Friday, July 22, 2005
I'm not sure if you remember my old blog (pokerquest.blogspot.com), but I ended up deleting it. Now it looks like some POS spammer picked it up and is selling calling cards on it. I'm not sure if this is against blogger's TOS, but I'm gonna report the site and hopefully get my site back.
Anyway, here's a brief history for those that don't know me. My name is Wes and I once had aspirations of becoming a professional poker player. Last September, I started a quest. I sparked up all my creativity to call it "Poker Quest". The quest was to take an initial $200 and turn it into $2000 by playing poker. The $2000 was to buy a new laptop.
That quest turned out better than I ever imagined. From the first week of September through the middle of April, I turned that $200 into a little over $40,000. That's over 15 times my initial goal. A lot of that was from a $15,000 bad beat jackpot on election day and a $4500 jackpot 2 weeks later. During that time span, I climbed the ladder from playing the $0.50/1.00 ring games to building a bankroll capable of withstanding the wild $5/10 6 max ring games. I had cashed out all my bad beat winnings to pay off debts that I had accumulated over the years.
BUT WHAT HAPPENED?!? Plain and simple, I burnt myself out. When I got control of the swings in the $5/10 6 max, I ending up making a nice hourly rate. Way more than I make at my current place of employment. So , now I got aspirations of becoming a full time poker player. I started playing more and more and winning more and more. Then one day, spring fever took control of me. I realized my golf swing had gone to shit. I hadn't been fishing in ages. I was missing out on a lot of things I really liked to do because I had to play poker. I had to keep that bankroll built up so I could go pro. It all hit me at one time.
So you're broke right? Not even close. My good fortune at the poker tables actually had me living like a rock star for a while. Also, I am now debt free. I've cashed in all my poker winnings (except for $300) and paid all my loans (2 vehicles, 4 wheeler, THAT NEW LAPTOP...). The only time I ever came close to going broke was the first week of my quest.
Now, here I sit on July 22, 2005 writing about Poker. I'm beginning a new quest. This quest is to re-establish the bankroll starting at my inital $300. No aspirations of building a pro's bankroll. Just playing for fun and extra money. I kept $300 so I would have a 300BB bankroll for the .50/1 games. That $300 sit there from somewhere around May to 2 weeks or so ago. Never touched. Not one single hand. Then something happened.
Something happened 2 weeks ago. I'm in a motel room in Greenville, SC bored as hell, but not wanting to go out and endure the heat. So what do I do? I fire up Empire on my shiney new laptop (compliments of the dipshits that play on party poker). During the course of the 3 nights I played in the motel room I ended up winning somewhere around $50 bringing the bankroll up to $350.
This past week, I'm back in Greenville. I'm watching the WPT on the Travel Channel and fire up Empire Poker. No connection. I keep at it for like 10 minutes with no luck. So I decided to fire up Pokerstars and see if I have some left over change in my account for the penny games just to kill time. I click on the cashier, put in my username/password and find $231 in tournament bucks staring me in the face. It was like Christmas. These tournament bucks were from some satellites I had won who knows when. Many times I would qualify for the $215 or $530 and not play in it. Just use the tournament dough for smaller tournaments. Off I go, planning to play a $22 or $33. Well, of course there are no good tournaments, so I pull up the sit n goes and sit down at a $55. It feels like a freeroll.
So off we go. First sit n go in months. I proceed to get dealt jack shit for a long time (for you non -poker players jack shit is my techinal term for rags, but on this particular night, I seemed to get dealt j-6 offsuit an unusually large amount of times). However, I used position to my advantage and stole some pots and pounded mercilessly on the guys on my left stealing there blinds with every opportunity I got. If I was in the cut-off, or button or one before the cutoff and nobody had entered the pot by this point, I was raising with just about anything. Anywho, I pretty much just stole my way to first place in this thing for $225 profit!
So, off to bed I go. Nah! Poker is still on TV, so I'll try another $55. This one was totally dominated by yours truly. I remember being dealt kings twice, aces once, and pocket tens at least 3 times during the course of the tournament. I had a huge chip advantage, pretty much eliminating everyone at the table. Honestly, the only guys I don't remember eliminating were the 3rd and 4th place guys. And I do remember having the 4th place guy all in on 3 separate occasions when I had the better hand, but I got outdrew. So now I've got a T12,000 to T1,500 lead on this poor guy. And here we go, all in on the first heads up hand. I got A-10, he's got pocket 5's or something like that. He doubles up. Then he does the Dewey Tomko (I think that's who it was) all in on every hand and chips away at me doing that because I got nothing. I catch J-10 suited and say fuck it and call him. He's got K-10 and I'm dominated. Now we're even. Somewhere, we get it all in and he's got me dominated again. I'm down to the felt with under T1000 to his over $12,500. I win some all ins and pretty much turned this guy's strategy around on him going all in, not on every hand, but every other hand or so. Now I've battled back to almost even, but he's got me outchipped by just a tad. I get AK, he raises, I reraise. He pushes. I damn near folded it thinking he might actually have aces. Then I thought, if I lay down AK right here I'm either the best poker player on the planet or the biggest pussy on the planet. I know the best poker player thing is out of the question, so I call out of fear of being a pussy. Of course this asshole has KK and I'm dead. Not so fast Daniel San. I got 3 outs up my sleeve. *Poof* Ace on the turn and I'm a huge chip leader again. Shortly thereafter we get it all in again with him all in and me with a mediocre hand and this time I won. $225 more to the bankroll. $450 total for the evening.
Now the bankroll is back up to around $800. That's probably the last you'll hear about my bankroll. I don't want you vultures asking for a handout. It's happened before. It'll happen again.
I probably won't play a lot of poker before the end of the summer. But lookout when the temparature drops. This bad boy is back. At least this week. I might be broke next week. I don't care. It's all a freeroll.
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Brand New Sin - The new CD