Poker Career So Far

When I graduated from law school in 1994, a started playing poker with a group of friends. We would play something like 8 to 10 times per year, rotating from house to house. We still have this home game going today, but we only play about 4 times per year, since nearly everyone in the group has 2.3 kids and careers. Most of us are attorneys. So I’ve been playing poker for about 12 years, but I freely admit that during the first 8 years or so I didn’t really know what I was doing.

During one of our home sessions in 2002, one of the guys proposes that we play “tournament style,” like they do for the World Series of Poker. We gave it a shot, but the blind structure was really messed up and it made for an awkward evening -- three guys sitting around for about 2 hours watching the rest of us play. That was my introduction to tournament poker.

Then the WPT aired. I caught the third show by accident. I was hooked, and became a regular viewer. I had played poker once in a casino prior to 2002, back in maybe 1998. I think it was Omaha (high). After the WPT ramped up and poker started taking off nation-wide, I was in the thick of it.

I started venturing to the local riverboat casino poker room about once every 4 to 6 weeks. At the time, my daughter was 3 and my son was just born, so a night away was a very rare event.

As the 2003 WSOP approached, I learned about on-line poker, and that players could win a seat in the Main Event through satellites. I made my first $200 deposit, strictly with the goal of winning a seat in the Main Event through a satellite. I lost that $200 in the wacky crazy rebuy sats. I made another $200 deposit and gave it another shot. No luck.

My wife and I scheduled a trip to Vegas for July 2003. I bought my first poker book -- Sklansky’s Hold ‘Em for Advanced Players. I read it and re-read it in preparation for my trip. Looking back, I probably understood about 30% of what I was reading, because you really need a lot of time at the tables to understand that book.

I discovered the 2+2 site. After reading many posts about bankroll management and other basic concepts, I decided to get organized about my new hobby. I made another $200 on-line deposit right before the July 2003 Vegas trip, and devoted $1000 of my own money as a live game bankroll. My general goal was to see how far I could take my $1000 live roll and my $200 on-line roll.

The Vegas trip was a success. Tight-aggressive play at the $5/10 and $15/30 tables. I was playing somewhat above my bankroll, but I played very tight and generally avoided trouble. At this point, I was not following the world poker seen, but I heard the results of the WSOP and the Moneymaker win on the day it happened.

I started playing with more focus on-line. I played strictly at night, after the kids went to bed. I would never allow poker to become a distraction from my family. I slowly built-up my bankroll. We went to Vegas again in 2004, and I played some poker, but not as much as I would have liked since it was a trip with my wife and I didn’t want to abandon her for significant periods of time.

I started keeping records on my live play. I continued to play at the local poker rooms about every 4 or 5 weeks, continuing to build the bankroll. In January 2005, I set the goal of winning enough to pay for a July 2005 Vegas trip, and entering one of the lower buy-in WSOP events.

In June 2005, I went to Vegas a few days before my wife flew out. I played in the $2000 NLHE WSOP event. I made it to about 235th place out of over 2000 players, and I got knocked out by Spider-Man. I also played in a Bellagio $500 tournament, and win $4845, my biggest cash to date. I also played some $5/10 NLHE cash games, and won a good amount.

At this point, my combined on-line and live bankroll together was over $10,000. I had increased my starting bankroll ten-fold in about 2 years.

I had been keeping records in an Excel spreadsheet, but our computer hard drive crashed in the fall of 2005, and I lost all of the data. Stupidly, I did not have an electronic back-up or even a paper copy. I tallied the accounts up, and started over with my records.

My total bankroll reached a peak of over $11,000 in August 2005. Then I withdraw money to pay for the July Vegas trip (I balked, but my wife held me to my commitment) and I also purchased a fantastic 1000 set of Paulson Pharaoh chips. This drained a total of about $2,800 from the bankroll. In August 2005 I withdrew about $300 for a flat-panel computer monitor. After these withdrawals, my total bankroll was around $8,500.

In August 2005, the “Family Poker Debacle” occurred. I have a separate post about this occurrence. Though an unfortunate series of events, my niece unintentionally evacuated my PokerStars account to the tune of over $1646.

Christmas Day 2005 was perfect. I had an absolutely wonderful day with my wife and kids from morning ‘till the kids bedtime, playing games and having a great time. That evening, I simultaneously cashed in a PokerStars and a FullTilt tournament for a combined $1900 win. Its hard enough to cash in any tournament, and cashing in both at almost the exact same was a big surprise. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I was very relaxed and was under no work-related stress during the holiday break.

So, by the end of 2005, I had fully recovered from the Family Poker Debacle, and the total bankroll was at about $7,500. In January 2006, I decided to take a dip into higher on-line stakes. After some bad beats, compounded by some bad plays, I got smacked back down to the lower limits.

I also started taking some hits in the live games. As I got more advanced with my play, I moved into an almost hyper- LAG stage of my poker development. This resulted in bigger swings, with some nights where I’d win $2000, followed by a few $800 losing sessions. Looking back a few months, I think I was just testing out some new techniques.

I was very aware that I was playing more loose and aggressive, but it was like a context with myself to test my live read on my opponents. I wasn’t really playing against my opponents, it was more like I was testing my own read of my opponents. In a hand, if my read was that my opponent had a mediocre hand, I would push the action in an effort to test my read and make him fold.

Unfortunately, as I learned, this style doesn’t work against weaker players. They aren’t skilled enough to see that you are sending the signal “I have a set,” and so they call with middle pair. My read was correct -- yea me -- but I still lose the pot.

So, backing off from the tricky stuff, I’ve decided to regroup on my game and get a plan of attack in May 2006. I’m back on the winning track, and I’m still playing on that original $1000 live and $200 online starting bankroll from 2003.

This blog will be an effort to set some goals and track my play.

June goal:
Build on-line bankroll to $3500

Longer term goals
Play in the Bellagio tournaments in October, if I can arrange it. Can’t make the WSOP this year (unless I win a seat on-line…)