Okay, lets RETURN THE WELL (again)

[Bond18]

My poker story:

I first started up playing in home games with friends my Senior year of high school (2002-2003). I was the school bookie so gambling on cards seemed like a natural transition.

In February of 2003 I bought in online to paradise poker with a friends help (name/credit card, I just played the account) and played 11 dollar SNG’s. I went to the book store and bought/read all the books I could find on poker. I also continued playing in little home games, and eventually destroying them.

I won about 400 on paradise before my mom found out and chucked a massive spaz, so until I got to college that fall I didn’t play online any more. I was however, killing live games for like 20-60 dollars profit a night 5 times a week, which seemed like an assload of money at the time.

In college I kept going with SNG’s and got into LL poker. I also started posting on www.unitedpokerforums.com I met some people there, and got involved with propping for a while.

Unfortunately, one of my early poker mentors, who at the time I thought was very good, was in fact AWWWWWWWFUL at poker and turned me into a huge nit. In fact, because I learned before the days of people loosening up, I became a huge nit with no real concept of pot odds for quite a while.

I started to get a bit better around sophomore year, and somehow on party poker managed to win a 13k package to Australia on what was then a 3k bankroll. On my first try on a 38 dollar satellite I won a 320 seat that became a 13k package.

In Australia I went very deep in the speed poker tournament and was a HU match away from the final table. Previous to the trip I had read a bunch of Daniel Negreanu cardplayer articles, and decided that damn it, I was gonna play wacky loose aggressive to! I’d also talked to Curtains on IM for a while as well and he told me things like “you can’t fold getting 3 to 1” and “you have to pay attention to peoples stack sizes.” So even though I was basically clueless, especially post flop (some things never change) I was aggressive enough to make things happen. I was set against Sweedish player Michael Thuritz HU, who was and still is a very good player, and going into the HU with him at 70k and my at 55k he says to me “why don’t we organize a swap where the winner of this HU match gives the other 15% of whatever he wins at the final table?”

Michael probably thought I was pretty good having played with me at the semi final table (it was a weird sorta structured tournament) because I was a huge card rack. HU was over in 2 hands where we got it AI with my bottom pair and flush draw vs his middle pair and straight draw. He went on to win the tournament and promptly handed me 15k AU. Plus the 4k I got for my finish I’d cashed for what amounted to about $15,000 US dollars at the time, a huge sum for me.

Having never really spent time outside the country and being totally amazed at the world outside the walls of the US, I decided to do study abroad in Australia, which is where a lot of that 15k went. When I got back to Australia in July 2005 I started hanging out at Crown all the time again and playing the live 10/20 and 20/40 limit games. I ran incredibly hot to start (which is how I got the name LuckyTonyD) and made a lot of friends in the Australian poker world. Then around October I went on an incredibly bad run, which coupled with my poor bankroll management brought me to a few thousand within busto. I asked a friend back home who knew me to be a trustworthy and studious if he would stake me and he agreed, so we worked out a deal:

He puts up all the money (about $8000 at the time if I recall right.) If I lose it I owe him back half of it, though I told him it’d be a while to get it since I’d have to go back to work. If I won he got to keep 1/3rd of profits me 2/3rds.

I started playing 3/6 and 5/10 limit online and continued to run bad. I asked a friend of mine who was beating 100/200 limit online how he got so good so fast (had been playing like 9 months.) He told me to go read 2+2. So I went into the limit forum and started getting a real education. I got a lot better, but still ran very bad. Down a few thousand on the stake the Aussie Millions came around and we decided to put me in a 1k tournament. I ran good and played mostly well, and managed to get 4th for 19k Aussie.

I became increasingly interested in tournaments and started playing a few online. I even ventured into the MTT forum. People really seemed a lot nicer there, there was a sense of community. I started looking it over more though I didn’t post that much. I decided with my recent success I was going to attempt what had been my dream since 18, I’m going to play the WSOP ME damn it. I sold some pieces of myself to people in Australia in case I didn’t win a seat, and if I did said I’d honor their % purchase if they wanted to keep it.

I won a seat on Bodog and went off to the WSOP for 6 weeks. I played 9 pre lims and went 0 for 9 after god knows how many 2 outers. In the main I managed to get late into day 4 before AK<AQ and finished 198th for 43k. I paid back a bunch of the 43k then went back to Milwaukee to hopefully finish school. Unfortunately, my girlfriends visa ran out and she had to go back to Australia while I finished the semester. I started playing/posting online more and more and had a lot of early success. In December my girlfriend and I decided we needed to find a place that’d let both of us live together without much worry for visas while I sorted out my Australian permanent residency, and that ended up being China, where her mother had an apartment anyway.

The single greatest recipe for poker success I could give someone goes as like this:

Go somewhere you have no friends and can’t communicate, spend all day on computer asking questions and playing poker, continue for 6 months.

Eventually I got to know more and more guys through 2+2, and eventually approached one whose game/thought process I had a lot of respect for, AJunglen, to coach me. He agreed and helped a [censored] load at plugging all the various leaks I didn’t see or can’t be found by posting a few times a day.

I also got to know Timex online, and told him if he wanted to back me for WSOP I was all for it since I was under rolled for that amount of events. I thought he’d want to do like 5 events or something, see how it worked. Instead, when he got back to me, Stevepa and him had asked their players to play as many as possible. No complaints on my end, but as you guys already know, Vegas was a huge bust and I lost over $61,000 in the end.

Anyway, at this point I’m hoping to continue to play the occasional live tournament, but my real goal for the time being is continued improvement. I feel like my game is pretty good, but not anywhere near as good as it could be with further coaching and comments from my peers. So that’s the game plan for the time being, keep learning and asking questions.