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.

[graydot]

[ QUOTE ]
I really have no idea what to say, but I feel left out by not posting.

err, I guess my name is Ryan and I'm 19 years old living in Vancouver Canada. Although, I go to McGill University in Montreal, and just completeled my first year of my BCOM there. I've done martial arts my whole life, with a black belt in Hapkido (for those who care), and am now heavily involved in Brazilian Jiujitsu (the ground work they do in the UFC). I'm a really small guy, about 5'4, half chinese, half white, born in Singapore.

I'm pretty much your normal teenager...I party (drink but no drugs), go to movies, clubs and whatever else is fun :P

[/ QUOTE ]

What the hell is Hapkido? I have taken Aikido for several years, anything like it?

[ChrisV]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The field. Physics and Astronomy are fields of diminishing returns. This means that the more they are studied the less new information will found out because we get closer to "learning" it all as time marches forward.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow I don't agree at all. Do you really think that we are closer to learning "it all" than the greeks were? (I do think we have "better" answers) We don't even have a unified theory of how the fundamental forces work within one context.

Do you also feel like we are closer to knowing "it all" in medicine, biology and genetics?

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely we have. All of the easy stuff in Physics has been figured out, and only the hard stuff is left. I am not saying we have currently "figured it all out" or that these fields will not be rewarding for zero. I am saying that to think they are endless is misleading, as they are much, much smaller then they were even 100 years ago.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

Be careful about assuming that the current state of knowledge will not undergo some radical paradigm shift. It's happened before and could easily happen again.

[Tokyo!!]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The field. Physics and Astronomy are fields of diminishing returns. This means that the more they are studied the less new information will found out because we get closer to "learning" it all as time marches forward.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow I don't agree at all. Do you really think that we are closer to learning "it all" than the greeks were? (I do think we have "better" answers) We don't even have a unified theory of how the fundamental forces work within one context.

Do you also feel like we are closer to knowing "it all" in medicine, biology and genetics?

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely we have. All of the easy stuff in Physics has been figured out, and only the hard stuff is left. I am not saying we have currently "figured it all out" or that these fields will not be rewarding for zero. I am saying that to think they are endless is misleading, as they are much, much smaller then they were even 100 years ago.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

Be careful about assuming that the current state of knowledge will not undergo some radical paradigm shift. It's happened before and could easily happen again.

[/ QUOTE ]

That has nothing to do with the amount of finite knowledge available to be gained. That only has to do with the way that this knowledge is interpreted.

I watched a video about this in my Science and Society class, and there was a professor who had wrote a book about this topic and he was very thorough on most points. While I did not agree with him completely on everything, he had an answer for the most common believers who felt science was infinite. I wish I could remember his name, his book was like "the end of science" or something, but I am not positive on that.

[ChrisV]

Just wanted to say a bit about sports and poker since other people seem to be doing that.

I play touch football. Not sure if you know what that is in the States. It's basically like rugby but with less players on the field and touches instead of tackles. This makes it a faster, more strategic game. Also more social since it can be played mixed. I'm not a tiny guy (6'1" or so and around 180 pounds) but I would get annihilated at rugby by well built guys.

I count myself lucky to still be able to participate in sports. About 10 months ago I had major surgery to correct a vascular problem in my left leg called "popliteal artery entrapment syndrome". Going into surgery, there was some chance my leg would have to be amputated below the knee. Even two weeks after surgery, my surgeon was saying it was "realistic" that I would never play sports again. Now it's recovered to an extent (about 90-95% what it was) that caused my surgeon to poke it and mutter things like "I'll be goddamned" and "Miracles DO happen" last time I saw him.

Poker wise I have been playing for probably about 7 years now. I spent quite a while playing low limits (1/2) while I was at Uni with no income. After I got a little money together, I moved up through 3/6 rapidly to 15/30, where I stayed for about half a year before discovering SNGs. I destroyed the $215s for about the next year. I have 6 figures in the bank largely as a result of my play back then (and I was working full time at the same time). Then a vicious downswing on 30/60 holdem saw me take a break from poker, and I returned to $55 SNGs to get my confidence back, then moving back up to $109s, where I played for a while, doing moderately well. I consider the $215 speeds unplayably bad now. Some guys are still beating them but they are freaks of nature.

I've just bought in to Pokerstars and am building my bankroll there playing $60s. Haven't tried any higher than that yet.

I have several friends who make a living on poker. Two of them would be close to $A half a million in earn.

[His Boy Elroy]

Any time you can make a surgeon say "I'll be goddamned", that is pretty awesome. Glad to hear it.

[ChrisV]

[ QUOTE ]
Any time you can make a surgeon say "I'll be goddamned", that is pretty awesome. Glad to hear it.

[/ QUOTE ]

It was pretty funny actually, I was seeing a registrar of his and then the registrar dragged him in. Then my surgeon is like "Dude, you don't know how bad this case was. This was the worst operation I'd done in 5 years.". The registrar is like "really?" and the surgeon is like "come here, I'll show you some scans". He drags him into the next room and puts up films of a CT scan taken just after surgery, and from the next room I hear the registrar go "DEAR GOD! THOSE LOOK LIKE 90 YEAR OLD'S ARTERIES". And the surgeon is all like "DUDE I KNOW! IT WAS THE WORST OPERATION EVER".

[Andrew Karpinski]

I love you guys ;0

[traz]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I really have no idea what to say, but I feel left out by not posting.

err, I guess my name is Ryan and I'm 19 years old living in Vancouver Canada. Although, I go to McGill University in Montreal, and just completeled my first year of my BCOM there. I've done martial arts my whole life, with a black belt in Hapkido (for those who care), and am now heavily involved in Brazilian Jiujitsu (the ground work they do in the UFC). I'm a really small guy, about 5'4, half chinese, half white, born in Singapore.

I'm pretty much your normal teenager...I party (drink but no drugs), go to movies, clubs and whatever else is fun :P

[/ QUOTE ]

What the hell is Hapkido? I have taken Aikido for several years, anything like it?

[/ QUOTE ]

hmm...its based off the same root art (DRUJJ), but Hapkido generally includes alot more striking (quite alike TaeKwonDo), and most Hapkido styles use smaller circles and are considered a little more agressive/direct than most aikido styles.

[Hornacek]

My turn.

My name is Ben. I'm a 22-year old Chinese American living in New York City. I was born in Chapel Hill during the Michael Jordan era at UNC, then moved to the Metro Detroit area when I was a year old. Avid Detroit and uMich fan all around, my older brother and half my HS friends went to UM.

I was a relatively bright child in my formative years. I excelled particularly in memorization and math. My dad taught me math all the way through my childhood, and decided I needed to learn calculus when I was 12. I graduated High School was I was 16, and enrolled at MIT in the Fall of 2000. I graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science in 2004, and in 2005 I received my Masters in CS at the ripe old age of 21. With all that computer knowledge, it was only natural for me to accept a job in the Finance world trading equity options in NY. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I've been dating the same girl for two years now, and things are going great. I am also a Christian, although I myself believe in the possibility of atheists. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I am a very right-wing Conservative Republican, and I'll leave it at that. I love the booze and cigars, and will have a cigarette when drunk enough, but am not a regular smoker at all. I also smoked weed in college for two years, but decided it clearly wasn't for me.

Poker-wise, I started playing poker in 2000, and ventured into online poker in 2003. I'm still playing the $55 and $60 SNGs on PP and PS after three years. Even though I have the BR to move up, I'm either too scared or don't think I'm good enough to win at higher levels. Yeah, whatever that means.

I played tennis in HS, rowed crew in college, and now I just run and lift trying to get rid of this extra 15 pounds from grad school. I have also run two Boston Marathons in the last five years. I'm generally pretty easy to get along with, pretty competitive, and love games. POG has been great to me, and I'm interested in getting to meet some of you IRL. I've talked to quite a few of you on AIM, but that's about it.

That's all I can think of for now, but don't hesitate to ask any questions. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]