The Timex Story(SUPER TLDR!!!!)

[timex]

Hey, so a bunch of people have asked for my story, so here it is.

I’ve always tried to be competitive at whatever I do, and had always been very interested in any sort of games. I had been playing chess fairly competitively, and played lots of card games and board games with my family. At the end of grade 10, I was invited to a national math camp, and there I was introduced to texas hold’em by some people there. We played some SNGs, and the structures were super deep, and my knowledge of relative hand values was so skewed from playing like pregnant threes five card draw, that I more or less just waited for boats, and my patience was rewarded.

After that camp, summer started, and I worked part time at a chess/soccer camp where the other instructor, Andrew was learning online poker. He more or less just watched spirit rock, read some books and everything he could find online, started playing online and instantly started winning(nothing huge, just like .5/1 LHE, to 3/6 LHE). He’d give me some advice, but since I was 14(this is like August 2004), he never really tried to get me too into it.

After that summer, my parents decided for my 15th bday to get me a set of poker chips(since casino night was my favorite school event, despite just minbetting blackjack for like 2 hours). Poker chipsets were like $200 back then, so they said they’d get me one once we found a better deal(either through a friend at my dads work, or at Costco).

One day, I decided I wanted to learn how to play blackjack properly in case there was another casino night, so I went to thewizardofodds website, and printed out a strategy card. When I was there, they had a banner to a website offering a free set of poker chips if you signed up for an online poker site(pokersourceonline). I went there, and decided that in 250 hands of playing the smallest stakes, there’s no way I could lose more than the $200 a chipset would cost.

So I called up Andrew and said I’m interested in seriously learning poker, so we more or less told me how to beat small stakes limit holdem in a couple hours. I am a huge nit, so I asked him if he could play the 250 raked hands for me, he came by the one day and he won like $57 at .5/1 LHE. I thought this was the greatest thing ever, so I bought WLLHE and SSHE, and read them each a bunch, then started playing play money online. I then moved to 1c/2c on UB and after getting more used to playing for real money, I decide I want to get a poker tabletop, so I put $100 on pacific to play .5/1. I play this for a while, only playing a few hours a week, and run pretty hot for a couple months to get up to about $600. The one time I took a shot at 1/2 LHE, I ran pretty bad, so it took a while for me to get over moving up stakes.

I heard good things about bonus whoring, so for the next few months, I played at a variety of sites at 1/2 just making a small profit while grinding bonuses. By April, I had built my bankroll to about 5k, and was looking to settle down and find a main game, rather than site hopping.

I decided to stick with the 2/4 BBJ tables on Party, since the people there were much worse, I lose about 100BB fairly quickly, recovered to nearly even over several thousand hands, then instantly lost it back. It wasn’t a large swing or anything, just the continuous bonus whoring meant I never really had downswings, so it was quite inconvenient to have one that lasted so long. This takes me to about the Summer of 2005.

I planned to play lots over the summer, but ended up mostly just working at the chess/soccer camp since it was a lot more fun, so I played very little. In the fall, I found out about casino bonuses, so I went through a bunch of them to get my bankroll up to about 10k. At this point, I had been reasonably successful for someone who had never really played any decent sized games and had no real confidence in my play.

Around this time(December 2005), I had been going back to 2/4 LHE, and was running pretty good, when Steve Paul-Ambrose won the PCA. I stalked him on 2+2, then sent him this email: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...ue#Post10560378

He replied saying that he usually plays on Sundays, and I could come by and watch him play some tournaments and LHE. He and his room mate (Pacmann on 2+2) helped me fix some leaks in my game, and got me to play 6max rather than full ring. I was quite quickly beating 3/6 and 5/10 6max LHE, as well as learning some basics for tournaments.

One day that I went to their place, they were particularly excited because it was the night of the empire 200k( a $250 rebuy tournament that was like 50% overlay, had a super soft field, and they final tabled like every month despite not initial rebuying). I thought it would be pretty sweet to watch, but after having my best cash session ever(+$600), I called my dad, and told him I’m going to take my first ever real shot and play the 250r.

We split our action 3 ways, so it was more like 3 80r’s, but I had never played bigger than a 1r, so this was pretty exciting. In the end, Pacmann took 4th place for 16k, so I decided if tournaments were this easy, I may as well try them out more, this was about February 2006.

My parents went away for March break, and I stayed home since I had a badminton tournament, so I decided I may as well spend this week trying to learn donkaments and play as many 20/180s as possible. I put $600 onto stars to try these out. I called Steve whenever I went deep in one, and he more or less taught me how to raise lots, and fold whenever you got played back at. This worked so well it was unreal. I made about 4k in that week, then played satellites to the Sunday Millions, and got 4st on Stars for like 2k.

I was running pretty good at these things, so I decided I may as well keep playing tournaments, I started playing them more towards the end of April, and eventually had a 9k weekend where I FT’ed both 11rs on Stars, and won a $50 FO on Party.

The MTT forum decided to have a team challenge for May 2006, and I decided I wanted to get on a team, for some reason Ansky picked me to be on Team Canada, along with Stevejpa, Jurollo and Foucault.

I played a huge amount, and ran ok, and our team ended up winning, and I won the individual bet, this was a pretty sweet thread, and definitely helped build some confidence as I became more recognizable.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...rue#Post5731095

Since I started playing so much in May, I started playing a wider variety of sites, Paradise ended up being pretty good to me, and during may, I had my first 5 figure cash, when BodogAri offered to even chop HU in the Paradise 100r, which was also a pretty huge confidence boost.

In June, I topped that by winning the Paradise 100k for 23k, and didn’t play a ton because highschool was coming to an end. In July, most of my friends had left for the summer, so I decided I’d try winning a triple crown on pocket fives, and started playing more or less every tournament that qualified. I FT’ed more than a tournament a day for the 3 weeks I played, won a triple crown and profited about 100k(70 off of my own play including 2 20k cashes in the 109r and 215r, 30 off of running hot action swapping with Stevejpa and Ogre). Getting to know Ogre was pretty sweet since it was good to know another underage player who was having similar success, and I always sort of looked up to him, since he owned the Stuper, and that was the tournament I continuously dumped money into, we talked about hands a lot, and it was good to get a wider variety of people to talk with about poker than just Steve and Pacmann.

My success during June and July on Paradise poker put me 2nd on the Paradise wins leaderboard, and 10th on their TLB. I got into a 20 player freeroll for a seat in the power SNG(a 10 player tournament where winner got $1,000,000), I won that qualifier and made it to the SNG. In this tournament, I ran super hot, winning TT>QQ, AK>TT and K8>JJ before chopping it 3 handed for 330k.

At this point, my motivation dropped significantly; in addition, I was starting university in the fall, so I didn’t really play too much poker. It would still be over a year until I could even legally gamble, so I didn’t even consider going pro or anything like that.

I entered advanced math at UW, and although the classes are reasonable, and the environment is awesome, as the year went by, I realized more and more that I probably won’t end up in math, I plan to eventually get my degree, but rather than getting it really early, I plan to take my time more, find things I enjoy, I guess this is typical dropout talk.

After winning the power SNG, I had thought a decent amount about potential investments, and after teaching some friends to play poker, I realized my money could probably be better invested in other players than it could be in the market or anything else at this time. So I lost a bunch off of staking various players in the WCOOP(~20k), but I stuck with it, and eventually Stealthmunk, Ajunglen and cutiepi314 started running pretty good. I had done some live staking as well, and going into 2007, nothing particularly huge had happened. Then on New Years ever, ActionJeff and I bought someone’s stack in the million, and went on to win it, then a few weeks later, Gobbo who I had 15% of took 2nd in the Aussie Millions. This year was off to a pretty ridiculous start. Around this time, I went to the PCA for a couple days, and realized how much I am looking forward to live tournaments.

After getting back to school for another term, I again didn’t play a ton, I got more into cash games, and since then have been quite successful. Some people have probably seen my shortstacking graph

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...ue#Post10269655

This kind of means nothing though, it seems like a lot of dollars, but anyone could probably do this if they ran as good as I did. After games began getting tougher(less spitecalling from degenyamine, as well as the regulars better adjusting their ranges), as well as the games running much less regularly, Watts and I decided to play these games a lot less. Around this time, I was also beginning to play more 20/40 on Doyles as well as 10/20 and 25/50 on cake, party and paradise.

It had been a while since I had won anything huge staking people, so Ajunglen and Kingdan each decided to have a 200k online cash, and cutiepi314 won the Grand Prix de Paris for like 400k euros.

Sorry if the chronology of this is getting messed up, I’m getting kind of tired.

I took classes this Summer so that I could take the fall off to travel and play poker, I wasn’t particularly involved since I hardly knew anyone, so it wasn’t particularly exciting. During the Summer, I had a ridiculously swingy month of June. I lost like 70k on the WSOP, had my best month of tournament in 2007(up maybe 80ish), and ran really well on paradise cash. Paradise was bought out by Boss Media, and was stupidly soft, so I was more or less the best player on the network(and I’m not very good). I played a lot of 25/50 and 50/100, and finished up about 200k during July and early August. I had been up to about 320 or so, but then lost a few buyins at 1/2 and 50/1, then several players stopped giving me action on the site, as well as various people going broke, so the site isn’t as high volume now.

After school ended for the term, I purchased a house, which we are currently finishing, and I’m moving into with ibluffuout4 and cutiepi314. I won’t be living there too often for the next month or so since I’ll be traveling to live tournaments a lot. So far, I’ve played one live tournament(WSOP Europe) and busted to Jamie Gold, but the structure/field was pretty awesome, so I’m looking forward to Turks and Caicos then Aruba, I’m flying out tomorrow.

After being drained quite a bit from playing the WCOOP, and having like 5 mediocre cashes, I’m thinking I might take a break from tournaments, and after that 120k downswing playing HU and 3 handed cash, I’m thinking I may try just multitabling lots of like 5/10 NL etc. Some of the ~0 variance graphs in MSNL are pretty enticing, and the hourly rate can probably be nearly as high since its so much easier to put hands in.

Heres the post I made on my 18th bday a couple weeks ago

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...ue#Post12045671


Heres my well

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...e=0&fpart=1


Sorry if this has been getting kind of boring, I started off while sweating a horse deep in the WCOOP #14, and you can probably get a rough idea by reading this when he lost out.

Anyways, that’s my story, I might be on here for a bit longer if anyone has any other questions.

[Double Ice]

[ QUOTE ]
there I was introduced to texas hold’em by some people there. We played some SNGs, ... I more or less just waited for boats,


[/ QUOTE ]
nit (also: first)

[JP OSU]

I really can't even explain how much these stories inspire me to play more and put more energy into refining my game...

[LuckyLloyd]

nh

[ASPoker8]

[ QUOTE ]
I might be on here for a bit longer if anyone has any other questions.

[/ QUOTE ]

What is your favorite color? Why?

Is luck 1 thing?

Thayer claims he can beat me in a race. Can he?

[inyourface]

Serious question - do you believe the time has passed for a new player to achieve the same success you have? Bearing in mind the strength overall of poker has gone up and the sites which may be considered weaker (Party, UBetc.) have less traffic?

[Bond18]

Timex,

I didn't realize how fast everything sort of 'happened' for you. That you've managed it and grown it in the way you have shows your intelligence and maturity.

Also, i am kind of drunk. Sorry i didn't win us more monies today, as i told luckychewy several hours ago "No, just watch. Pokerstars is lubing up their 8 inch wide dildo in preparation of jamming it WAAAY up my ass at the most intense moment. It will sound like; YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!"

Timex=cool. That is all.

[Yoshi63]

Very cool. It's awesome to hear the whole development of successful players from the very start to present. TY for sharing Timex!

[augie_]

[ QUOTE ]

I didn't realize how fast everything sort of 'happened' for you.

[/ QUOTE ]

no kidding. timex played 20/180s. those haven't even been around very long!

[stealthmunk]

Cliff Notes:
My life is a huge upswong, envy me.
<3 timex.