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My story (aka how the poker bug bit me)
by spectralradius on 12/19/08
Warning: loooong post
In the fall of 2002, after a 20 hour flight from India, I landed at JFK with a couple of brand new "made in India" suitcases, a smug grin on my face and made my way over to the Greyhound bus terminus, heading for Pennstate to work on my Masters' degree (on a fellowship, reason for the smugness in the first place). Having spent two wonderful years at Pennstate finishing up my MS, in the fall of 2004 I decided to pile on more academic trash on myself and decided to head over to Stanford to start work on my Phd (the smug-factor by then had increased by several orders of magnitude, I was going to stan-fucking-ford after all and this time on a Stanford Dean fellowship, God I so own every soul on this planet). Two miserable years later, I decided enough is enough, proceeded to give Stanford my precious middle finger, dropped out of my Phd, and headed over to Houston taking up a plump job as an industrial scientist in one of the oil and gas biggies, and thats where I have stayed put since 06. And that, dear readers as the saying goes, is "where I come from".
Anyway, while in Pennstate, one north-east-winter-induced-ass-freezing saturday night, a few friends dropped into my place with a deck of $3 Walmart cards and a box full of colored plastic chips, and announced lets play no-limit poker. Now all through my life I have been very very comfortable with cards, for as long as I remember I have played all forms of bridge, gin, rummy etc etc with pretty decent skill, but never had I heard of poker except for a fleeting memory of an atrocious Mel gibson-jodie foster flick "Maverick". To cut a long story short we started playing 4/5 handed "NL poker", and pretty soon I found the game mind numbingly boring. For starters we had a gazillion colored chips to start with, blinds never went up (hell none of us knew blinds were supposed to go up) and nobody EVER lost. Fast forward an year, and I was crushing Stanford in bridge, I had formed a feared team with a South Korean guy and pretty much decimating the Stan competition. One day I found a flyer on the Stanford student center announcing some Online world championship of student poker to be played every sunday (I forget which site, Paradise?). And thats where I got my start in online poker. Having played there for a few sundays, i deposited $10 onto the site and played a few $1 sngs or something like that, and did it a few times and in general found it a quick 30 minute time-pass and pretty much boring compared to bridge.
Having moved to houston, and not finding too many places to play bridge, one fine work day I trolled into P5s and started reading with fascination stories of people like pokerpro, bax, sheets,pearjam and of people who were actually making a decent living playing that online game I had found so boring. And then I started digging deeper into the whole poker thingie. Downloaded PS and FTP and every night railed the 100r final table while myself playing sng/50NL FR cash/some such shit with little idea of any theory/startegy regarding this. For the majority of 2007 and early 2008 I played on and off online and was a losing player at best (played high like FTOPS, WCOOP etc etc), the money wasnt really a concern, but I was pretty much convinced that online poker is something that you need to be supremely lucky to win in. I had also discovered a home game group in houston and was doing really well in that, which further convinced me that online poker was a big mehhh and setup and a luckfest, who the fuck can win a 1000 man tourney after all, and everytime I have AA someone calls me with 57 and flops a straight. Damn online poker.
By 08 the live poker bug was really into me hard core. By June of 08 I had won 3 of the 4 biggest home game tourney in houston (250-300 buyin 50-85 entrants), won several 150-buyin 30 mans, and was up close to 10k in live home-game tourneys. But when it came to online -----------SIGH.
In july-aug I decided that I had to look up into why I was so pathetic online. I had by then discovered 2p2 and realized that leaks are supremely magnified online compared to my home games with live donks which I was crushing. So i spent a month studying with a vow that I am gonna be a winning online player and building a bankroll. I have started with sng theory and mastering my push-fold game. Once I have put in a substantial sample size of sngs, 6mans, 9mans, 45mans, 180mans, and have a 5.5k+ roll, I would move into MTTs. And absolutely no impulsive shots.
Deposited 1k into FTP on sept 10th 08, $150 into PS and started my online journey with a vengence.
Some stats:
On sept 10 08: Sharkscope FTP games played 600, total profit $612
PS games played 350 total profit -$567
As of today FTP games played 1444 total profit $2752 , ROI 19%, ABI : $10
PS games played 627 total profit $278 ABI: $5
Current roll (PS+FTP): 4.2k.
Avg weekly play time : 15-25 hours.
In the fall of 2002, after a 20 hour flight from India, I landed at JFK with a couple of brand new "made in India" suitcases, a smug grin on my face and made my way over to the Greyhound bus terminus, heading for Pennstate to work on my Masters' degree (on a fellowship, reason for the smugness in the first place). Having spent two wonderful years at Pennstate finishing up my MS, in the fall of 2004 I decided to pile on more academic trash on myself and decided to head over to Stanford to start work on my Phd (the smug-factor by then had increased by several orders of magnitude, I was going to stan-fucking-ford after all and this time on a Stanford Dean fellowship, God I so own every soul on this planet). Two miserable years later, I decided enough is enough, proceeded to give Stanford my precious middle finger, dropped out of my Phd, and headed over to Houston taking up a plump job as an industrial scientist in one of the oil and gas biggies, and thats where I have stayed put since 06. And that, dear readers as the saying goes, is "where I come from".
Anyway, while in Pennstate, one north-east-winter-induced-ass-freezing saturday night, a few friends dropped into my place with a deck of $3 Walmart cards and a box full of colored plastic chips, and announced lets play no-limit poker. Now all through my life I have been very very comfortable with cards, for as long as I remember I have played all forms of bridge, gin, rummy etc etc with pretty decent skill, but never had I heard of poker except for a fleeting memory of an atrocious Mel gibson-jodie foster flick "Maverick". To cut a long story short we started playing 4/5 handed "NL poker", and pretty soon I found the game mind numbingly boring. For starters we had a gazillion colored chips to start with, blinds never went up (hell none of us knew blinds were supposed to go up) and nobody EVER lost. Fast forward an year, and I was crushing Stanford in bridge, I had formed a feared team with a South Korean guy and pretty much decimating the Stan competition. One day I found a flyer on the Stanford student center announcing some Online world championship of student poker to be played every sunday (I forget which site, Paradise?). And thats where I got my start in online poker. Having played there for a few sundays, i deposited $10 onto the site and played a few $1 sngs or something like that, and did it a few times and in general found it a quick 30 minute time-pass and pretty much boring compared to bridge.
Having moved to houston, and not finding too many places to play bridge, one fine work day I trolled into P5s and started reading with fascination stories of people like pokerpro, bax, sheets,pearjam and of people who were actually making a decent living playing that online game I had found so boring. And then I started digging deeper into the whole poker thingie. Downloaded PS and FTP and every night railed the 100r final table while myself playing sng/50NL FR cash/some such shit with little idea of any theory/startegy regarding this. For the majority of 2007 and early 2008 I played on and off online and was a losing player at best (played high like FTOPS, WCOOP etc etc), the money wasnt really a concern, but I was pretty much convinced that online poker is something that you need to be supremely lucky to win in. I had also discovered a home game group in houston and was doing really well in that, which further convinced me that online poker was a big mehhh and setup and a luckfest, who the fuck can win a 1000 man tourney after all, and everytime I have AA someone calls me with 57 and flops a straight. Damn online poker.
By 08 the live poker bug was really into me hard core. By June of 08 I had won 3 of the 4 biggest home game tourney in houston (250-300 buyin 50-85 entrants), won several 150-buyin 30 mans, and was up close to 10k in live home-game tourneys. But when it came to online -----------SIGH.
In july-aug I decided that I had to look up into why I was so pathetic online. I had by then discovered 2p2 and realized that leaks are supremely magnified online compared to my home games with live donks which I was crushing. So i spent a month studying with a vow that I am gonna be a winning online player and building a bankroll. I have started with sng theory and mastering my push-fold game. Once I have put in a substantial sample size of sngs, 6mans, 9mans, 45mans, 180mans, and have a 5.5k+ roll, I would move into MTTs. And absolutely no impulsive shots.
Deposited 1k into FTP on sept 10th 08, $150 into PS and started my online journey with a vengence.
Some stats:
On sept 10 08: Sharkscope FTP games played 600, total profit $612
PS games played 350 total profit -$567
As of today FTP games played 1444 total profit $2752 , ROI 19%, ABI : $10
PS games played 627 total profit $278 ABI: $5
Current roll (PS+FTP): 4.2k.
Avg weekly play time : 15-25 hours.
And here we go
by spectralradius on 12/19/08
Can a 8-5, late 20s, first generation US immigrant, earning in the 130s from said job ever make his dream of being a pro poker player come true? Or is he destined to be stuck on the rungs of the US corporate ladder ?