[elindauer]

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hi eric, for the benefit of a lot of the newer posters, perhaps you could write a bit about your 'poker story/history?'

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I've played card games, including poker, all my life. I really got serious about poker in 2002 when a friend lent me a copy of HEFAP.

I read the book, and had memorized the opening requirements in the first chapter before I even sat down in my first game. That first game was a $5/$10 limit game at Ace Point in New York. I won $110, and have never been down overall since.

After a few months, I deposited a small amount at partypoker and started playing online in my spare time. I started at .50 / 1 and slowly grew my bankroll to the point where I could play 2/4 comfortably.

Since I never took money out of my online roll, it continued to grow, to a point where I was ridiculously over-rolled for the stakes I was playing. Sometime around 2003, I started eyeing the 15/30 game, which at the time was the biggest game party offered that you could always sit right down in. Much to my surprise, the players in those games seemed to have clear leaks in their game... not little subtle ones, but big, obvious, calling-2-cold-with-A4o-preflop type of mistakes. Eventually, I sat down.

With excellent table selection and extreme caution, I dipped my toe in the 15/30 waters. It didn't take long to become comfortable with the swings at that level, and before long, I'd abandoned my 2/4 watering hole and jumped straight to the top. Or at least what I considered the top.

My winrate was solid, I felt like I knew why I was winning, and in the middle of 2004 I quit my job with a New York hedge fund and decided to go pro. That's what I tell people anyways. The truth is, I just quit my job, and then discovered that I didn't need to find a new one because I was making enough playing poker.


So I played poker. Then I met the woman who would become my wife. She was just back from a trip to China and hadn't started working yet. I was still playing poker for money and could make my own hours. So we spent all day every day young and in love in New York City. We were married within a year. I owe poker a great debt for that time of my life.

During this run, I eventually moved up again and routinely multi-tabled 30/60. At my peak, I was 4-tabling that level. The highest I've ever played was 100/200 heads up. I think I could play at higher levels, but the fact is, I'm just not a gambler. I play because I have an edge, and the smaller edge / higher variance of super-high-stakes poker makes me uneasy. Maybe one day...


When the UIGE was passed and partypoker dropped all US players, I cashed out my partypoker bankroll to await further developments. I haven't been back to serious poker since, because at the same time I landed a great job for another Wall Street company. So poker moved back into "hobby mode" again. I currently have a few hundred dollars on a couple sites, and I play a wide variety of games with it. I'm particularly fond of 2-7 triple draw these days, though limit hold'em and a bit of O8 get mixed in. I think playing other games has helped me to continue developing my understanding of the fundamentals.


I still have some ambition to go farther up the poker food chain. I can feel the itch coming back, and I'm already in the process of depositing a more serious bankroll to start playing "big" again. I'll probably really get into that around New Year's.

You can find me at stars or UB playing under "elindy". Say hi!