Well, what better way to officially commit to quitting poker than making it my 1000th 2p2 post? I’ll leave the whole poker story out just because, frankly, its almost exactly like everyone else’s, with the exception that I went on a pretty nice heater at high-stakes. I always enjoyed just messing around with a 500 dollar deposit, immediately playing 1/2 or something with it, making the 500 back, withdrawing it, and then seeing how high I could run up the BR, withdrawing whenever I felt like I needed extra cash. This worked well for a very long time and I had no problem making a few extra thousand per month playing poker while balancing it very well with my social/college life. Then, I hit a bit of a heater, and ran something like 18k into just under 100k playing one guy HU at 25/50 PLO. This was fun. Clearly, still with no concrete knowledge or regard for BR management, I kept playing 25/50 and found the game pretty easily beatable. I kept running for the most part well, and mixing 25/50 with the random 5k HU SNGs, I ran this amount into over 200k, which was a reasonable roll to be playing 25/50 with, though far from what is actually necessary for the game.
At this point, I did post on 2p2, but mostly in PLO strategy, and so wasn’t really aware of all the big superstars of the game, or really any poker gossip. As I kept cruising along at 25/50, making good money and cashing out 100k+ whenever the BR got to 300k or over, all of the NL pros started to transition into PLO. When Townsend first sat down with me on Stars, I honestly had no clue who he was, and when my friends told me that I should stop playing because I was at the table with a poker legend etc, I was honestly just more excited by the challenge. Well, we played just under 15k hands together and I wound up a fairly good amount (I ran really well I think…) and got in some good action vs. cts when he was just learning the game (he crushes me these days), as well as a few other extremely soft HU grudges that lasted a few weeks and gave me nice 6-figure scores. A little bit too cocky, I jumped into 100/200 on Stars and got good and crushed by Benyamine, who ran like unbelievable hot fire vs. me in showdown pots, and probably crushed me in non-showdown hands. I busted a ~300k roll playing 100/200 and was pretty disappointed with myself for doing so, as by this point I had built up a reasonable knowledge of the game, and was well aware of BR management, but just had bad self-control.
Then I finished up undergrad at WashU, moved out to Vegas and………. Got crushed! I was like 0 for an unreal 14 in WSOP tournaments, being the bubble boy for 1 of them, and maybe 10 off the bubble in another 2. 0 for 7 in flips for tourney life, and ran very poorly in the 25/50/100 PLO game at the Rio, though at least I only lost like 40k live or something small, thanks to the game being stupid soft at some points. But oh well, c’est la vie. I am, admittedly, not a very good tournament player.
After Vegas, I put another 200k or so online, and basically broke even for 3 months, then exasperation tilted off 100k at 25/50, split the 100k between Stars and FTP and have been at this point since then. Continuing to break even and become very frustrated by long, unrewarding hours at the computer and a dwindling social life, I have decided to take a permanent break from poker. No amount of money is worth how miserable poker is capable of making me feel at times. Plus, I feel as if it has alienated me from the majority of people my age, and frankly, I hate this. I want to have the same aspirations and concerns as most everyone my age; most people don’t think in 6 and 7 figures, and really, sums this large have been much more a negative, rather than positive influence on my life. I love nature, being outdoors, and traveling - things that really don’t require the extravagant money flowing around in the poker community.
I have withdrawn almost all of my BR to pay for my coming quarterlies in 2009, and at this point, I have more than enough to live comfortably on for a long time, and to cover grad school which I will be starting in Fall of 2009, for an Education masters. I will play 3/6 with what I have left myself on Stars, then move up to 5/10 only with 50 buy-ins, and just do things the conservative way. Should this fail, well, just more time to hike and travel before school starts again. Thanks to anyone that actually read all the way through this, it was very soothing to write.
Some graphs:
25/50 lifetime missing the last 100k downer on my new desktop over 40k hands or so:
100/200 (it felt like I lost more than this, but meh, I guess this was it):
the lifetime graph with 1/2 included sans the numerous databases that have been created since then that add up to a small loss (still hurts to see that spike):
Brag: I crush[ed?] souls at 25/50 and am leaving poker having taken a nice chunk out of the game..
Beat: Lost a solid amount of winnings back to Benyamine, which he probably spent on his HORSE habit..
Beat: Lots of poker money currently in stock market..
Variance: Degenerate seeks to teach elementary/high-school children with coming Education masters
I’ll be at the PCA and the LAPC, but mostly to party and just play the main events and a bit of PLO, so come say whats up if you guys are gonna be there.
Good luck to all, cheers.
Two Plus Two
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