Hi Everyone! (sorry for this being a long post, but for the interested: here is my full story)

During the last year I have been trying to pick up poker again after 10 years. Back then I was a winning player (regularly but not pro), playing mainly cash, but also mastered Sng’s and played some MTTs.

I really studied the game, mostly on my own, through multiple books. Everything from Sklansky/Miller to Harrington, and when I really had grasped Harringtons three tournament books, I heard of a $40k guarantee for $25 on a different poker site than I was regularly playing on. I headed over there and I won it ($12.000). This was much more than I really could handle so i withdraw most of it, and continued playing on that site. (On my cash game i had a steady profit of $1.000 a month, so this was a year profit in one tournament). This caused me to move to higher stakes, which made me loose some money, but then I moved down. After a few months I realized that I was not earning any money any more, my month result was a steady $0 (non negative!=). So I decided to quit poker while I still was ahead.

Besides for the occasional home cash game, I didn’t play poker for a very long time, until last year, when I started to slowly pick it up again. 

Earlier this year I was traveling to the US again (favorite country to visit) and stayed a couple of nights in Vegas again (favorite city), mostly for vacation, but also to try to earn some money on the cash game, ended up loosing only $15. This on the $1/$2 NL cash games so I was pretty happy with the result.

After that we went to a cruise in the caribbean again, for 7 days (favorite type of vacation), and I played all the tournaments and was a regular at the cash game (so soft, but oh so high rake). They had 4 tournaments and I ended up winning (dominating) one, I split the money on one. And in the cash game the end result was negative, but in the whole perspective I earned about $500.

However – now to my real reason to join TPE – on the cruise one of the tournaments was a satellite to a main event with a $1000 entry including a cruise later this year, which I didn’t won, but I exchanged business cards with the one who won. I told him that would like to buy it from him, but at that point he was not interested, although he told me he thought I was the best player there and I should have won (nice words to me). Later this summer, he emailed me and he sold the ticket and package to me, (for only $1000 which means I got the cruise for free), and he expect nothing from me if I win.

So – In three weeks I’m coming to US again and going on that poker cruise – and I’m trying to learn as much as I can from TPE so I can go on and win it!

It is a $200k guarantee and the prognosis is that there will be less than 200 people playing it, so I think I actually have a chance! Although I don’t expect it, but it would be very nice. However, I am from Sweden so I will probably have to play tons of taxes on the winning money, but money is always nice.

So thats my long poker story, and thanks for everyone that has been reading so far. 

If anyone have any suggestion for me how to practice and maybe want to give me some tips and tricks on how to get ready for the big one, please let me know!

FYI: I’m currently playing $11 MTTs on PokerStars and it is not going that well (this week though; I satellites for $5.5 into The Hot $55 ending up winning $106 for a 32nd place, but that is the first win in months)

Cheers!

See you at the tables!