Who are you? Personal / Poker background

[ZOMG_RIGGED!]

bah, who needs an other lawyer anyway :-)

[sethypooh21]

[ QUOTE ]
bah, who needs an other lawyer anyway :-)

[/ QUOTE ]

If it's any consolation, I have plans in the works to make there one less lawyer...

[jba]

28 years old
single but live with someone who's going to make me marry her soon
I write software for a living, poker was a hobby and now is more like a second income/job. sometimes I hate it but there always seems to be a reason to grind.

I always played card/board/strategy games growing up but never much poker. stuff like hearts, pinochle, canasta, gin, etc with family - probably 5-10 hrs a week my whole life. my dad is a blackjack fish and I don't remember learning the game, I think I always just knew it. between 19-25 I played bj in nevada a couple times a year, learned craps and got hooked but lost enough money fast enough that it was never a problem.

about 3-4 years ago I started playing holdem with work friends, little single table tournaments for 5-20. hit foxwoods for my first limit experience after looking up starting hand recommendations online. there were huge lists for 2/4 and 4/8 so we sat at a 5/10 with a kill table and I was definitely the fish, trying to win every hand. I remember asking my buddy after we quit (he isn't good) how in the hell you were supposed to play something like 66 (I knew it was supposed to be good, but it didn't seem to stand a chance in that game). He told me you just have to flop a set, and I was like WTF there's only two left that can't be right.

so for the next year or so I played the home games and downloaded paradise and played in freeroll tournaments, and deposited 20-50 a couple of times (I have an addictive personality so I tried to keep the real money to a minimum). I had no concept of bankrolls and usually busted out after playing a bunch of $1 or $5 big mtts. Then around dec 04 I entered a $3 rebuy super satellite to the bay101 shooting stars tournament, beat a big field and won an entry into a $150 satellite a few nights later. I was staying at my gf's apt the night of the satellite and was just going to play it there thinking it would be an hour or two. funny story: in the first level she started giving me head and it folded to me and I had TT and I was like nahhhh and folded, someone else had something and the big blind had AA. I never could have folded back then so to this day I probably owe everything to that one BJ.

anyways around 4 am (gf had gone to sleep hours ago), the third to last person got knocked out and they awarded two seats. I remember staring at the popup for like ten minutes not really believing it had happened.

I won the seat and 1.5k spending money, withdrew 1k and bought a bunch of crappy TJ cloutier type books and also TOP. by the time I finished reading TOP and donking off the other 500, I finally realized I had absolutely NO idea how to play the game, the tournament was in a couple months and I decided to really dedicate myself to learning the game. somehow in the next couple months I discovered this site, bonus whoring, bankroll management, and LHE and quickly grinded up to 1/2 full.

I went out to the tournament and had a blast and realized that I still had no idea how to play. I played with a bunch of big name pros and folded queens preflop (probably incorrectly). after I got knocked out I put in some marathon 24+ hour sessions at 6/12 and got seriously hooked.

I came back and ground my way up to 5/10 full, then switched to 1/2 6max late in 05. this was back when party 6max jumped from i think 1/2 or 2/4 straight to 5/10. I made that jump and still crushed. The next 3-4 months was a vicious cycle of getting crushed at 10/20 and rebuilding at 5/10. I was terrible and didn't realize it. At one point I deposited some money on hollywood poker to clear a bonus and lost 3k at 5/10, staggeringly fast. Then I lost another 3k at 5/10 and 3/6 on party and suddenly I only had like 1.5k around january or feb 06. I was really depressed and stopped playing as much and was thinking really hard about cashing out and buying a plasma tv and doing something else with my time.

Then I found two things that turned it all back around: casino whoring and lhe sngs on party. I never told anyone at the time but those lhe sngs were SICK - thing is the player pool was stupid small, not many fish but the ones that were there were amazing. Most of the players were really bad, and about 1/3 tournaments there would be one guy that meant to open a NLHE table but opened a LHE instead, and they would stack off in the first 5-10 hands --- and most of the other players didn't realize they were doing it and adjust. and then everyone else thought I was the maniac. I started 12 tabling them and ended up playing almost 5k of them from the 20s up to the 200s at almost 30% ROI. then party changed the structure and made it much harder to accidentally open the wrong game and the games got a LOT worse, and I quit playing them. but by that time I'd done the damage. and I made another 6k casino whoring and was suddenly very robusto. great experience overall as I found that learning every type of advantage play imaginable is the best way to make money gambling. no sense hunting with all the sharks.

During this time I was playing 10/20 and shots at 20/40 at the local casino, and by the time the UIGEA was passed I was comfortably crushing the 20/40. So I took almost all of my money offline (left about 600 in) and took a solo trip to vegas to play poker and BJ. crushed the bellagio 30 and blackjack (this is when bj really started to click for me) and almost tripled the money I took down there in 9 days. I came back and started going to foxwoods pretty much every other weekend. Only playing online when I was bored or drinking to donk off chips playing HORSE or 5/10.

By march my live roll was very ROBUSTO but online roll was down to about 70 bucks, and I decided to roll the dice and play a 25bb challenge, moving up every time I had 25bb for the next level. made it up to 50/100 with ~3k in a few hours, finally quit and went to bed with about 2.5k. started regularly playing 5/10 again, ran it up to 6k, started playing 10/20, ran it up to around 10k -- all in a month or two. I've been playing 10/20 and lots of huhu ever since.

not going to foxwoods much anymore - the place makes me want to puke, they can't get anything above 20/40 going, and I found a closer place to play occasionally. my plan now is to build up a little more online and live to play in the 75/150 mix that they run, or hopefully mohegan can get a regular 30 or 40 holdem game going. my dream is to move to LA in a year or so and eventually get a masters or something and play/freelance on the side.

much longer than I planned this to be.. hope someone enjoyed it.

[ervinsm46o]

Actually sethypoooh im curious for your input on this. We were just breifly going over some of the "higher ethical standards" in the legal profession blah blah bs and the in depth background you fill out when you take the bar. Could depositing money online and playing poker ever come back to haunt us in our profession? I know i heard one lawyer in NC who was disbarred (sp?) for being drunk in a bar and fighting. If so, i may just say forgo the online world of poker altogether and just occasionally visit the casinos.

FYI im assuming you are familiar with the Unlawful internet gambling act

[sethypooh21]

[ QUOTE ]
Actually sethypoooh im curious for your input on this. We were just breifly going over some of the "higher ethical standards" in the legal profession blah blah bs and the in depth background you fill out when you take the bar. Could depositing money online and playing poker ever come back to haunt us in our profession? I know i heard one lawyer in NC who was disbarred (sp?) for being drunk in a bar and fighting. If so, i may just say forgo the online world of poker altogether and just occasionally visit the casinos.

FYI im assuming you are familiar with the Unlawful internet gambling act

[/ QUOTE ]

Pay your taxes and you're fine. UIGEA doesn't make anything YOU do illegal that wasn't illegal already (i.e. if you're in Washington state or the like) - it's stated effect is more on the banks' ability to send money to a poker site. Seriously, just don't get arrested for anything and you'll be fine.

[Heisenb3rg]

Age: 23
Name: Jordan
Sex: Male
From: Toronto, Canada
About me:
I'm 6'1, blonde hair, blue eyes, I like long walks on the beach and holding hands over a candle lit dinner. Star gazing and wine tasting are personal favorites.
I also play the poker good.

Truth:
degenerate pro gambler, who spends his bankroll on vacations, blow, prostitues and stirppers.

Real Truth:
Undergrad from Queens University in compsci and physics.
Played my first game of holdem two summers ago, fell deeply in love with the game insantly.
Read theory of poker twice before I even played my third game of holdem (truth).
After my first year, I had clocked about 40k hands online and had read over 18 poker books (many multiple times)... Great success in every game I played. Won tons of local NL tourneys, crushing 2/4 6-max for 5.0BB/100.
Didnt play too much during school because it distracte me from the university lifestyle. For every 1 hour of play at the tables, I spent 5 hours reading or thinking about poker.

Went PRO 4 months ago, and have been running/playing well. Moved up to 10/20 6-max and feel very comfortable here.
4 tabling and running just under 2.0BB/100 over 130k hands.
3/4 of that at 5/10.

Interests:
Hockey, Golf, Mixed Martial Arts, Prog Rock, Women... Used to be obsessed with video games and any geek related hobby.

[Freganism]

30 y old.
Dating several girlfriends.
Lawyer.
I play 10/20 6-max and up to 5/10 HU... mostly on Stars and FT.

As all lawyers I hate my job and will probably go pro in 3-4 years.

[sethypooh21]

[ QUOTE ]

As all lawyers I hate my job and will probably go pro in 3-4 years.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm really really really hoping for 3-4 months, myself.

[Tryptamean]

A lawyer Fregan?!? You must be like the only dude who fits that description

[Freganism]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

As all lawyers I hate my job and will probably go pro in 3-4 years.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm really really really hoping for 3-4 months, myself.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I don't have enough tilt control to go pro, but I'm working on it. I think I need at least 1500 BB for 10/20 FL before I'll go pro. Thats 30k. Gonna take a while.