Soo... here goes.
For all you tldr mofoz, cliffz at bottom. TYVM KTHNXBAI
I haven't posted in this thing in so long I don't even remember the year... but a lot has changed. I was going to school... but at this point I haven't been to any college in over a year and to be perfectly honest, I don't miss it at all. I think that someday I would like to go back and finish my engineering degree.. but for right now I am enjoying how I live my life. I haven't been unmotivated or lazy during this time at all though, I've been working full-time (until November, got laid off YAY!) and since then I have been playing poker as a means of making money. I started off playing poker during spring semester of my freshman year and started off as a fish online to becoming a live shark. I'd say I lost about $1.5k during my first two years playing poker. After that point, I had made a few withdrawals totaling about 1.5k, and since then I have lost another $1.2k. So -$1.2k online total.. however, I was also playing very small stakes live where I had made about $2k.. so my live income supplemented my online game. When I turned 21 I was able to play in a casino and I started my real education of poker.. playing $1/$2 No Limit Texas Holdem. The casino subjected me to so many different types of players in a short period of time.. my strategy was simple.. play tight, observe their tendencies, and attack when I sensed weakness. This worked alright to start.. I would say my first 6 months after I turned 21 (june '10 - jan '11) I was up about $2500. Some of it I can attribute to some really good luck, but all along.. I was getting better. My work ethic now has to take over... as I try to transition to be a professional live poker player. Seems like a pipedream, but I'm young, right? Why the fuck not just let it ride and take a chance? Maybe at some point I catch a huge upswing and never look back.
Some people will probably tell me that I won't be able to make it... and they may be right. A character named Mike McDermott said in a movie called Rounders said "if you're not careful, your whole life will become a fucking grind" and I think that it's 100% true. No matter what I choose to do for work, it will consume me for the rest of my life. If I go and get my degree and become an engineer, fuck that, I could even get a job as an electronics technician right now , I would be doing repetitive work for the rest of my life. Either sitting in front of a prototype building it, sitting in a cube creating a prototype, or going and playing cards... I think I prefer to have fun while I work. While I can see the rewards and benefits of pursuing my field of expertise, right now I want to pursue other endeavors. What if I win some huge tournament like the World Series of Poker? That would be pretty sweet, I think I would be set up for life.
I've also been dating a new girl named Ashley for about the past 1.5 years and to be perfectly honest I can say everything has been going awesome! She likes me for who I am and hasn't really asked me to change in any sort of dramatic way and I really like that. She gives me my space and freedom and trusts me completely. She doesn't complain about my lifestyle at all.. and I really appreciate all the time we spend together because we never spend it fighting. I can say that I've learned a lot more outside of school than I think I ever would have inside the confines of a campus... going to college gives you some independence and freedom.. but I think that college was about the worst 3 years of my life. I was never really content.. I had a girlfriend who never really gave me the time of day which I feel really affected my overall outlook on life. I was suspended twice from school for academic reasons. I failed my first semester EE class, got kicked out on probation after my sophmore fall semester, came back during what would have been my junior year spring semester and then failed out again due to not meeting academic probation standards. That time I ended up failing a stupid physics elective writing course, LOL. So stupid of me, cramming to write my final paper, used a really good bit of info on wikipedia to make up like a page of material... and apparently teachers can tell even when you hand in a physical copy. Oh well... my bad there, got a 100 on the midterm paper too, was expecting an 80 or so for that, not a fucking goose egg for 50% of my grade.
Anyways, after I got the second bid from school I decided to just work full time. Started off doing manufacturing work for a couple months during the summer as a temp job, and I ended up getting laid off from that job due to there not being enough work. However, I got a strike of luck.. I got a job about a week and a half later from a company doing military prototype work on air conditioning applications. I was hired on initially as an electronics technician, but was eventually turned into a kind of hybrid tech, doing refrigeration and electronics work. I was working on the cutting edge and doing a terrific job in the eyes of my boss and I. My boss then told me at one point that he was looking to get me hired into the company full-time. GREAT!!!
I wanted to become a full time tech. My boss asked the vice president of r&d, he said they weren't looking to hire a tech in r&d at that time. My boss informs me of the news and they begin to run out of work for me. My quality of work declines because I already see what's in the future... another fucking lay-off. Crisis mode then hit next door over in production.. their product line they released was going to have to go through a recall due to quality issues in the design. Basically, they needed a tech to fix all the shit they were going to have to go through and they would need me to write detailed instructions for the production workers to do easier things.
I took the job and ran with it. I was kicking ass and taking names. I ended up piling on more responsibilities for myself than just my re-work bench (basically I would troubleshoot and fix units there), I would also be doing unit qualification tests and data analyzing as well. Meanwhile, I was also helping out all across the production floor doing some of the grunt work so to say. I thought I was a fucking all-star there.. I brought up to my new boss over in production that I would love to be a tech full-time... he never got back to me on that, and then I had a coworker at final inspection start to ride my ass all the time. I'm not sure if he was intimidated by the fact that I was taking on all sorts of responsibilities, but this guy had single-handedly gotten my bosses to start doubting me. They began to pull me aside and talk to me about some little things that weren't happening. A few units in qual test didn't have grills on them(like a truck grill kind of, but for an ac unit).. however, it wasn't my responsibility to do that assembly and I was not informed that they needed to have the grills on. Alright, I'll work on making that happen. From there he was finding small things at final inspection... like a screw at the bottom of the enclosure.. okay, open it up and take it out. A lot of these things that were going on weren't my responsibility to do, but if I touched a unit they said it had to be perfect when it left my hands. I guess they got tired of finding little things at final inspection.
It's okay, they laid me off, gave me this speech about how I didn't care about the job. And about how he had given me a lot of warning that this moment was coming. I felt cheated. I fixed over $750k worth of fucking material for $15/hr over 3 months, OH, the profit margins on these machines??? 15-1 on their investment... so I basically saved the company $700k in profits. They repay me by sending me home. It's alright, I'm not bitter. You see, during this time where I thought I was on my way out during r&d, I started playing poker again... took a break for a while after I met Ashley because of the new job and her, and I didn't pick it up again since the summer of '11.
I played at the casino a few times, made some money. About $1k. Sweet. Played on the weekends at foxwoods for the month of june. Halfway through july i said to myself, I fucking hate driving to foxwoods all the time. The drive itself is like 1hr15mins each way, so about 2.5 hours of driving total to and from. That's a lot. If I could cut that down to an hour or less, that would be sweet. Then I found some local 1/2 games.. underground games. Games run in rich peoples houses, underground poker clubs.. private club games.. and a couple legit underground poker rooms in boston. From the games I've played over the past 5 months and 334.5 hours, I have made $11.1k at an hourly rate of $33.46(yeah it's a brag, but fuck it I'm proud of myself).
I am now properly bankrolled to take a shot at 2/5 no limit (basically a move up in stakes, from a $200 buy in to a $500 buy in) and if I can catch an upswing of good variance, I may never look back. My hourly rate could average out over the course of a year to about $50+ per hour! At that point I would be making as much playing poker as I would have if I went back to school for 2 years and got an engineering job. That sounds pretty sweet to me, especially with the lifestyle of being your own boss. At this point I just need discipline in my own life. I need to conquer myself... get back into good shape, and make this poker thing a full time job that I love. I'd be going to the table instead of the cubicle.. I think I'd like that more.
Anyways, I think I'm going to be updating here a lot more as a poker journal, I'll contain updates about my personal life but I also feel that I'm gonna need to vent about some of the bullshit and variance that occurs with not having a guaranteed income. I don't win everyday I go... sometimes I will lose, but my job will be to make the wins as big as possible while minimizing my losses using good common sense bankroll management. Never lose more than two buy ins, ever. If you are on tilt, just get off the table.
I felt really proud of myself yesterday. I went down to Mohegan Sun for the first time ever with my buddy Paul. I bought in for a full stack ($300) and sat down. The poker room was small but I heard there were loads of fish at this places... so I figured checking it out might be in my best interest. I noticed at the table we were at, there were 3 mega fish, a couple bad regulars (people who play a lot but are either break even or losing players) and 1 good regular (he was pretty passive anyways). So after the course of the first hour I had played only a few hands, being aggressive when I played (raising or betting) and took down a lot of pots without showdown, and the one hand I had at showdown was the 3rd best hand in poker, QQ, pocket queens, ladies, hoes, depends on my mood and if they win or not, lol. Anyways, I get into a hand with AsKc which is a really good preflop hand, it's a straddled pot (basically double the big blind, so theres a third big blind of $4) one guy calls for 4, then this bad regular raises to $25 preflop, I look down and see my AsKc in the small blind. I contemplate a call but realize I will probably be out of position in a big pot with a drawing hand, not my real cup of tea. So I decided to raise this guy under the circumstances that 1) I thought my raise had a very good chance of getting the pot HU with the initial raiser and 2) I would get more money in preflop with presumably the best hand. Also, 3) if the initial raiser comes over the top all in I could still fold my hand by putting him on AA or KK (the best two hands) or call with potentially the best hand, in most cases a coinflip against a pair of queens or lower, or dominated hands like AQ and less. So I raise it up, make it $85 to go, the big blind, straddler, and the limper all fold to the raiser who thinks for about 15 seconds and calls. At this point, I knew I had the best hand preflop and was going to shove any flop that came. My logic behind this was that my opponent had called with a clearly inferior hand preflop, he would have raised better hands over my raise. So the flop comes out QdTd6d and the pot size was $177. I shove all in for $208. He looks down at his hand for 1 second and says CALL!!! FUCK ME I probably got outflopped. He turns over AdQs for a flopped top pair and flush draw and the board bricks out and he takes the pot.
I got so frustrated.. I didn't need to shove the flop, it really kind of sucked for my hand!! All I had was a gutshot straight draw on a 3 diamond board, I didnt have the draw... why bother? Anyways, RELOAD, another $300, an orbit or so later (about 9 hands) I pick up QcTc, not a great hand but I called a small $11 raise into a 7 player pot. So 7 way $77 in the pot, flop comes Js9c4c. A huge flop for me, I hit an open ended straight draw and a flush draw, potential that the overcard, Q, is good. Conservative estimates says I have about 15 outs to the best hand. So I need to narrow the field, checks around to me, I make it $50 to go, get one caller in position to me. I put him on a jack or a flush draw. Turn hits 6s. I check, guy bets $50 into the pot, so I'm being laid $227-$50 for pot odds, about 4.5-1, and the odds of me making my draw here are 15/(52-2(my cards)-2(opponents cards)-4(community cards seen) = 15/44, or about 1/3... which is 2-1 odds of hitting. Im getting fantastic implied and pot odds to play the hand compared with my chance of making the hand. So I call, no reason to shove here. River bricks, 9h. FML. I check and he checks behind, shows JT for two pair, jacks and nines ten kicker. So i had even more outs, 18.. so I was an even better favorite... I got so tilted. Two hands after I pick up TT, 5th best hand in poker make it $12 to go, get one caller, new player in the big blind makes it $57 to go.
I just thought to myself, WHAT THE FUCK. I wasn't even thinking clearly about what to do I was just thinking I was so pissed off about losing, fuck it, I might just go all in I don't give a fuck if he has a better hand. Then I stopped when the action got back to me... took a deep breath, and just threw my hand away and left the table. I said to myself.. if I can even think rationally about the hand, just throw it away and get off the table. Don't let tilt cost you another $200. And I saved myself that much.. and thought that I had the discipline to get away from the table even though I was getting unlucky.
I'm hoping that in the future I'm going to be able to work on my discipline and really take my life to the next level... so here's to that. Peace out. Also TLDR I cant understand if you guys feel that way haha.
-Nate
CLIFZZ
out of school
new girlfriend
worked full time for over 1.5 years
trying to play poker full time
lez go get it CHEAA!!!
I haven't posted in this thing in so long I don't even remember the year... but a lot has changed. I was going to school... but at this point I haven't been to any college in over a year and to be perfectly honest, I don't miss it at all. I think that someday I would like to go back and finish my engineering degree.. but for right now I am enjoying how I live my life. I haven't been unmotivated or lazy during this time at all though, I've been working full-time (until November, got laid off YAY!) and since then I have been playing poker as a means of making money. I started off playing poker during spring semester of my freshman year and started off as a fish online to becoming a live shark. I'd say I lost about $1.5k during my first two years playing poker. After that point, I had made a few withdrawals totaling about 1.5k, and since then I have lost another $1.2k. So -$1.2k online total.. however, I was also playing very small stakes live where I had made about $2k.. so my live income supplemented my online game. When I turned 21 I was able to play in a casino and I started my real education of poker.. playing $1/$2 No Limit Texas Holdem. The casino subjected me to so many different types of players in a short period of time.. my strategy was simple.. play tight, observe their tendencies, and attack when I sensed weakness. This worked alright to start.. I would say my first 6 months after I turned 21 (june '10 - jan '11) I was up about $2500. Some of it I can attribute to some really good luck, but all along.. I was getting better. My work ethic now has to take over... as I try to transition to be a professional live poker player. Seems like a pipedream, but I'm young, right? Why the fuck not just let it ride and take a chance? Maybe at some point I catch a huge upswing and never look back.
Some people will probably tell me that I won't be able to make it... and they may be right. A character named Mike McDermott said in a movie called Rounders said "if you're not careful, your whole life will become a fucking grind" and I think that it's 100% true. No matter what I choose to do for work, it will consume me for the rest of my life. If I go and get my degree and become an engineer, fuck that, I could even get a job as an electronics technician right now , I would be doing repetitive work for the rest of my life. Either sitting in front of a prototype building it, sitting in a cube creating a prototype, or going and playing cards... I think I prefer to have fun while I work. While I can see the rewards and benefits of pursuing my field of expertise, right now I want to pursue other endeavors. What if I win some huge tournament like the World Series of Poker? That would be pretty sweet, I think I would be set up for life.
I've also been dating a new girl named Ashley for about the past 1.5 years and to be perfectly honest I can say everything has been going awesome! She likes me for who I am and hasn't really asked me to change in any sort of dramatic way and I really like that. She gives me my space and freedom and trusts me completely. She doesn't complain about my lifestyle at all.. and I really appreciate all the time we spend together because we never spend it fighting. I can say that I've learned a lot more outside of school than I think I ever would have inside the confines of a campus... going to college gives you some independence and freedom.. but I think that college was about the worst 3 years of my life. I was never really content.. I had a girlfriend who never really gave me the time of day which I feel really affected my overall outlook on life. I was suspended twice from school for academic reasons. I failed my first semester EE class, got kicked out on probation after my sophmore fall semester, came back during what would have been my junior year spring semester and then failed out again due to not meeting academic probation standards. That time I ended up failing a stupid physics elective writing course, LOL. So stupid of me, cramming to write my final paper, used a really good bit of info on wikipedia to make up like a page of material... and apparently teachers can tell even when you hand in a physical copy. Oh well... my bad there, got a 100 on the midterm paper too, was expecting an 80 or so for that, not a fucking goose egg for 50% of my grade.
Anyways, after I got the second bid from school I decided to just work full time. Started off doing manufacturing work for a couple months during the summer as a temp job, and I ended up getting laid off from that job due to there not being enough work. However, I got a strike of luck.. I got a job about a week and a half later from a company doing military prototype work on air conditioning applications. I was hired on initially as an electronics technician, but was eventually turned into a kind of hybrid tech, doing refrigeration and electronics work. I was working on the cutting edge and doing a terrific job in the eyes of my boss and I. My boss then told me at one point that he was looking to get me hired into the company full-time. GREAT!!!
I wanted to become a full time tech. My boss asked the vice president of r&d, he said they weren't looking to hire a tech in r&d at that time. My boss informs me of the news and they begin to run out of work for me. My quality of work declines because I already see what's in the future... another fucking lay-off. Crisis mode then hit next door over in production.. their product line they released was going to have to go through a recall due to quality issues in the design. Basically, they needed a tech to fix all the shit they were going to have to go through and they would need me to write detailed instructions for the production workers to do easier things.
I took the job and ran with it. I was kicking ass and taking names. I ended up piling on more responsibilities for myself than just my re-work bench (basically I would troubleshoot and fix units there), I would also be doing unit qualification tests and data analyzing as well. Meanwhile, I was also helping out all across the production floor doing some of the grunt work so to say. I thought I was a fucking all-star there.. I brought up to my new boss over in production that I would love to be a tech full-time... he never got back to me on that, and then I had a coworker at final inspection start to ride my ass all the time. I'm not sure if he was intimidated by the fact that I was taking on all sorts of responsibilities, but this guy had single-handedly gotten my bosses to start doubting me. They began to pull me aside and talk to me about some little things that weren't happening. A few units in qual test didn't have grills on them(like a truck grill kind of, but for an ac unit).. however, it wasn't my responsibility to do that assembly and I was not informed that they needed to have the grills on. Alright, I'll work on making that happen. From there he was finding small things at final inspection... like a screw at the bottom of the enclosure.. okay, open it up and take it out. A lot of these things that were going on weren't my responsibility to do, but if I touched a unit they said it had to be perfect when it left my hands. I guess they got tired of finding little things at final inspection.
It's okay, they laid me off, gave me this speech about how I didn't care about the job. And about how he had given me a lot of warning that this moment was coming. I felt cheated. I fixed over $750k worth of fucking material for $15/hr over 3 months, OH, the profit margins on these machines??? 15-1 on their investment... so I basically saved the company $700k in profits. They repay me by sending me home. It's alright, I'm not bitter. You see, during this time where I thought I was on my way out during r&d, I started playing poker again... took a break for a while after I met Ashley because of the new job and her, and I didn't pick it up again since the summer of '11.
I played at the casino a few times, made some money. About $1k. Sweet. Played on the weekends at foxwoods for the month of june. Halfway through july i said to myself, I fucking hate driving to foxwoods all the time. The drive itself is like 1hr15mins each way, so about 2.5 hours of driving total to and from. That's a lot. If I could cut that down to an hour or less, that would be sweet. Then I found some local 1/2 games.. underground games. Games run in rich peoples houses, underground poker clubs.. private club games.. and a couple legit underground poker rooms in boston. From the games I've played over the past 5 months and 334.5 hours, I have made $11.1k at an hourly rate of $33.46(yeah it's a brag, but fuck it I'm proud of myself).
I am now properly bankrolled to take a shot at 2/5 no limit (basically a move up in stakes, from a $200 buy in to a $500 buy in) and if I can catch an upswing of good variance, I may never look back. My hourly rate could average out over the course of a year to about $50+ per hour! At that point I would be making as much playing poker as I would have if I went back to school for 2 years and got an engineering job. That sounds pretty sweet to me, especially with the lifestyle of being your own boss. At this point I just need discipline in my own life. I need to conquer myself... get back into good shape, and make this poker thing a full time job that I love. I'd be going to the table instead of the cubicle.. I think I'd like that more.
Anyways, I think I'm going to be updating here a lot more as a poker journal, I'll contain updates about my personal life but I also feel that I'm gonna need to vent about some of the bullshit and variance that occurs with not having a guaranteed income. I don't win everyday I go... sometimes I will lose, but my job will be to make the wins as big as possible while minimizing my losses using good common sense bankroll management. Never lose more than two buy ins, ever. If you are on tilt, just get off the table.
I felt really proud of myself yesterday. I went down to Mohegan Sun for the first time ever with my buddy Paul. I bought in for a full stack ($300) and sat down. The poker room was small but I heard there were loads of fish at this places... so I figured checking it out might be in my best interest. I noticed at the table we were at, there were 3 mega fish, a couple bad regulars (people who play a lot but are either break even or losing players) and 1 good regular (he was pretty passive anyways). So after the course of the first hour I had played only a few hands, being aggressive when I played (raising or betting) and took down a lot of pots without showdown, and the one hand I had at showdown was the 3rd best hand in poker, QQ, pocket queens, ladies, hoes, depends on my mood and if they win or not, lol. Anyways, I get into a hand with AsKc which is a really good preflop hand, it's a straddled pot (basically double the big blind, so theres a third big blind of $4) one guy calls for 4, then this bad regular raises to $25 preflop, I look down and see my AsKc in the small blind. I contemplate a call but realize I will probably be out of position in a big pot with a drawing hand, not my real cup of tea. So I decided to raise this guy under the circumstances that 1) I thought my raise had a very good chance of getting the pot HU with the initial raiser and 2) I would get more money in preflop with presumably the best hand. Also, 3) if the initial raiser comes over the top all in I could still fold my hand by putting him on AA or KK (the best two hands) or call with potentially the best hand, in most cases a coinflip against a pair of queens or lower, or dominated hands like AQ and less. So I raise it up, make it $85 to go, the big blind, straddler, and the limper all fold to the raiser who thinks for about 15 seconds and calls. At this point, I knew I had the best hand preflop and was going to shove any flop that came. My logic behind this was that my opponent had called with a clearly inferior hand preflop, he would have raised better hands over my raise. So the flop comes out QdTd6d and the pot size was $177. I shove all in for $208. He looks down at his hand for 1 second and says CALL!!! FUCK ME I probably got outflopped. He turns over AdQs for a flopped top pair and flush draw and the board bricks out and he takes the pot.
I got so frustrated.. I didn't need to shove the flop, it really kind of sucked for my hand!! All I had was a gutshot straight draw on a 3 diamond board, I didnt have the draw... why bother? Anyways, RELOAD, another $300, an orbit or so later (about 9 hands) I pick up QcTc, not a great hand but I called a small $11 raise into a 7 player pot. So 7 way $77 in the pot, flop comes Js9c4c. A huge flop for me, I hit an open ended straight draw and a flush draw, potential that the overcard, Q, is good. Conservative estimates says I have about 15 outs to the best hand. So I need to narrow the field, checks around to me, I make it $50 to go, get one caller in position to me. I put him on a jack or a flush draw. Turn hits 6s. I check, guy bets $50 into the pot, so I'm being laid $227-$50 for pot odds, about 4.5-1, and the odds of me making my draw here are 15/(52-2(my cards)-2(opponents cards)-4(community cards seen) = 15/44, or about 1/3... which is 2-1 odds of hitting. Im getting fantastic implied and pot odds to play the hand compared with my chance of making the hand. So I call, no reason to shove here. River bricks, 9h. FML. I check and he checks behind, shows JT for two pair, jacks and nines ten kicker. So i had even more outs, 18.. so I was an even better favorite... I got so tilted. Two hands after I pick up TT, 5th best hand in poker make it $12 to go, get one caller, new player in the big blind makes it $57 to go.
I just thought to myself, WHAT THE FUCK. I wasn't even thinking clearly about what to do I was just thinking I was so pissed off about losing, fuck it, I might just go all in I don't give a fuck if he has a better hand. Then I stopped when the action got back to me... took a deep breath, and just threw my hand away and left the table. I said to myself.. if I can even think rationally about the hand, just throw it away and get off the table. Don't let tilt cost you another $200. And I saved myself that much.. and thought that I had the discipline to get away from the table even though I was getting unlucky.
I'm hoping that in the future I'm going to be able to work on my discipline and really take my life to the next level... so here's to that. Peace out. Also TLDR I cant understand if you guys feel that way haha.
-Nate
CLIFZZ
out of school
new girlfriend
worked full time for over 1.5 years
trying to play poker full time
lez go get it CHEAA!!!