delayed aspirin, meant to preserve remission. They’re 500mg pills and I take 12 of them a day. I still do – and will for a long time, or so says the new doctor (who is a gambler!). [I end up getting sick again a year after this, but really not since then.  I'm only on a few pills a day now of a different drug and feel fine 99% of the year, thankfully.]

Having not played much poker, there’s not a ton to say about this period. I lost a nice $4,000 in two hours 3-tabling on Bodog before I got sick, one of my most ego-crushing defeats ever – and my biggest loss to date. After I got better, or at least during recovery, I had a session where I won $3,171.50 at $5-$10 on Bodog, one of my biggest non-tournament wins ever. That win was helpful in repairing my somewhat rusty confidence/ego.   I played very few tournaments during this period as I there was just no way I’d be capable of a lengthy, scheduled game at that point.  I did make my first small deposits into Fortune in the middle of December – and even though I ended up losing that money quickly, the games were amazing and I was definitely interested in playing there more often.

By December 17th I was pretty much recovered.  In my sick haze, I had been so overdramatically sure that I’d be sick the rest of my life, nevermind for Christmas, that being healthy felt like an amazing miracle.  I had been resigned to my fate that I wouldn’t make $100,000 by the end of the year. I didn’t even care. I had survived a pretty awful bout of sickness and felt a renewed sense of direction and purpose in the time after.  I was happy to just be able to live a normal life and to be able to choose exactly how I wanted to spend my days, a perspective that poker synergizes with very nicely.

Some graphs from the period of 11/1/05 through 12/17/05:

Earnings by Date. I don’t play for awhile at the height of my sickness.

Earnings by Location. Bodog is the only place I show a profit at during this period.

Total Earnings for this period.

Career Earnings. My bankroll is probably around $20,000-$25,000 by the end of the period.

Hmmm, you say? Why would JCarver end this segment on such a strange date as 12/17? Why not just go to the new year? THERE SURELY MUST BE A REASON!

A reason exists indeed!

Part X : …and in HEALTH! (finally!)

Being sick sucks. Being really sick really sucks. Thrilled to be done with school, healthy enough to consistently gamble, and slightly pissed I wasn’t closer to $100,000, I started gambling with a fury. Once I found out that I wasn’t going to die from the colitis, my mind began focusing a lot more on poker.

December 18th was my first big tournament that I’d played in awhile. I believe it was a $600 buyin $300k guarantee on Interpoker. I finished 7th for a $7,841 profit, my biggest win to date, and I was happy with the finish as I was shortstacked for a long time. Soon after, on the 22nd, I won a tournament on Bodog for a smooth $4500.

As this was all happening, I finally redeposited into Fortune. Fortune had lots of bad players, or so I had heard, but I had never really explored the site on my own.  Scotsman kept pushing me to deposit, teasing me with tales of crazy europeans, and eventually my deposit stuck – I finally started winning. I never looked back, and Fortune became a goldmine for me. I began the biggest heater I’d ever been on and started simultaneously crushing the games at Bodog and Fortune. By Christmas of 2005, in little over a week, I won $14,600.  I was thrilled.   I was healthy, winning, and felt like I was back in a big way, loving every second of it. My career earnings exploded to over $50,000 with 6 days left in the year.

Even though I was winning tons and feeling great, I was still pretty sure it was extremely unlikely that I’d win 50k by the end of the year. I was just happy I had been winning any money at all, and honestly being healthy was all that really mattered at the time.   At that point, I didn’t think I’d get close to my 100k mark by the end of the year and planned to fill early 2006 with as much poker as I could to try to reach my goal.  Lady Luckbox, though, had other plans in mind.  I started pillaging the $5-$10 games on Fortune, Party, and Bodog – in unison. I was playing awesome poker and getting lucky when I needed to on top of that. In the final 6 days of December 2005, I won slightly under $25,000 without any tournament play whatsoever.

By the end of the year, I didn’t hit $100k. I was pretty fucking close, though. My career earnings totaled $75,000 by the close of 2005. I moved up to $10-$20 NL on Party and Fortune. I ran good there too, and so my heater continued. I was going to post pokerhands from before the new year, but mostly its “JCarver flops a set vs an overpair, clicks ‘call all in’, and what a shocker, wins $5k.” I was determined to win $100k as close to 1/1/06 as possible, even after technically missing the goal by the New Year.

The night of New Year’s Day, I was playing some €10-€20 game on Fortune, heads-up.

I pick up A 9, 3-handed. I have €2500 and the villain has just slightly less than that. He raises to €60, and I call.

The flop comes A Q 2. He bets €120 and I call.

The turn is a 6. No help. He again bets €400. I see no reason to fold and call.

The river is a 7. No obvious help other than the backdoor flush draw just hit. He pushes all-in for €1,825.46. I think..and think… and think. I went through my whole history with the guy, his prior betting patterns, everything, in my mind.  I took a deep breath, went with my read, and called.

He flipped 8 5 over and I won a €4800 pot, the biggest of my life at the time (pokerhand is here).  Winning this pot felt like the culmination of so many things, that finally everything came together in one huge, high stakes moment – trusting my instincts, using the available math, the reads I had gathered, and focusing it all into making the right decision.  I began to trust my instincts more and more, working on sharpening my skills and trying to become a LAG force at the tables.

I was dominating the cash games everywhere I played, and getting lucky when I got my money in behind. My favorite example from the period :

$10-$20 game on Party. BB is extremely lag and aggressive.

Button ($2417)
Hero ($2796)
BB ($4480.55)

I limp the SB with Q Q behind the button’s fold. I expect the villain to raise, as he always does. He does raise to $66 here and I just call. [lol.  lol.]

Flop: ($132) 6, 9, 3 (2 players)

I check. The BB bets $126, and I think a second before I raise to $326. He quickly reraises to $800. I think for a long time and determine his range here is a lot greater than a set – very likely air, A9, JJ, etc. I’m beating a ton here vs this guy, I think. I push all in for $2404, and he instantly calls the $1930.  [this is unmodified.  lol.]

Turn: ($5592) 8 (2 players)

River: ($5592) Q (2 players)

Final Pot: $5592

I did actually give an uncharacteristic little fistpump when the Q hit, as I wasn’t too sure I was ahead after his instacall. He flips KK and I take down a pretty huge pot. I can defend plays like this as +EV (villain here is ridiculously over-aggro and tilting at the time), but I got lucky in spots like this consistently in January and December.

In January, I keep on playing nonstop, making the most of my first real high stakes heater.   School was out since late December and thus my focus was totally on poker. I take some of the money I’ve earned and upgrade my gamble factory, adding new monitors and a big TV for the wall [I cannot find this picture ].

My family planned a cruise to the Caribbean for mid-January.  I was excited about maybe getting a chance to play live poker in the casino on the ship, but it ends up not having poker tables.  I didn’t let that stop me – all I wanted to do was play.  I end up spending a large percentage of my time on the cruise ship on my laptop paying $.35/minute for me to play poker on the internet.  Cool.  Somewhere in the waters off Mexico, on January 20th, 2006, I break $100,000 in earnings, thanks to this hand pushing me from $99,000 to $100,000.

By the end of January, I’ve earned over $120,000 from my initial $5. My bankroll is just slightly under $100,000 at this point as I haven’t spent much of it on anything but school, insurance, and the plasma + surround setup. I was just 20 days shy of making my goal.  I felt incredible, invincible, and so excited about what the future could bring.

All told, I won over $80,000 in that 45 day period from 12/17 to 1/31. I put in nearly 550 table hours during that time. And yes, I know, I was on a pretty awesome heater.  Party, Interpoker, Bodog and Fortune were the major contributors of money earned during this period.  I even won money at Pokerstars, a sure sign of the rapture.   While on the cruise in January, I wrote what would become the very first Spicebox file, my Heads-up Report vs Bubbles at [long gone ] and launch the original Spicebox with Addict, my own free-for-SomethingAwful poker training site.

Once I hit $100k, feeling like I could do anything [heaters are pretty good for that] my next goal was to hit $250k by the end of this year. Fairly easy considering the proportional difficulty of the $10k and $100k goals, right???

Some graphs from the period of 12/17/05 – 1/31/06:

Life Earnings til January 31



Period Earnings

Part XI :  Coolers and Heaters

In February, I finally slowed down the amount of play I had been putting in.  I diversified my interests a little, focusing on school and spending time with my friends more than I had in prior months.   I also started training in martial arts more seriously than I had been, even occasionally working out at the gym.  I pretty much broke even for February – it was a dull, boring, unmemorable month pokerwise.

Except for one night.

I start playing a guy at $10-$20 NL on fortune. We joust back and forth for a bit before he says “come to ₤10-₤20.” The guy seemed like a donkey, so away I went, playing higher than I ever had before.

The guy had a very interesting strategy for a heads up game. He raised every hand, preflop, without exception [I don't know if I meant this to be notable or not, but funny to read anyway]. He’d also call any reraise under a quarter of his stack.

The game was playing VERY big.  I quickly got stuck $6,000.  I gritted my teeth, determined to beat this guy, when the following hand came up.

I worked my stack back up to ₤3000. He has me covered.

I pick up J J. He raises, like he always does, to ₤60. I make it ₤200, and he calls.

Flop is 7 6 4. He checks, I bet ₤300, and he calls. His range here is huge. A-5, 7-K, a flush draw, a four, anything.

Turn is a T. He checks, I perhaps stupidly bet ₤600 here, and he pushes. I compound this stupidity by putting in the remaining ~₤2000.

The river is a 5 and he tables 7-7.  I had just lost a pot worth $10,700. The first $10k pot I had ever lost.  I remember thinking about how much money that was.  As far as the hand itself goes, I don’t know what I was doing in that hand.   I just wanted to beat this guy so bad I talked myself into ignoring logic and decided to go with the hand even though I was likely beaten.

Fortune had an insanely dumb $10k loss-nanny, so after that hand I was forcibly done with Fortune for the night. Being stuck a smooth $10k and not realizing that I was probably tilted and maybe trying to get unstuck was a bad idea, I headed over to party and fired up two NL2000 tables.

In typical JCarver fashion, I ran AWESOME. I had two stacks of $4000 very quickly. I repeatedly flopped top set vs overpairs and ended up busting people left and right.  In about an hour of play, I had $12,000 at two tables. I had rebought once or twice on each, but still, it was amazing. This hand showcases my night best :

I have $10,000 and the villain has $2,500.

Villain minraises to $40, and I call with A 4.

The flop is 2 3 5.  He bets $40 and I “debate” before making it $140. He calls.

The turn is a 5. He checks, I bet $250, and he calls.

The river is a 9. The action speaks for itself:

BET Lovedayr, $800
ALL-IN JCarver1 [ $9562.50 ]

Lovedayr: dude go fuc k yourself
FOLD Lovedayr
JCarver1 does not show cards.
JCarver1 wins $11221.50
Lovedayr has left the table.

All told that night I won $16,000 on party, making me actually up $6,000 or so for the 6 hour session.  Not a bad way to recover.

The next morning, I wake up to see an email from James, manager of Fortune poker:

“PLZ DONT KILL YOURSELF SONNY, SCOTSMAN FEEDS HIS CHILDREN WITH YOUR RAKE!” It was our first correspondance (only a welcoming letter was before this), so its not like I had any contact from him consistently.  Ahhh, James.  What an amazingly nice guy back in the day

The only other exciting poker thing that happened in February was that I won a Bodog tournament for a few thousand dollars. Nothing too dramatic. I lost a few thousand overall for the month, reasonable considering I didn’t play that many hours.

March was a rough month, but not in poker.  The short story is my girlfriend and I broke up and then she immediately hooked up with my best friend. Awesome, right?  Poker was pretty much the last thing on my mind for a few weeks while I immersed myself in drama.

To make myself feel better [read: engaging the spite machine], I decided to go buy a new car. Previously, I was driving my sweet sweet 2000 Sable LUXURY SEDAN, and decided the time had come to upgrade. I planned on only spending a total of $20,000 on the car but ended up blowing about double that on a [fairly obnoxious] 2005 350z convertible. Yes, it’s a manual, and yes, I learned how to drive stick on this car.

I lost $1000 or so in March over even less hours than what I put in in February. However, the most awesome achievement of my life occured when I met Unamuno in Turning Stone. I still haven’t bathed since.

Feb and March ‘06

Barely playing poker is cool and all, just so long you’re not hemorrhaging money when you do put in the few hours you play.

That was not the case in April.

In the first fifteen days of April, I lost $22,000, playing NL2k and 1k sporadically. I barely put any time in at the tables, but when I did, hoo boy, the money spewed out. Including the prior two months, I lost $30,000 or so at poker, $20,000 for the down payment for the car, and some tens of thousands on taxes. That’s a pretty nasty downswing for what was a ~$95,000 bankroll at its peak.

My confidence crashed. Between my two broken relationships, losing every time I touched a poker table, and the sheer amount of money that I had lost (I’m pretty much immune to “OH GOD -$XX,XXX!” but for some reason everything piled together amplified it so that it may as well have been a million that I lost), I was mentally very beaten down. My mother was thrilled. “THIS IS WHY YOU CANT DEPEND ON POKER, DONT YOU SEE! YOU NEED A SOLID JOB AND TO GO TO COLLEGE (which I do, if you haven’t read every update [ha gotem])”

This whole downswing thing hurt because not only was I not thinking rationally from the other drama, but because I had started thinking that I could really depend on poker for an income for the rest of my life. Those dreams were [temporarily] shattered in March-April.   I really didn’t know what I was going to do.

The other lesson I learned in this time is to not play poker when you’re already emotionally unstable. I was playing my B or C game, probably, AND when I lost, I wasn’t ready to deal with the natural swings of the game.  Bad mix.

I had no plans to play poker on my birthday. I had had enough of poker and made other plans far from a computer.  That morning, I woke up to the pleasant sound of my phone ringing.  It was a friend from karate wishing me a happy birthday. “Hah,” my drama-soaked depressed mind thought afterwards, “at least one person likes you. Lucky you.” My best friend was the next person to call me, and as the day went on, I heard from a surprising amount of people. It sounds silly to point to this as a reason for getting back on the horse, but all the birthday wishes were something of a shock to my system which ended up helping me feel like I was ready to start climbing up out of the hole that I had dug. That stubbornness to accept losses won out again and, like so many times before it, I was mentally pushing myself to play again – and hopefully, this time, win.

April 1-15

Part XII : The Future

At my low point, I had no more than $20,000 or so online, and had even moved down to NL600. Once school started winding down, though, I started really focusing on poker again. After my birthday, things just started to click. When I was playing good and running good, money started pouring from the sky.

I started destroying the 5-10 NL game, mostly on Fortune. I won tens of thousands of dollars from that game alone in May and June. As my bankroll steadily climbed from the $20k low point to $30k, $40k, $60k, I resumed taking shots at NL2000. My experiences in the downswing made me stronger, and I started killing the higher games. Fortune Poker becomes my, well, bitch/ATM, and I earn what is scientifically referred to as a “fuckton” of money between the end of April and July.

I start taking shots at NL5000 by early July. Within a week or so, I’m playing the game pretty regularly and doing well.

The villain from the $10k JJ/777 hand sits down in my $5K game one night. He’s actually a good player, and not the donkey I believed back in February. He’s definitely a maniac, though.

I pick up 8 8. The game is four handed and is very aggressive. The villain makes it $200 and I call.

The flop is 6 8 Q. The villain c-bets for $350. I fake debate for a moment before making it $850 straight.  Villain waits just a moment before pushing all-in for $3,500 more or so. I instacall.

The turn is a 2 and the river is a 2. He tables Q-J and I take down a pot worth $10,070.  Ah, sweet vengeance.  That was my first $10,000 hand that I won (I actually had lost another 10k pot at nl2k right around the first one, so I was 0-2 for $10k pots til this hand).

Over a 10-week period (4/15-7/01), I won almost $100,000. I didn’t have any big tournament wins, didn’t hit a lucky jackpot – I earned every dollar, ‘grinding’ it out at short handed NLHE cash games.

It’s amazing how far I’ve come since the days of playing $.05-$.10 on pacific.  At this point, [June-July of 06] I’ve been lucky enough to turn that $5 into $200,000+ in earnings.   I shrug off five figure downswings like they’re nothing now.  What’d I earn today? $26,000. What’d I earn two weeks ago? I lost $35,000.  Shrug. That’s poker.   I love the game, though, just like I always have. Every day is something different and poker has opened doors to me that no job ever could offer a 19 year old. I plan on traveling for the European Poker Tour this fall, buying my own house, and who knows what else beyond that.

I plan on keeping my future trials and successes recorded on my blog at http://jcarver.thespicebox.net [I think I moved here about a year or two after that now-gone blog].  Writing this thread was a ridiculously awesome trip down memory lane for me. It would have been impossible (and far less believable) without pokercharts and pokerhand.org.  While I’m thanking people/groups, without PITR, I wouldn’t be where I am, either. You guys supported me when I was losing and pushed me to be better and work harder when I was winning.  I like to think the Spicebox is my small way of giving back to such a great community.

I hope you guys enjoyed my story and took something from it, even if it’s only that I could be a writer for . Will I make $250,000 this year? Will my online success translate into live cashes? Will I buy a golden rocket ship that says “THE ADJUTOR EXPRESS” [havent heard that name in forever!] on the side that only runs 30 seconds at a time before petering out?   You’ll have to stay tuned to the blog to find out.

[it was pretty fun to reread this.  Eventually, after a lot of swings, I did end up making my goal for life-to-date earnings by the end of 2006.  It's crazy to think this was written almost 5 years ago, and crazier to think the subject is the 2 years before that. I tried not to change a lot but man I shook my head at so much that my 19-year old writing voice thought was acceptable and just couldn't leave some things if it was going to be enshrined forever in this blog.  Sorry again it took so long to get done, thanks for reading!]

parts 1-3 can be found here
parts 4 and 5 can be found here

Well I’m not really shocked that I didn’t stick to my once a day promise.  Sorry about that!  There should be about 2 more updates to post, give or take, which’ll come over the next week or so.  This update is the first one where I didn’t have graphs anymore and had to re-add them, which is going to hold true for all future posts so it’ll be a little slower going.  The feedback I’ve gotten has all been real positive so I’ll try to get them out asap.

Part VI : The Big Climb

After my switch to No-Limit cash games I pretty much stopped playing anything else.  I played primarily $1-$2 NL on Pacific during this time, with shots as high as $3-$6 on Party between April 15th and June 1st. I did a good amount of winning, taking down nearly $8400 in cash games for that 45 day period.

No Limit Ring games – 4/16/05 – 6/1/05

During this time, I had a forgettable short love affair with Pot Limit Holdem.  In addition to winning $8400 at NL cash games, I won an additional $4300 at PL cash games, making my total for big-bet games over that 45 day period slightly over $12,000. My best session for the period happened in a $2-$4 PL game on Party where I played for 2 hours and 30 minutes and won a little over $2400 in profit.

Total Earnings – 4/16 – 6/1/05

Total Earnings til 6/1/05

Part VII : The House Always Wins…

By the start of June 2005, I had earned over $20,000 and played over 2,000 hours of poker. I had started primarily playing $3/$6 NL on Party (the highest Pacific had was $1-$2) and was looking to expand my game further.  I started playing on Bodog, Eurobet (a Party skin, but I had rakeback there), SunPoker (crypto skin), and started to take stabs at $5/$10.

The biggest change for you readers during this time period is that I started in June recording some of my big hands – both wins and losses – at http://www.pokerhand.org. Very few of these have any actual true strategic content, but I’ll include a few from now on in these posts.

I am scooping the whole summer of ‘05 into one big segment because, quite frankly, it was three months of break-even frustration. I played $10-$20 NL once [this has to be the biggest game online at the time], because Moquel wanted to watch me (and I wanted to be a big shot!), and won $3000 when my AK sucked out on A9 on a 9-6-2-K-4. I left right after that hand and didn’t go back for the remainder of 2005.

The pattern in the summer for me was : run good, then run twice as bad – recover back to even, then suffer the same loss as before, putting me back in the hole. This happened time and time again over the summer. My MTT game started to suffer as I attempted to gain a big stack early rather than “bust out to bad beats later on” through gambling in what were, retrospectively, badly -EV spots. I got frustrated. My parents and other adults constantly pounded me with helpful advice such as “QUIT WHILE YOU’RE AHEAD!” and “YOU GOT LUCKY, BUT YOU KNOW, KID, THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS!”

Cash game winnings, Summer 05 (6/1-9/1)

Summer “Earnings”

Over the summer I also expanded my play away from Pacific more and more. I played pretty much every major site on the internet, in fact, so many that the pie graph can’t accurately display all the colors. The most played location is at the bottom of the list on the key to the right, and then listed in ascending order from there by most played:

The best part of my summer was my two trips to Turning Stone. The first time I went and played a few MTTs and $2-$5 NL. I won a few hundred at cash games and didn’t cash in any tournaments.  I loved playing live, though.  I went on that trip with Chuck and it was a pretty awesome time overall.  I went back for the Empire State Championships in August.  After that summer, I would try to take every opportunity to play live that I could.

Little did I know that as well as an inspiration to play live I’d pick up another gem from my time at Turning Stone. I went downstairs one night to the poker room, late – maybe 2am. It was surprisingly packed, and there were a lot of games going. I went over to the game I wanted to play (the $5-$5) and started watching the action. Nothing exciting was happening, so I decided to go play a satellite to something. I busted quick, but I met this guy up there who was pretty bad. Young kid, maybe 23.  He informs me that he is staying in the same room as his “superstar friend” named Peter, but who is legally changing his name to Ace (truly a perfect tribute to one’s cardplaying skills).  I hold back an incredulous laugh, not helped by my realization that I only knew one famous Ace before then:

Before I bust, this other guy comes upstairs (Ace and my tablemate’s mutual friend) to tell my tablemate here that Ace got challenged to a $1000 heads up match [WHOA]. After I bust out, I go downstairs with the mutual friend to investigate, and Ace is at the $5-$5 game I was watching before.  Ace was a young, slick kid, cocksure, slightly arrogant, and definitely very stubborn.

Across the table from Ace sat a huge man.  The two players are impossible to miss as their dramatic blowup is currently the focus of the entire room.  The two are engaged in a yelling contest that I’ll never forget.   Let’s call the huge antagonist something clever, like Fatty McGee. I’m standing in the line of fire behind Ace during this whole exchange. Fatty never lets Ace finish a point without interrupting [sounds like he'd fit in with my family].  I’m summarizing the whole thing, as there was a lot of plain boring swearing at eachother. Yes, hands were being played during this whole rated-R dramabomb at the table.

Fatty McGee: Fucking kids these days, fucking think they know everything.

Ace: I don’t think I know everything…

Fatty McGee: …just more than me, right, moron? Fucking loser kid thinks he can bully the whole god damn table!

Ace: I didn’t say that.

Fatty McGee: I hate fucking punk kids like you.

Ace: What, just because I won your money and you can’t win a pot?

Fatty McGee: Fucking kid! I’ve won pots so fucking big! SO FUCKING BIG! (wildly gestures) You want to play me for $1k?!

Ace: Sure!

Fatty McGee, growling, somewhat rising from his seat: YOU FUCKING KID! YOU THINK YOU GOT BALLS? YOU WANT TO PLAY ME FOR TEN FUCKING GRAND YOU LITTLE SHIT? ILL FUCKING CRUSH YOUR FUCKING BALLS (he now dramatically slowly gestures like he’s crushing grapes with his hand, I swear to god) LIKE THEY WERE NOTHING! [it wasn't Mike Matusow]

Ace: But…but…I don’t have 10k to play you.

Fatty McGee over there starts to grin in triumph. I am honestly fucking LOVING this. The drama, the drama! Just when I think it can’t get any better, deus ex machina, some random kid who has been silent this whole time, says firmly, but quietly to our villain (loud enough for all to hear):

“I’ll give him $10,000 to play you.”

Fatty McGee shuts up and never says a word to Ace the rest of the session.  A little while later, we started talking to Ace and the $10k kid [I have a feeling this guy is a current well-known name in online poker].  Both were very nice guys – even Ace did seem (surprisingly) knowledgeable, much more so than his idiot buddy who I met in the satellite room.  We talked for 15 minutes or so, discussing lots of poker-related things. He eventually told me about this secret place he had been crushing – “Bodog” .  He said that the games there were enormously juicy, especially the shorthanded ones, and he had won a TON of money there.  I hadn’t played on Bodog before talking to Ace and made a note to check this place out.

While I was in TS, I decided to play in a $20 rebuy multitable satellite to the $2,000 main event. I had never played in a tournament with that big of a buyin and had no intentions of buying in if I didn’t successfully satellite. Somehow, my magic luckbox powers held up, and I was one of the 5 seat winners to the main event [this turns out to be the only live satellite I've ever won, and one of max 3 I've ever played].

The main event of the tournament itself was pretty awesome. I love playing live tournaments – it provides a thrill that for some reason most cash games don’t give me [apparently later on I felt the way the rectify this was to play cash games I wasn't remotely rolled for]. In the smaller events, I had felt comfortable, talking up a storm and owning each successive table until some unfortunate circumstance came about putting an abortive bullet into my dreams of glory. I went into the $2,000 event determined not to let my game plan differ from prior events.

Unfortunately, my plan didn’t work. At all.

I sit down, one of the first in the room at the bright and early 9am start time [Turning Stone start times are the worst]. First guy to sit with me at my table is Pete “thebeat” Giordano, a talkative mid-50s guy who is friendly but very good, made a WPT final table and is a very well known internet player.

Pete “thebeat” Giordano, an online MTT legend

OK, whatever. I can handle one pro with me, I thought.  Next guy who sits is wearing an “Ultimate Poker Challenge” bracelet [lol on like 4 levels] which probably qualifies him as being decent (even though I don’t usually automatically equate MTT success to  “decent at poker” [probably the wisest thing I've ever thought]).  A few unknowns sit (who I find out later are regulars in the NL2K game on stars) and then an older guy sits who has decent results. His name is Al Krux [!].  He’s sitting two to my left. Great, I remember thinking. At least I’ll have a good story to tell when it’s all over. [this is an amazing paragraph]

There’s one idiot fucker sitting directly across the table from me, obviously a qualifier or rich fish. The guy to my right isn’t too wonderful either. I play conservatively for a few hours, watching Pete Giordano bust Al Krux on a Q-4-Q board with AQ vs Krux’ JJ (Krux was surprisingly passive, limping UTG and such quite frequently). Pete built up a nice stack and was very intimidating (he yelled “PAIR THE BOARD!” every time a flop, turn, or river was dealt that he was in) and bullied the table quite effectively. I lost a nice pot vs him at some point with 6-4 on what must have been a 7-5-9-J-8, or something, because I remember rivering the “not best” straight versus his “best” straight.

I get my chips in versus the one idiot across the table preflop [somehow] with my AK vs his J7 and he sucks out to a 7 on the river to bust me just a few hours in.   I, in classic JCarver style, immediately begin the long drive home, but felt pretty thrilled overall with how awesome the trip was and was really motivated to play some more poker.

All in all, I won my seat to the $2000 main event, got to play with superstars Al Krux, Pete Giordano, and some other mildly famous people, made a lot of new friends, and for the first time, felt like a member of a tangible poker community.  I was way outclassed in the tournament [I doubt it], but even though I busted early, I was intrigued and hooked by live play.  I left TS in August totally psyched to play poker, inspired by the stories I had heard from my new friends about check-raising Doyle at the WSOP and bluffing guys for $20,000 pots on Ultimate Bet.

Perhaps Bodog would be the site where I would dig myself out of my downswing and back into profit land? Could this August trip to Turning Stone be the turnaround on my summertime journey towards the abyss of Frowntown?  WOULD I EVER WIN A POT OF POKER AGAIN?

parts 1-3 can be found here

Part IV : Rising Action

Early January Pacific introduced no-limit and pot-limit cash games. I had never played NL/PL cash games before online [I still remember their "Ring in the New Year with our No-Limit cash games banner/promo]. I sat at a $.50-$1 NL table one night with very little understanding of the game (with 100 BB, as opposed to the shortstack home games / mtts).  Upon informing my friend Chuck of my plans, he remarked to me (in his usual hilariously sour tone) “Fantastic, now you can blow your money ten times as fast, clown.”

I blew at least three buyins over the next few days of NL heads up cash game play. I liked it, but I distinctly remember having no clue how much to bet in so many spots. I felt that there was money to be made but I just had no idea how to do it. I recommitted to playing Limit Holdem.

My bankroll kept growing. I planned on moving up to $10-$20 when my bankroll hit $4000, and got there a few times in January. I suffered my worst losing night (not in BB, in dollars) thus far by losing $600 at $10-$20 in two hours in mid January. For the most part, though, in January I did a pretty good job smashing Limit Hold’em, taking down $1130.20 over 160 hours of play.

Additionally in January, I had several big tournament cashes, the biggest being my first outright win in a $33.  The tournament had 188 runners, making first place good for my first four-figure score of $1692.  I also managed to get 2nd in a $5.50 with a seven-hundred strong field for $513.20.

January was reasonably quiet otherwise. I kept reading books, made my first withdrawal on Pacific (and promptly put a small amount of that money into Party), but was a month of relatively strong growth. Some graphs from the period :

Career Earnings Til 1-31-05

Career Earnings Til 1-31-05, by date

Amount of Time played by Location

January Earnings

Earlier I said that I had graduated high school early and that I felt this was key to me doing so well. 17 year old kids tend to have a lot of time on their hands and not a lot of bills to pay. Once I graduated high school, I found that college had a lot less “busy work” and I had a lot more available time to work on my game. Like most kids that age, I had really no bills (car insurance, that was about it) and so was able to dedicate 99% of my bankroll back into poker.

By the end of January, I had earned $5448.51 over my career which had amounted to 858 table hours. My lifetime hourly rate is very low as I tracked most of the freerolls I played along with all the microlimit games.  I was only a few thousand dollars away from reaching my goals in April with months to spare.

Everything didn’t go quite as smoothly as I had hoped it would in January, but compared to February, January would feel like paradise.

Part V : Falling Action

Let me preface February with my graph from $5-$10 limit.

Wow! Must have been a great month, right!

Wrong.

February was my first recorded month where I actually LOST money. Over the month I lost a total of $-155.76. I lost money in my very few hours of NL cash games, my tournaments, my sit and gos, and most stakes of limit poker. In fact, only $5-$10 brought me any positive income for the month. I spent all month fighting to get something going, and by the middle of the month, I felt like I had recovered nicely.

February Earnings til 2-21-05

Every one of those huge downspikes, for the most part, is from $10-$20 Limit Holdem. I was getting pretty frustrated, and in fact, February was the first month I really started to dislike limit for more than just a moment. It seemed so frustrating, so restrictive. I read Middle-Limit Hold’em by Bob Ciaffone (I think) but it did me little good. Everything seemed to make sense in theory but just totally fell apart in practice at the tables.

Once I had recovered, and things had started going well again, I was happy. I [thought I] knew by then the huge variance in poker but limit just…frustrated me, greatly, at times – as I’m sure it does to everyone. For some reason, even now, I prefer losing thousands and thousands of dollars to one-hand coolers than hours and hours of prolonged lesser bad beats [now I don't have any feelings at all so not a problem].

But anyway, my recovery in February was short lived. On the afternoon of the 21st, I once again started a new $10-$20 session. Things immediately started going badly. Before I knew it, I had lost $2,000 and was very unhappy. I spent over ten hours in that game (far, far longer than I should have, but I felt I was playing well at the time – even though I now doubt I was) before leaving down $1562.50.  Another nail in the limit poker escape canoe that I would eventually ride off on [what a sentence this is].

I don’t really have a lot more to say about February. I wasn’t as disillusioned as I was when I had lost in December. I knew this was going to happen sometimes and that it didn’t mean I was a horrible player. By now, though, I had started to dislike limit poker itself and would be looking to start expanding my cash game beyond just Limit Holdem in the coming weeks.

Some graphs from February :

February Earnings

February Limit Holdem Earnings

February MTT “Earnings”

February $ Win by Location

Total Career Earnings Til February vs Total Hours Played

I was no closer to my April goal by the end of February than I was at the end of January. I was hoping for a solid March and had already started planning on how I was going to go from $5k and change to $10k in a month and a half.  The answer fell into my lap.  Pacific Poker was advertising a $1,000,000 guaranteed tournament for the middle of March.  I told everyone in my very limited poker world, “that’s going to be the game that gets me to $10,000.”  I don’t think anyone believed me [not that I blame them].  Little did even I know that I was going to prove them all wrong come March 26th.

Part V – The Start of Something

February was fairly rough but I still felt like I was on track to meet my goal to reach $10,000 by April 15th.

The beginning of March was pretty good to me. I was winning at limit again, mostly playing $10-$20. I of course in my [still] unending quest to play games I am not ready for blew over $1300 taking shots at $15-$30. However, I also started putting a good amount of time into No-Limit cash games, winning over $1500 at $1-$2 NL. I barely played any tournaments and cashed in none of the few I played.

March 26th was the 1M guarantee on Pacific. I was pretty psyched.  It was the biggest game I had ever played [I believe it was a $400]. I was hoping things ran well, as I had a problem in a 75k guarantee on Pacific that I didn’t share with you guys in February that made me question the software’s strength.

The 75k [a major guarantee at the time] was totally ruined by a bug in Pacific’s software that was exploited by certain players. In short, out of the three tables that were left, some players were able to effectively max timebank, then skip their own action, making hands take forever.   With several people exploiting this, two tables were playing about 2 hands per hour and mine was quickly 5 handed (can’t balance tables until the hands finish at the other tables) with our table’s massive chip leader playing normally. Pacific’s support did nothing about it during or after even with the huge uproar that I know several of us gave them. I was in the top five going into 3 tables and busted 22nd as I couldn’t outlast two near-frozen tables while playing a normal shorthanded game. If you guys want to hear more details I still have all the emails saved that I sent them and the responses I got back [I don't know if this is true], but it’s definitely one of the big reasons I eventually left Pacific.

Still, though, I was assured the bug was fixed (even though it obviously wasn’t, as I saw in later tournaments) and would not be an issue in the 1M. I won my seat on March 24th and was ready to play on the 26th.

I was planning on going away the weekend of the tournament even before I heard of the 1M.  I rebuilt my weekend around the tournament that Sunday.  I relaxed the day before in Florida, reading tournament books and other things (like losing thousands at $15-$30 [not literally...I don't think]) preparing for the big day.

Chuck called me while I was in Florida. He told me that he wanted to play the 1M too, and I told him no way – I had got my seat already. We settled on him sort of “coaching” me through the game as I needed it, even though I was in Florida. He’d end up being on the phone with me for the entire duration of the game [nobody knew what ghosting was 6 years ago].

The game ran with 1600 people.  There was almost $400,000 in overlay, and a lot of people weren’t there that actually did enter. I steadily built a stack hour after hour, even though I was card dead. I never got anything better than two pair throughout the entire course of the game and rarely got any big hands [amazing that I still remember going through the hand history and realizing this]. The ones I did get I made count, though.

After many hours, we were down to 14 people.  I was in 5th place. I pick up 8 5 in the big blind. UTG limps as does one other person. I check. Flop is 8 5 2. I check, UTG bets, and it gets back to me. I shove. He instantly calls with AA.

Turn is a jack.

River is a duece.

I was devastated. Obviously, this is just a bad beat, but first place paid nearly $210,000, while 14th paid only $7,500 (which I shared with Chuck in our bankroll). It hurt pretty bad for several weeks, but in the end, I was happy with my play.

The rest of the month went relatively smoothly. By the end of the month, I won $6,789 (counting half the 1M score as profit) and $2232 from NL cash games in March alone. I broke my $10,000 goal slightly after the big tournament (even counting it for half). Here’s a random screenshot where I doubled up in a coinflip that a goon took during the 1M :

I was thrilled.  I reached my goal and had started learning the ways of no-limit cash games. I felt like I was so…free, compared to limit poker.   I started getting a better ability to feel the pulse of the games, a better grip on players, and started realizing that my chip stack in no-limit could be used as a weapon. Things started to click in my no-limit game while my frustrations just compounded further and further in limit. I considered my goal having been met (as I wasn’t sure if the goal I set was to hit $10k by 4/15 or 4/1), but I had won enough in mid-March to put me well over that $10k level (and I’ve never been below it since then).

The first 15 days of April were extremely rough on me. I won $2000, then lost $4000, all by April 14th. Stuck $2,000 thus far for the month, but still with a healthy $10k+ bankroll, my birthday came at midnight of the 15th. I had made my $10k dream into a reality.

Early that morning I decided to play $30-$60. I hadn’t been winning at $ 30-$60 when I took stabs earlier but that didn’t stop me that morning. I played 5 hours, til 6 am, and lost $2043.40 in a hugely upsetting fest of suckouts and bad play. It was that very day, on my birthday, that I finally boiled over. I swore off limit holdem for good. I had had enough with the beats, the suckouts, the lack of control, and the losing (for some reason I believed NL to be less filled with those things [lol.  I do pretty much never come back to limit poker until very recently]). I would stick to $1-$2 NL (the highest Pacific had, at the time). Turning 18 would also mean access to Neteller [an e-wallet to help move money around...sad I have to explain that] and the rest of the internet poker scene.

That’s what I remember my 18th birthday for, for some reason. The $30-$60 $2k hit that I took. I have no clue what else I did that day.  What can I say?  It’s not in PokerCharts.  Seriously, though, without PC to remind me this story wouldn’t be nearly as detailed.  That night helped show me how bad things could get, at times, but I would soon see just how good it could get. I pledged on my birthday to earn $75,000 before the year was out, which was ridiculously ambitious on my part (like $2500 and $10k goals weren’t ambitious at all!).

And so on one day the limit player within me was dead. I’ve never returned to limit HE other than in short bursts for “fun”. On the same day the new me was born – the NLHE cash specialist with more dreams than knowledge. But hell, that’s what I started this journey with, and it worked out ok so far, right?

Career Earnings til Mid-April (this doesn’t include my -2k at the end, that’s the next half)

Earnings 3/1/05-4/14/05

2010 was amazing.  The best year of my life, hands down.  It started rough – getting pretty sick, a downswing – but turned out to be an incredible year filled with lots of new meaningful relationships and some sick poker adventures.

As you can see, I proudly made supernova today, and I’m on target to reach the volume goal of 70K hands with about 63000 played thus far.   I am pretty happy to never have to play another hand of 12+ tabling 5-10 again.  I’ll get into all the results of the bets in a later post, but for now, I want to share something I wrote in 2006 that I recently rediscovered.

In 2006, I wrote my til-then life poker story on my home forum, Something Awful.  I was barely 19 when I wrote it, so there’s a loooot of language (and I’m SUPER dramatic) that I wouldn’t use now to describe the same things.  I really enjoyed reading it – it’s been years, and I forgot a lot of the details to the story (also this is why a journal of any kind is so valuable) -  but wasn’t sure if I should repost it as it originally was or with some updated edits.   I figure the original is available (for a price, in the archives) and for a more long-term, permanent place such as this blog, I’d be better off cleaning it up a little bit.  Some of the graphs have vanished, so I may as well replace them too.  Besides some smoothing of stuff out, I didn’t change any of the content.  I have no idea how I remembered some of this stuff so clearly sometimes years later; other spots I still remember today.  I’ll be releasing these over the next few days as they’re all fairly long, standalone segments.

Hope you guys enjoy…

“COLON 2004-2006 : The JCarver Story” originally posted May 12th, 2006

I’ve thought about writing a thread like this for some time now. I was going to wait until I had a blog on the Spicebox to spell it all out in words, but may as well write it out now. My story is something I’ve always wanted to memorialize in writing and I hope it’ll inspire a lot of you guys to travel the same path. I’ve posted portions of this before but never the whole thing.

I don’t know if I’ll maintain this thread with updates on my winnings and losings. It’s a pretty sick ride and although I don’t mind reporting it here, I’ll definitely be keeping the blog updated with stuff like that once Addict finishes the site and we get it skinned. I guess the amount of updates I put in this thread, once I’m done with the “past”, will be totally dependent on the feedback I get. I was going to do this all in one post but it won’t even be close, so I’ll update this periodically over the next week. I promise it’ll be done before the 2005 Year in Review thread.

This story is pretty cool even without pictures and solid numbers, but with these, the story (which is fairly unbelievable) instead becomes believable and fairly incredible. I ran good at times, yes, and certainly had my share of luck. If I didn’t win at certain low points, who knows what might have happened. You don’t win $100,000+ out of $0 without a little luck somewhere.

I hope you guys enjoy the story. I have changed a few names so those mentioned won’t kill themselves when they see me ridiculing them on the internet.

Part I : Welcome to the Jungle

My first exposure to poker came in June of 2004, while I was still in high school (17).  Due to moving, I was forced into deciding between graduating early or moving to a new school for two years.  I opted to graduate at my old school that year, and was on track to graduate later that month.

I came home one day from my karate teaching job to discover my Dad watching a poker game on TV (turns out, it’s the WPT).  I was immediately intrigued, like most of us probably were back then upon first exposure.  It was all so foreign, yet so…exciting.  I watched Howard Lederer take down the tournament with style and composure and was hooked on the spot.  At the end of the episode, pretty awestruck, I knew I had to give this game a try.  I had never gambled before poker and had very little clue where to start.

It was nearing the end of the school year.  Even then, I was still lazy as hell, and didn’t put any more than the minimum effort required into school.  I spent the vast remainder of my free time talking to my friends about poker.  After making the discovery that a lot of my friends had started playing, I got myself invited to a $20 buyin SNG that ran once a week or so and was there a week later.

I’m amazed that I still remember that night. It was my first time playing cards for real money. I was damn nervous. The game was in my friend Cory’s basement, 6 handed or so, filled with loose and extremely bad play. I was only friends with the host of the game and I had never met any of the others before.  The host, Cory, had quite the imposing personality at the table.  He wore WPT-style sunglasses and loved to bully people at the table, calling out what he thought people had, making calls that most people didn’t understand that looked really cool. He was an intimidating presence, let me tell you.  Amazing how exuding self-confidence can be such a powerful weapon against others in poker.  The rest of the table was mostly well-off sporty-jock types with perhaps one or two occasional smart nerd-types that would drop by in the game from time to time. None of these people were much good, I would learn later, but it didn’t matter.  I was just a nervous little goldfish swimming in the tank.

I don’t remember what happened that night. I don’t know if I played well, who played badly, or what time I eventually left (it was late).  The only thing I remember clearly is that I lost $30 and felt terrible. I cursed my coming there, my ever seeing poker on TV, and mostly, my ever thinking poker was beatable – at least by me. By the next morning, though, my self-loathing had turned into an overdramatic resolve to get good.  I went and bought every book there was on poker.  None of the books I read initially had anything to do with no-limit, but it didn’t matter – I started reading anything that had the word “poker” in it.  2+2, SomethingAwful, anything.  I had a voracious appetite for information on the game.

By the end of July, it became clear most of my friends had never even opened a book on poker.  None of them were regulars at forums and few of them had any idea of even the most basic odds.  My very intelligent and equally-dedicated friend Chuck and I started talking about the game regularly and sharing the material we discovered. Without him, I doubt I would have made it as quickly as I did, if I made it at all.  He was a 1-man support group, sounding board, and served as comedic relief more times than I can remember.  He too became a regular in the game with Cory and the rest.

I started winning in the home games.  I won more and more often as the weeks went by.  I got a reputation as good and serious and exploited it by starting to emulate the confidence that Cory had intimidated me with earlier in my poker life. Things started to click in my head.

I went to my friend Ryan’s house for a game one afternoon. This was a game full of very intelligent kids but, as usual, none of them were particularly good. I sat in this cash game (.25-.50 with a .5 ante!) with maybe $25. At my table were a bunch of loose-bad players and one guy who was playing very tight. I was watching the game intently – focused on picking up reads, tendencies, and information – all while talking up a storm to keep the game loose and friendly.

I picked up A T on the button and raised Nitty McNit [2010 edit: I have no idea who this is ] who was in the big blind. He minreraised me, and I called. The flop was K 9 4. He bet small, and I put him on AK, QQ, or JJ [2010 edit: lol.]. I called, a plan formulating in my mind. The turn was a 2. He bet small again. I didn’t think he’d bet AK so small here. Again I called. The river peeled a K . Twateroo checked his cards and hesitantly checked. I paused five seconds before I announced “All-In” and dramatically pushed my chips to the center. The guy looked legitimately pained. My heart was racing as time itself seemed to slow down.  He agonized for what felt like an hour but was probably no longer than thirty seconds before saying “You’re a lucky son of a bitch and I hate you.” He flipped his cards over and threw them away. Two jacks. I breathed a sigh of relief as I stacked his chips next to mine.

As my talents grew, I turned to the internet for more action.  Once a week wasn’t enough for me – I wanted to play more.  I was only 17 at the time, and had no legal options to play live and no real means of depositing into any poker room.   In July, I discovered the glory of freerolls – and with no other choice, I started playing them heavily – even basing my sleep schedule around when they ran.

I learned the schedule of all the big freerolls – the $500 on Pacific at 3pm and 1am, the 2am on Empire, a few of the games on Prima. I played a lot. The fields in these games are huge but they’re very soft, and occasionally I did make small scores. I’d blow this money very quickly on games over my “bankroll” (as a $2 freeroll win on a site with nothing lower than .5-.10 tends to go fast). I kept reading books and improving, getting better and better as the weeks went on.

By August, Chuck and I had decided to share any freeroll wins we had online. We’d both play a lot, and when/if one of us actually won cash, both of us would be able to play with the money that was in the account. I liked this agreement because it meant I’d have twice the chance to play for real money. I did once turn to my parents for help getting money online.  They promptly told me no.  Throughout my career, they never would “enable” me by giving any means of depositing – although my Dad has always been supportive of poker, my mother is another story.

In the middle of August I bought a subscription to PokerCharts. It was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, poker-wise. Being able to track all my wins and losses over the years is an incredible asset that few poker players are able to do and I plug their site constantly (http://www.pokercharts.com). All serious players should consider using them to track their play, especially on sites not enabled for Poker Tracker.

In the last half of August I played a ton of poker. I won $90 that month from winning a decent sit and go at my friend’s house and doing well at a couple of smaller cash games. I was pretty thrilled with how things were going, but I still had no money on the internet. September came around and I still had never really gotten anything going on any site. Still, though, I had won $190 over the summer, which was a good amount for any high school kid’s hobby.

[2010 addition] I never mention in the original that me graduating high school early was a huge aid to my poker career.  Almost all of my friends were still in high school, busy 5 days a week.  My college schedule was light, piled on 2 long days a week, leaving all of the rest of my time free – which I spent on poker.  The timing was perfect.  Poker was booming, I had a ton of free time, and I was computer-literate.  It’s the perfect example of the concept from Outliers.

October came around, me still hungry to win money online. I watched some of the big games [which couldn't have been higher than $30-$60 LHE] and wanted nothing more than to play in them and beat those guys out of their money. I couldn’t help but see the money there in terms of physical items – “oh, that guy just stole the blinds, that’s like two DVDs.” and “oh, that guy just sucked out to half of a laptop.” It was pretty mind boggling at the time – but one of those high stake seats is where I wanted to be. Beating big games for money on the internet – lots of it. I envisioned poker as a financial vehicle to freedom. A very cool means to a very wealthy end. All these dreams, hopes, and wishes floated around in my mind constantly, and I repeatedly dismissed them as that, at the time.

Little did I know that sometimes dreams do in fact become reality. October would be the start of something that I never, in my wildest dreams, could ever concieve of actually occuring.

Part II : Winning money ON THE INTERNET !

October 17th, 2004. I logged into my account, “JCarver” on Pacific Poker. [I am pretty sure I got it from Jack Carver in Far Cry, as I was playing that at the time and guess I thought it sounded professional] My usual name that I had used since I was a kid, “Taknapotin” [from an obscure character in an unpopular R.A. Salvatore novel] was too big for the 8-character max on Pacific, so JCarver was born as a replacement.  I signed up for my usual 3pm $500 freeroll. 90 spots would be paying out with 2000 people in the field. Pacific’s freerolls employed a marvelous payout structure with 1st-10th getting a good amount of money and 11th-90th being paid equally, $5.  I played decently enough to place 88th.

I was thrilled, as I usually was when I cashed one of these freerolls, as it was a shot at life, a shot at all the dreams I had been seeking. Pacific, though, only had limit ring games, with no-limit SNGS/MTTs.  SNGs it was for me, and I played several $2.75 sngs that night. Over the rest of October, I would play $.05-$.10 limit and $2.75 sngs with the occasional $5 mtt as my bankroll ballooned. I had earned nearly $70 by the end of October. I mostly stuck with limit by the end of the month, climbing up semi-surely and slowly – but climbing. I read SSHE (Small Stakes Holdem) for the first time in October, doing everything I could to prepare me to pillage the Pacific limit games.

I steadily won money, confidence swelling. By November 15th, I had nearly $300 online, and earned almost $500 from my total poker career.

November 16th was a day like any other – at first. I was playing my usual games, thrilled to just log into an account with $300 in it (Chuck was playing on the account separately, but hadn’t earned more than $50-$75 or so, which I’m not including in these numbers, since I didn’t track his winnings in my pokercharts). I was playing well – $.50-$1 at this point – and had no intention of stopping.

Something caught my eye on the tournament list. “Heads up $20+2″.  I had never really played heads up other than at the end of SnGs.  I enjoyed it, but wasn’t too sure if I should play or not.  The budding degenerate within me won the debate and I registered.

There were 119 entrants. The Pacific HU mtt wasn’t like Pokerstars HU MTTs where they use a shootout format – where each game would play to one winner, bracket style – you could get moved any time on Pacific. Matches were never evenly stacked in chips except for your first one. On the night of the 17th, though, I found myself winning against player after player and building up a nice stack. I was in the money in under an hour (20 paying), and down to the final four in an hour and 5 minutes. Before I knew it, I vanquished my opponent, and headed to the final showdown, bristling with excitement.

I looked at my opponent’s stack and rolled my eyes [sure you did]. It was nearly three times mine. I clenched my fists, determined not to lay down and give this away. I was going to make him fight for every chip on the table. I fought my way back all the way to a slight chip favorite in under three minutes, before slipping slightly behind again.

I picked up Q T in the small blind. I raised and he called. The flop came Q T 8. He checked. I put out a pot-sized bet. He debated for a few seconds, and then shoved all in. I beat him into the pot, already dancing and imagining the $800 first prize in my account. My opponent flipped over J9 for the nuts. I didn’t suck out.

I wasn’t really devastated. Even then I knew that spots like that are just coolers that you can’t get away from. I won $454 for my second place finish, and resolved to get better at heads up play so I one day could get away from spots like that (I haven’t got there yet!) but more, so I could keep destroying those games which seemed VERY profitable. The next night I played it again and got 3rd for $202. I played it 11 nights to come and cashed in 9 of them. By the end of November I had earned $1400 from poker and was thrilled at what I had accomplished.

November Earnings

Total Earnings through November

I told Chuck at the end of November that by the end of 2004, I’d earn $2500 and by my birthday, April of 2005, I’d earn $10,000. His words were “Good luck, clown.” – which from him, is very supportive. I know I came off confident to him then, but secretly, I was doubtful. I wasn’t sure if I actually could do all that or not but I was going to do my damnedest to try. Little did I know then of the hard trials before me as I would approach December.

Part III: December to Remember

Fresh off my victories in the heads up games, I found myself with $1200 with probably more ego than skill. $1200 was a big enough roll for $3-$6 LHE, in my opinion (since I could only one-table on Pacific) so I played there, skipping $2-$4, for the most part. I won a little money then, building up my roll to $1500, and started to take stabs at $5-$10.

Soon things started to take a turn for the worse. I felt like I could take on the world coming off my November wins, and I damn well tried. I had read SSHE several times by then but didn’t really comprehend the concept of long-term variance, which I would soon start to learn as my December “lesson”.  I became upset at myself for losing, which I soon started to do.  Stupidly enough, I stuck with games no lower than $2-$4 and as high as $5-$10, even though I should have been stepping down as I was losing money.

In the first twenty days of December, I lost $1,100, bottoming my roll out at $300.  My confidence bubble was burst, my dreams were shattered.  I “realized” that my hopes of poker success on the internet were just pipe dreams all along.  It felt like I couldn’t ever win a hand or make a draw – nevermind win a session – something I had no experience with handling at the time. The dream of turning nothing into something looked like only that – a dream that would end soon enough.

Life Earn til December 21

But it didn’t.

Christmas Eve morning, 2004. I wasn’t exhausted and was looking to play something even though it was early in the morning and I felt like I sucked. I decided to play a 10+1 MTT at 1AM on Pacific. A few hours later, I was at the final table, playing tight, aggressive, winning poker. Soon enough, it was down to the final two. My opponent had quite a chip lead, and one suckout later, I was out, but I earned $523.60 for my efforts that morning. Winning ANYTHING though was enough to make me very happy and my previously tattered self-faith was cautiously restored.

A day later, after doing the usual Xmas thing and feeling good about my win the day before – and back to having almost $1000 online at that point – I decided to enter a pot-limit MTT at noon. Again, I found myself at the final table in two hours. I got second place in this game, too, for another $513. This would also be the start of a fairly long-term love of pot-limit, as I had never played PL before then.  A few days after that, I got 4th in another MTT for another $450.

My bankroll had been resurrected (finally). I won nearly $2,100 in the last ten days of December and had met my goal to make $2,500 by the end of the year from poker.

December Earnings

2004 Earnings

Over a period of 3 months I had won over $3,025 from poker, the vast majority of it one-tabling Pacific Poker online. I played a total of 620 table hours of poker in 2004, and earned $2,747 online and $275 from home games. I went into January having learned a lot about poker from my past three months of dedicated play and I felt very prepared for the months to come. I knew it would be tough to earn $7,500 in 4 months, but I felt like it could be done. When one of my good friends told me I was crazy for setting the bar that high, I responded with two words : “We’ll see.”

I set out after my next goal – winning $10,000 by my birthday on April 15th.

Parts 4+ to come tomorrow…

Well, it’s been quite the ride the past few weeks.  There have been some changes and tweaks to the bets and lots to report (when was the last time I included actual pokerhands in a blog?).  I’ve really been getting into mixed games lately, and working really hard on breaking down hands and trying to improve.  I enjoy the challenge, even though I think I’m a dog in a lot of spots, it’s really cool to feel like every day I’m better than the day before.

That being said, I’ve never been berated in chat this much in my life.

The bets are going…well, ok.  I’m making some progress in the online cash game bet, and somehow negotiated an inclusion of mixed games below 150-300 (so it’s 5-10 through 30-60 NL/PLO and 150-300 limit games now).  Still got a ways to go there, though, and running 50K under EV is not helping.  Volume is progressing well – I have about 35000 hands played for the bet, about 15K more than last time, well on target for the 70K goal by the end of the year (and ~23K VPP from supernova!).

The bet that has both changed the most and resulted in the burst of crazy high stakes action is the online profit bet.  That bet no longer ends this month but at the end of March, obviously a huge change for me especially considering how far behind I was.  I can play any stakes or tournaments up to $500-$1000 limit games or $100-$200 NL/PLO.  Being so far behind, my plan was to play as high as I could and try to go on a heater to get it close vs my opponent, but now I don’t really have to (although I probably still will).

About a week ago, I had my biggest losing day so far in my career.  I didn’t even realize how much I lost until I quit, and I was never tilting or anything so I don’t feel badly about it.  I had expected this to happen at some point with the stakes that I’m playing, and at least I’m prepared for it now.  Years ago when I was “young” and had like 100K to my name I would occasionally not be able to help myself from playing some of the bigger 6-max games running.  Always seemed like a good idea at the time, but on three separate occasions I recall blasting off about a third to half of my bankroll.  Whoops.  Nobody ever accused me of having the best bankroll management (although I did manage to get unstuck one of those times!).

Here’s some big/cool hands from the last few weeks (I definitely made some mistakes in a few of these, and the stud/razz isn’t really too interesting but I have no way to sort through them so I included two decent sized pots for variety’s sake).  More to come soon – and this saturday’s UFC might actually get some sportsbetting attention in a later post this week.

Full Tilt Poker Game #25940042962: Table Hawk Valley (6 max) – $50/$100 – Pot Limit Omaha Hi – 14:28:36 ET – 2010/11/28
Seat 2: Eli Elezra ($14,302.75)
Seat 4: JCarver ($11,846.75)
JCarver posts the small blind of $50
Eli Elezra posts the big blind of $100
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to JCarver
JCarver raises to $300
Eli Elezra calls $200
*** FLOP ***
Eli Elezra checks
JCarver bets $500
Eli Elezra raises to $2,100
JCarver has 15 seconds left to act
JCarver raises to $6,900
Eli Elezra raises to $11,700
JCarver calls $4,646.75, and is all in
Eli Elezra shows
JCarver shows
Uncalled bet of $153.25 returned to Eli Elezra
*** TURN ***
*** RIVER ***
Eli Elezra shows a full house, Threes full of Eights
JCarver shows two pair, Queens and Threes
Eli Elezra wins the pot ($23,693) with a full house, Threes full of Eights

Dealt to JCarver
Villain raises to $300
JCarver calls $200
*** FLOP ***
JCarver checks
Villain checks
*** TURN ***
JCarver checks
Villain bets $550
JCarver raises to $2,250
Villain calls $1,700
*** RIVER ***
JCarver has 15 seconds left to act
JCarver bets $4,722.90, and is all in
Villain calls $4,722.90
*** SHOW DOWN ***
JCarver shows a straight, Eight high
Villain shows a straight, Queen high
Villain wins the pot ($14,545.30) with a straight, Queen high

PokerStars Game #53804027012:  8-Game (Omaha Pot Limit, $100/$200 USD) – 2010/12/05 22:15:55 ET
Table ‘Esperanto II’ 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: GVOZDIKA55 ($25485 in chips)
Seat 2: Omlphalotus ($61168.50 in chips)
Seat 3: MCS14 ($11062 in chips)
Seat 4: Taknapotin ($14185 in chips)
Seat 5: ScHnibL0r ($5731 in chips)
Seat 6: V. Wahlbeck ($24293 in chips)
V. Wahlbeck: posts small blind $100
GVOZDIKA55: posts big blind $200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Taknapotin
Omlphalotus: folds
MCS14: folds
Taknapotin: raises $400 to $600
ScHnibL0r: folds
V. Wahlbeck: calls $500
GVOZDIKA55: folds
*** FLOP ***
V. Wahlbeck: checks
Taknapotin: bets $1000
V. Wahlbeck: calls $1000
*** TURN ***
V. Wahlbeck: checks
Taknapotin: bets $2800
V. Wahlbeck: raises $8997 to $11797
Taknapotin: raises $788 to $12585 and is all-in
V. Wahlbeck: calls $788
*** RIVER ***
*** SHOW DOWN ***
V. Wahlbeck: shows (two pair, Jacks and Tens)
Taknapotin: shows (two pair, Jacks and Tens)
V. Wahlbeck collected $14283.50 from pot
Taknapotin collected $14283.50 from pot

Full Tilt Poker Game #25885641695: Table High Meadow (heads up, deep) – $50/$100 – No Limit Hold’em – 15:43:49 ET – 2010/11/26
Seat 1: Villain ($21,361)
Seat 2: JCarver ($22,641.25)
JCarver posts the small blind of $50
Villain posts the big blind of $100
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to JCarver
JCarver raises to $300
Villain raises to $1,100
JCarver has 15 seconds left to act
JCarver calls $800
*** FLOP ***
Villain has 15 seconds left to act
Villain bets $1,000
JCarver has 15 seconds left to act
JCarver calls $1,000
*** TURN ***
Villain has 15 seconds left to act
Villain has requested TIME
Villain bets $3,000
JCarver has 15 seconds left to act
JCarver calls $3,000
*** RIVER ***
Villain has 15 seconds left to act
Villain bets $8,000
JCarver has 15 seconds left to act
JCarver has requested TIME
JCarver calls $8,000
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Villain shows Ace Queen high
JCarver shows Ace King high
JCarver wins the pot ($26,199.50) with Ace King high [note : even though this hand was sweet this guy still ended up being clearly better than me at the mix and booked a smallish win vs me overall ]

some hands outside the nl/plo realm…

PokerStars Game #53697923741:  8-Game (7 Card Stud Hi/Lo Limit, $400/$800 USD) – 2010/12/03 23:53:52 ET
Table ‘Pythia IV’ 6-max
Seat 1: Villain ($8396 in chips)
Seat 2: Taknapotin ($9195 in chips)
Seat 4: runawayT ($46977.90 in chips)
Taknapotin: posts the ante $100
runawayT: posts the ante $100
Villain: posts the ante $100
*** 3rd STREET ***
Dealt to Villain
Dealt to Taknapotin
Dealt to runawayT
Taknapotin: brings in for $100
runawayT: folds
Villain: raises $300 to $400
Taknapotin: raises $400 to $800
Villain: raises $400 to $1200
Taknapotin: calls $400
*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to Villain
Dealt to Taknapotin
Villain: checks
Taknapotin: bets $400
Villain: calls $400
*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to Villain
Dealt to Taknapotin
Villain: checks
NoraFlum joins the table at seat #5
Taknapotin: bets $800
Villain: calls $800
*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to Villain
Dealt to Taknapotin
Taknapotin: bets $800
Villain: calls $800
*** RIVER ***
Dealt to Taknapotin
Taknapotin: bets $800
Villain: calls $800
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Taknapotin: shows (HI: two pair, Eights and Threes; LO: 8,7,6,3,A)
Villain: mucks hand
Taknapotin collected $4149.50 from pot
Taknapotin collected $4149.50 from pot

PokerStars Game #53698438371:  8-Game (Razz Limit, $400/$800 USD) – 2010/12/04 0:14:01 ET
Table ‘Pythia IV’ 6-max
Seat 1: Onadraw2 ($6697 in chips)
Seat 2: Taknapotin ($22282 in chips)
Seat 3: ScHnibL0r ($40091 in chips)
Seat 4: runawayT ($50670.90 in chips)
Seat 5: NoraFlum ($11090 in chips)
Seat 6: Lost Boy 1 ($11596 in chips)
NoraFlum: posts the ante $100
Lost Boy 1: posts the ante $100
Villain: posts the ante $100
Taknapotin: posts the ante $100
ScHnibL0r: posts the ante $100
runawayT: posts the ante $100
*** 3rd STREET ***
Dealt to onadraw2
Dealt to Taknapotin
Dealt to ScHnibL0r
Dealt to runawayT
Dealt to NoraFlum
Dealt to Lost Boy 1
NoraFlum: brings in for $100
Lost Boy 1: folds
onadraw2: folds
Taknapotin: raises $300 to $400
ScHnibL0r: calls $400
runawayT: raises $400 to $800
NoraFlum: folds
Taknapotin: raises $400 to $1200
ScHnibL0r: calls $800
runawayT: raises $400 to $1600
Betting is capped
Taknapotin: calls $400
ScHnibL0r: calls $400
*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to Taknapotin
Dealt to ScHnibL0r
Dealt to runawayT
ScHnibL0r: bets $400
runawayT: calls $400
Taknapotin: calls $400
*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to Taknapotin
Dealt to ScHnibL0r
Dealt to runawayT
runawayT: checks
Taknapotin: bets $800
ScHnibL0r: calls $800
runawayT: calls $800
*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to Taknapotin
Dealt to ScHnibL0r
Dealt to runawayT
runawayT: checks
Taknapotin: checks
ScHnibL0r: bets $800
runawayT: calls $800
Taknapotin: calls $800
*** RIVER ***
Dealt to Taknapotin
runawayT: bets $800
Taknapotin: folds
ScHnibL0r: folds
Uncalled bet ($800) returned to runawayT
runawayT collected $11497 from pot
runawayT: doesn’t show hand