Presenting... better know a pogger

[Tokyo!!]

My name is Peter, and I'm 20 (21 in 21 days [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]). It is completely my fault for introducing BobbyO to POG, and for my penance I'll do this writeup.

I've lived on Long Island my whole life and on the whole, I think it's a pretty good place to live overall. Like Shortline, I am a very competitive person and have played sports for basically my whole life (until recently really). I love soccer, baseball, golf and will play or watch most anything. I also love playing video games and believe that old school games are better than new school games by far. I love Zelda and have beaten nearly every one. RTS games are very enjoyable to me as they are very competition based. I love Starcraft: Brood War and think it is the best game ever made for any platform.

I got my first job in 9th grade (1999) as a soccer referee for my old youth soccer association. I started out making only about $10 per game, but by the time I stopped (2003) I was pretty much the most called referee and was reffing 14 year olds (I was 17). I only worked on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons, but I made enough to go out occasionally and get through HS.

I discovered poker in January of 2004. I got $15 free on The Gaming Club (a Prima poker skin). At the time, their smallest limit was .25/.50, and I played uber tight with my 30 BB roll and managed not to go BUSTO. I got it up to about $200 playing .25/.50, and then I started playing $1 MTTtournaments. I won one for $378 which more than doubled my roll. I started playing more tourneys and had my first big win in a 335 man Speed tournament for $1415, which included busting British pro Jac Arama in the final three. After I won, my father sat me down and told me very seriously to not get too excited, that I had to finish school before everything else. I found it funny.

I had more success on the Gaming Club, including 2 more >$1300 cashes. I eventually got a free $50 on PartyPoker from some crazy guy, and ended up making like $2k there as well. Around this time I discoved 2+2, and it helped my game immensely. My parents also decided when I began college in Fall 2004 that I needed to be "respectable" and had me get a real job working at my mother's school as a substitute aide. My mother's school is a school for autistic children and I work(ed) there during late May to June, then for 29 days in July-August for their summer session, and whenever I can in January when I am hope for break. The job doesn't pay a ton, but the work is fun, and my parents are happy. My parents again wanted me to work there this summer, but I was able to find "other" plans right smack dab in the middle of the session.

In the summer of 2005, I had curtains loan me $1 on Pokerstars. I had known curtains not from 2+2 (in fact I didn't even know he posted here at this time), but from playing Kung Fu Chess ( link). I was one of the better players ever to play the game, but imo, curtains was the greatest KFC player ever. I had wanted to play on PS for so long b/c the Gaming Club and Party's interfaces were ugly as hell to me, and I had played PS play money, and found it enjoyable. I grinded this $1 into a few hundred over several months, playing some MTTs and low limit cash. In January of 2006, I had read alot of the STT forum, and decided to try a turbo SNG experiment. I played 40 $6 Turbo SNGs in one night, and had a great ROI. The next day I started playing the $16's. In a week and a half I was rolled for the $27's. In less than a week, I had hit $3k and decided to try the $60s. I hit a huge roadblock and dropped back almost half of my entire PS roll. I was dejected and unhappy. I fiddled around playing some cash games and went back to the $27s. I continued to beat them pretty steadily, but every time I took a shot at the $60s I ran bad/sucked/whatever I dunno. At the very end of March I decided to try MTTs because they were what made me successful in the first place on GC. From April 2006 until the beginning of June I played Stars MTTs and went on the run of my life. I had 6 >$1k cashes, including chopping $7k in a $11R and winning a WSOP seat (now I had an excuse not to work at summer school) in a 4k FPP freeroll (top 2 of 384 got it). This inspired BobbyO (who is my poker protegee btw) and a week later he won his seat.

That pretty much sums up my poker career up until now. For my non-poker life, after graduating from HS very near the top of my class, I got into every school I wanted, but ended up staying near home and taking a bunch of scholarships and enrolled in the Honors College at Stony Brook University here on Long Island. At this point, I feel it was a mistake and I wish I could call for a re-do and go somewhere else. I am majoring in Physics, and minoring in Astronomy. I like it, but it is extremely difficult. I will probably end up becoming a HS teacher, as I have little desire to get into the academic university professor world for various reasons. Plus, as a HS teacher, I would have summers off to go play in the WSOP. Next year, during my Senior year, I will be working with one of my favorite Astronomy professors doing research into galaxy evolution by attempting to measure the characteristics of faint galaxies more precisely (it has not been done well by any professors anywhere before) so that should be exciting.

That's all for now, if I think of other stuff, I'll post it here.