A Year in Review

Save for Later

It is really quite hard to believe but it has been a full year since I joined TPE. I thought this would make a fitting 99th blog to go through and think back to where I was when I started and where I am now in my poker journey, setting up for a very nice 100th blog post of what this next year looks like, how I am going about preparing and what I am looking to get out of it. Okay, off to the races. Last year in July I took the leap and subscribed to TPE. I have played poker on and off for a number of years now, but never seriously and never with any actual thought behind it. I had in December of 2009 after my brother had done some convincing decided that if I took this seriously there may be something in it for me. I started to play. Found very little success and had no idea what was going wrong. I went to the bookstore and started reading, went back practicing and nada. It was all of 6 weeks and I was dejected. I like to think that I can pick things up fast and this was killing me. It was at that point that I made the jump to the first training site I used and started playing Single table SnGs. I found a coach relatively quickly and we gelled from the start. I was playing tons and tons of SnGs for nights at a time logging loads of tables. I was actually making money and I was feeling good. That lasted until a fateful day at the end of March. I was talking with a group of players that I had been talking strategy and working on our collective SnG game with a lot and we all decided to engage in a little prop bet to see who was the best. In the litney of decisions I have made in this game, this has to be the worst and best all at once. The best was simple. 1000 games at the $6.50 9man Turbos on PokerStars in the month of April (ahhh remember the good ole days of US players on Stars…sorry about that, daydreaming a sec there!). He who has the most profit wins.  To break that down for you that is 33.333 games per day for 30 straight days. Not a whole lot of people can swing every day of the month to play so more realistically it works out to 50 games a day for 20 days with some slack time for unexpected events to make up the difference. So Turbo SnGs last typically 30min (some shorter, some longer, but on average about 30 minutes a pop is standard). At the time I was comfortable 6 tabling effectively so that was rought 4hrs 15min per day for 20 days of play to get to 1000 games. As you can see, not my best idea. So once I figured out that my volume wasn't going to be sufficient I upped the number of tables to 8, then to 12. It made it easier to get in the volume, but I hemmoraged money. I couldn't keep up with it at all and I paid dearly. I paid roughly a $3k lesson to learn that you don't add tables until you can manage it. Expensive lesson, well learned. So needless to say, I didn't win. Not even close. I lost a ton of my BR as well as completely destroying my confidence. I went into May a mess. I dropped stakes, I couldn't get anything going. I reduced tables, I couldn't get my mojo back. I fell apart as a player. The guy who was coaching me at the time suggested that I take a break from them and try something different. I decided to cut off the SnG entirely. I couldn't stomach playing it and every time I tried things just got worse. I decided to hop in and try some micro MTTs. I played a couple and I min cashed. I understood roughly what was going on and if I played it like an SnG I could do okay, but never run really deep. I knew that there was something I was missing and I just wasn't happy with the content at my prior site, so I stared looking. And looking. And looking. I stumbled across TPE somewhere, I can't ever remember where, but I did and I am thankful. It wasn't long after the site had launched and there weren't that many folks on, but there were a few of us and it was a great group to play with and hang in chat with. It was exciting. The game felt new to me. I was learning and starting to improve. August was a long month of watching vids and studying but it was paying off. September I took the leap and jumped on FTP (if i knew then what i know now…) and I got ready for Mini FTOPs. It was all the buzz on TPE and the guys in chat were all excited. I had never played in anything like it and I was pumped. I played 3 events. I almost cashed the first, finished 37th in the second and got my first T-shirt for busting a pro in the 3rd. It was exciting as all hell. From there I saw that December was the next Mini FTOPs and I put in a ton of time, studying, playing analyzing and it started to pay off. I took down several tourneys in teh interim and FT'd a ton. I was going into the series on top of my game. And once again the wheels came off. Looking back now, my fundamentals weren't strong enough to allow me to start playing like I knew what I was doing. Should have stuck to what I knew and what had got me to where I was, but I didn't and I paid again. Dearly. Coming out of December my confidence was shot. I have to say thank god for Wein, FkCoolers and xxsosickxx. Hands down along with RFB and KB some of the best guys I have ever met and spent time with. Inside of the game though, their insight and understanding of the game helped recenter me and by February I had managed to get back on the wagon and was back. I ran though Mini UBOC with mixed results, but at least didn't embarrass myself like in December. I was comfortable again and it was great. The best day in poker I ever hand was fast approaching. The 5th Anniversary of the Sunday Million. I was going to play it, it was so big and so juicy. I was on the fence for a long while and it was actually Wein who pushed me over the edge. We spent a lot of time talking about it and he told me, "look, it is the biggest $10 MTT you'll ever play". He was right. I knew how to play it and I wasn't afraid. I sat down that Sunday and back and forth in chat I can still remember KB and I chasing each other deeper and deeper in that tourney. 60k+ people started and I managed 1800th or so and I lost a flip I was ahead in so I got my money in good for a huge pot. It was my largest cash to date and my biggest accomplishment. Best of all I had my BR for SCOOP and I was ready. I was feeling so good that my brother and I actually headed down to Atlantic City and played in the WSOP-C event at Caesar's. The tourney was fun and sweating RFB was great, but the best part was the people we met and the time we spent together. Wouldn't trade that for the ring. It was dynamite. So we returned from that and the preparing for SCOOP began, only to get sidetracked by the DOJ. I have written extensively on the subject and how I feel about it and what I think so I won't rehash it again. Check older blogs, its all there. Anyway post Black Friday I found Merge, but most importantly I have learned some of the mixed games and I continue to grow and evolve as a player. Although the options have dwindled extensively, they are there and I make the most use I can still playing on Lock. Recently though we had the WSOP. THis summer was some of the best poker and coverage in recent times and I loved it. I am sitting at the end of my first year of serious poker playing and I have never been more excited and intrigued by the game. I think that there is still a future for me in it as a serious amateur and I will still continue to work and develop. Stay tuned for tomorrow for Blog Post 100 and my plan for the next year. Until then this is the Gman signing out!