How It All Began

Finally! I have finally taken some time to start out my poker blog. I have spoken with so many of you who do have blogs and have heard the same thing, "I think it really helps my game - where I can find leaks and weaknesses to improve upon" (something along those lines) And you all suggested that it would be beneficial if I started one, so I am going to tell you how my poker "career" started. This could be a long post, but I feel if I get it out, I can eventually start writing a post everyday or two with my most recent poker events.

I was at my best friends house at the time, and he put on the movie Rounders, and this was the first time I had ever seen it, and I obviously loved it. This got me wanting to play, but I didn't know much about the game, and my friend and I always made bets on stupid stuff like - "I bet you $5 that he won't make this free throw", just random things like that. But one day we both decided to play heads up at a bunch of games of poker. He "promised" me that he wasn't that good and he would help teach me the games, but we were going to play for money. I was really excited to do this because I thought I would be able to beat him easily. So we agreed to play with $125, which was absolutely ridiculous for me, I had no idea we were going to be playing for this much but, we did anyways. So he taught me bunch of games with wild cards, like - Follow the Queen, Baseball, Up Baseball and then Chicago and NL Hold Em. Anyways, so I got out my pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters so we could use them as chips, but as exact denominations for the $125. Pennies were worth $1, nickels worth $5, etc. In the end, I ended up bluffing him at the wrong pot where he had the nut straight and I had nothing. He slow rolled me, I flipped out, I threw my glass across the room, yes it was full, and just got so angry because $125 was alot of money to me and CLEARLY this was major bankroll mangament problems. Haha, oh how fun it was. I seem to be writing alot, so I will try and make the story as short as I can so I can write about new things. Anyways so after losing that $125 with my friend Liam, I wanted to try and win some money back against my friend John. John and I had played alot of pool and I asked him if he wanted to play for money, he agreed and we decided to play for $10 a game, plus, $5 each ball left on the table. So, let's say I was stripes (yes, 15-ball pool), and I had 4 stripes left on the table and John and cleaned me up and won, I would be down $10 for the game, and 4 x $5 for each ball left on the table, so in this case $20, and down $3o for the game. Turns out, John owns a pool table and I ended up down $90. So I said, let's play some poker, so we played and the way we played, which was so stupid, since we knew nothing about blinds, was $5 minimum preflop each, and you either fold or check. So basically we were playing 5-5NL, and I ended up taking him for a HUGE amount. He got stuck and wanted to keep playing to try and win it back, he ended up down $180, including the $90 that I owed him for the pool. So he owed me some cash, which I was happy about. We would play in class at school, everywhere. It was fun, anyways he ended up paying me like $20 a day, and I would just give that to Liam to pay off my debts for our heads up game. Finally one day, John paid me straight up $140, so I gave Liam the rest that I owed him, and took the rest for myself and enjoyed the money. After all this, I finally started getting into little tournaments with my friends...

So basically, like 95% of the poker population, I began playing games for fun with my friends in grade 11 and 12 for $5. There would be maybe 6 or 7 of us and we were using those horrible thin plastic red, white, and blue chips that were probably purchased at the Giant Tiger or Dollar Store. Anyways, so we would play, I forget how we structured our little tournaments but it was pretty sad. Basically 1st place would take all the money, and 2nd place would get double their buy in back, and 3rd would get his money back. Haha, wow, these should only have been winner takes all, which we would do from time to time, but some of my friends were desperate to actually win their money back or win something, I was one of them. Anyways, so we played alot of these and I actually ended up making a few bucks off of these, maybe $60 or so, which was of course alot of money to me at the time for winning these things.

I was accepted to Carleton University into a Bachelor of Engineering 4 year program, and I also started playing on the Carleton Ravens Men's Volleyball Team, where I met Jamie. Jamie also liked to play poker and he invited me to his friends place one Friday night to play some poker, and at this time I had felt like my game had improved and I was ready to move into cash games. Boy, was I wrong. We would buy in for $20, and the blinds were $0.25/$0.50, which I now know is the standard blinds for a $50 buy in cash game. What the fuck were these guys thinking. Obviously, I knew nothing about the blinds, nor did I care, I just wanted to play and try and win the money. I ended up losing $40 on the night, and was just like this is stupid, and I felt that I had played my best and just ended up getting involved in the wrong pots and the wrong time. I played a few more times, every Friday night, and lost $20 two more Friday nights in a row, and then made a big score the last time I went. I ended up cleaning off the table and had $220 in front of me, and I was so excited I brought my friends out for dinner with the money and we had a good night.

It was around February 2005 and my friend Jamie found out about this promotion on PartyPoker which he took advantage of. You could email them saying - "I found out about the $50 giveaway, I am interested in this." This was awesome, I could learn to play online poker, and to my surprise, there was no, "you need to sign up and deposit $25 and play 23986343422 hands until you get the free $50" which is what they do now I think. Anyways, so I emailed them and I got my $50 into my Real Money account and I was ready to play. I turned it into $450 playing $0.10/$0.20 and withdrew all of it. I then found out about a tournament in Ottawa. $50 buy in plus $10 for a rake. My friend Jamie found out about this on www.pokerpoker.ca and told me to call a number to register into the tournament. I called the man, got a seat and was ready to play in my first big tournament ever.

Long story short, sorry, I know this is a long post, I busted in the tourny, I played super tight, and met my good friend Frank. Joined the $1/$2 cash game with $20, hahahaha this was so funny, at the time I was like whoa, tonnes of money, but now, a $20 buy in to a live $1/$2 game is absoultely ridiculous, $20 is like half the minimum raise preflop haha. Anyways, I was able to turn this $20 into $160 one night. I'll tell you about the big hand. It was 3 handed, I have KK on the button. I limped, don't ask why, this is so funny now that I remember this. The SB completes, and the BB raises to $22. I call, and the SB calls. I had about $50 left in front of me, so I told myself I was pushing this flop no matter what. I got the worst flop in the world. A 9 J. I was so upset that it came A high, but I had to go with what I said. So i shoved my last $50 into the pot and at this point if he had the A, good for him, it was like 3am, I had to be at school the next day for 9am, and I still had to drive 45 minutes to get home so I wanted to leave. The SB took a while to fold, he said "I can't believe I'm folding this", and kept his cards to show after. The BB called, and showed QQ. I was like thank god. I took down the pot, I was excited, and the SB showed A 8. So I cashed out and drove home. I was so happy and actually thought I could do well at this. I was told they play every night except for Saturdays. So I just kept going to the cash games instead of the tournaments after I kept busting out of the tournaments. This turned out to be my summer job for that summer. I was able to pay for my tuition for school the next year and I finally took down 2 tournaments in a row there. I had met alot of really nice people and I was feeling really good about my game.

September rolled around and it was time for me to focus on school, until February 2006, when I started to go back and play again, I was in need for some money and decided to take my last $1000 of my bankroll and play some $1/$2. I was able to make some money and eventually had enough to be able to afford to play the $2/$5 game again (I was playing this game the whole summer). Anyways, this is where I met my good friends Adam and Krissy who I got along with fine, and apparently made some pretty stupid calls against Adam that I can't totally remember, but it sounds funny. So I played for a few weeks, maybe 2 months or so until Exams came up. School finished and I wanted to keep playing, so I did. I would play almost every night from 11pm until 6am, drive home, and work from 7am til 4pm at my landscaping job in Kemptville. This was so brutal, but I was loving it, I was making money and I still loved my landscaping job. I would have quit, but my parents don't know that I play poker and if I quit, they would be wondering why I quit and had "no" job. I didn't really consider poker a job, but I was making enough money to pay for school and to have some spending money so I was happy.

The end of summer was nearing and I was introduced to online poker again. So I deposited $500 onto Eurolinx to try and clear this 100% bonus, which I did not do. I was playing $0.25/$0.50 but it was too low of a limit to gain enough FPP for the bonus. At first I was struggling with playing online, I lost my initial $500 and decided to deposit another $500, this turned out to be a bad idea as well, I was down to $340 in my account, and it was time for me to go away for the weekend, I had plans to go to Wonderland with my girlfriend, so I guess this would be perfect for me to get away from poker for a few days and come back. I came back and played for a few weeks more and ended up even for those few weeks so I decided to play $1/$2 online with my $340. I said, this is my last money, if I lose it, I lose it and I won't be playing online for a while, if I win, then I will continue playing and keep trying to figure out how to play against these morons online. I sat down with $200 and I played for 2 hours, I turned the $200 into $560 and quit for the night. The next day I sat down again at 1/2 and turned $200 into $640. So I was running really well and decided that I should keep playing at 1/2. I was moving out at the time, so I was busy with moving my things, and I bought a new computer for my new home. So I moved out, and kept playing. By the end of September, I had turned my $340 into over $4,000! I was like whoa, this is alot of money, I can't believe I did it. I was so happy with myself I just kept eating up the players and taking all their money.

I had been talking to Marc Karam alot online about my play and he was supporting me the whole time I was playing at 1/2, and I would ask for his advice on certain hands and stuff, and it was really helpful. One day, we met back up with Adam and Krissy. Marc and I decided to go their place for a night to play an online session. Turns out, this was the worst night ever for me. I had gone on the worst run and I had lost about $1600 of my $4000 and decided that it was time to move down limits and play at $0.50/$1. I had still been running bad there too, but still managed to keep up my bankroll and not lose everything. But I was still running horrible and had to move down limits again. I was getting frustrated and it sucked to have to play at such low limits, but I had to do it if I wanted to continue playing online.

So all in all, I am still here today. I still play micro limits on cash games on Prima through Eurolinx, and I have finally started to get into tournaments on PokerStars. I will make another post later about my PokerStars run. Sorry for such a long post, but I figured I should have gotten it all out so you can understand how I started to play poker.