Three Years in Las Vegas

[MicroBob]

congrats on your success so far. really terrific story and my nomination for post of the year (POTY).

i'm hopefully on my way to a semi-similar type of success story via online-poker income.
january of 2003 i didnt know how to play hold-em, didnt know if a full-house beat a flush and didnt know what the terms 'muck, nuts, utg, turn or river' meant. but i did know what 1BB/hr meant from my time spent on blackjack card-counting and the BJ21.com boards so maybe i was a step ahead of you there.

my progress hasn't been quite so rapid, but i'm getting there.

my USCF is around 1400...but i've knocked off the occasional 1800 in my time (so watch out)!! havent played much chess since taking up poker though so there's no way my game is very strong now.

if/when i stabalize my income a bit more via poker i look forward to spending more time back with the 64 squares with the occasional chess-club appearance or weekend tournament.

curious if you still play chess very much (perhaps you mentioned it but i didnt notice). i know there are a couple of big tourneys in LV...i think the bigger one is around XMas, New Year's.


congrats again...great story.

[Jesse Richman]

Just wanted to de-lurk a minute to thank you for posting this, along with everything else you post. I, like you, played "real" poker for the first time in the 1-3 stud games at Foxwoods in April 2001. While I haven't made the leap you've taken, it's been an exciting, fun, and profitable experience for me as well.

What I most want to say, though, is that despite the fact that we've been playing poker seriously for the exact same amount of time, I don't think there's anyone who's been more helpful in improving my game. Your posts here are the nuts, and I've taken more from them than probably 80% of the poker books I've read.

I'm moving to Vegas in August to begin law school at UNLV; I don't expect to have much time to play during the next 3 years, but maybe I'll see you at the tables.

[laceratedsky]

Best. Post. Ever.

[Rick Nebiolo]

Fantastic story. It proves that in poker a bright guy can get real good real fast.

My only advice would be to listen to pokerbabe and wear those suits.

Clarkmeister should right a companion piece (or I could write one on my fifteen year decent into mediocrity [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]).

~ Rick

[oddjob]

[ QUOTE ]
Fantastic story. It proves that in poker a bright guy can get real good real fast.

My only advice would be to listen to pokerbabe and wear those suits.

Clarkmeister should right a companion piece (or I could write one on my fifteen year decent into mediocrity [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]).

~ Rick

[/ QUOTE ]

you should, i think a lot of us are striving to reach mediocrity in poker. i enjoy reading these, and dynasty's was great. i always wanted to know how everyone got kicked off into their poker lives.

[PokerPaul]

sorry to ask this, but did you embellish a little bit in your post??

Don't get me wrong, i love to read about these kind of stories and live vicariously through them, since i have a family and kids to care for out east here, so i don't have the option to pick up and leave, but sometimes i do wish i could give it a try for aqn extended period.

Anyways, you mentioned one of your worst sessions in this thread as being -96 big bets for three sessions......

sorry, but if you have been playing professionally in vegas for three years, that should not stand out as one of the "worst" sessions. heck, to lose 100 bigbets in just ONE session is a really bad day, but not something most pros would describe as extrodinary.

For example, 100 big bet loss at 10-20 (my game of choice), is a $2000 hit. Its definitely a very bad day, where the fish caught their draws, and very few of my hands hold up, but it happens, even to me, who is definitely not playing pro hours here. And you are talking about 3 sessions to accumulate that loss....


Either you are very very good, play with marked cards (kidding), or the law of statistical variance has not caught up to you yet.

[Clarkmeister]

"Either you are very very good, play with marked cards (kidding), or the law of statistical variance has not caught up to you yet. "

Or maybe his sessions aren't as long as yours.

EDIT: You know what, I've never had a -100 BB session either now that I think of it. 75BB's, yes, but not 100. And I play way longer sessions than Dynasty with a higher standard deviation.

[CrackerZack]

Playing live, having a session near that is very rare. You get about 1/8th of the hands, and often get demoralized breaking the 50 BB mark and just call it a day. Online its easy, you have 2-4 tables going, you just click more chips and get more chips. A few hours later, when you realize you just not gonna get back to even, you look at the carnage. ugh. I've lost 63BBs once live and its my only loss over 50. Online I've had a couple of sessions that nearly broke 100 BBs and a number of -50 BB sessions.

[PokerPaul]

i'm sure one of the facts that play into this is that i play online, and shorthanded, so the speed of the number of hands played, along with the variance is way bigger that live play.

however, 100 BB's over the course of 3 sessions i find hard to believe even in BM cardroom to be that significant.

BTW, are you playing in WSOP?

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
i'm sure one of the facts that play into this is that i play online, and shorthanded, so the speed of the number of hands played, along with the variance is way bigger that live play.


[/ QUOTE ]

That definitely explains it. Because you referred to "marked cards" I assumed you were talking about live play.

As for the WSOP, I don't play tournaments, and at this point, I don't see myself taking the effort to learn. I've had a friend offer to buy me a seat out of his pocket and split any profit 50/50 and I turned it down.