My somewhat different poker story (extremely tl;dr)
08-17-2011
, 10:57 PM
08-17-2011
, 11:04 PM
08-17-2011
, 11:44 PM
08-17-2011
, 11:44 PM
08-18-2011
, 12:38 AM
Vol.3: Becoming a Winning Player, And Turning $120 Into $20,000
After returning to snowy Helsinki, life was tough. I was 20, $20k in debt, and I hadn't kept in touch with old friends as much as I should have. My life had consisted mainly of poker, eating, sleeping, and occasionally getting drunk and chasing Aussie girls. I hadn't planned of returning home, until it suddenly became clear that I'd have no choice but to return almost immediately to get my stuff together. When I got back, everything felt cold. Not just the temperature, but the people - after spending time with the warmest people on earth for two years, getting used to grumpy Finns took some time. I didn't have many people to contact, and I had no money.
I've never been the type to wallow in self pity and hope for a miracle, so despite reaching mild depression after just two days of the - to quote Thom Yorke - frozen winter **** Finland had to offer, I decided it was time to get my life back together. The first logical step was to get a job.
I sent applications to many places, and I got phone calls from at least four different companies. So, at least I could get a job. Good. I went to a couple of job interviews, and finally picked up one of the largest gas station/restaurant/cafeteria/grocery store complexes in Finland. They all offered pretty much the same wage, so I picked the one that had the nicest looking girls and the most young people working.
At the same time I was completely busto, and I knew that everything I'd earn would go straight to paying my debts, so my only shot I'd have at playing poker for a long time was the $120 I had on my poker account. I believe it was my MansionPoker account dryyoureyes1, back when Mansion was still a part of the Ongame network. It was my last rakeback payment, the only thing I had left from my endeavours busting bankroll after another in games I was massively -EV in.
I wanted to play poker real bad, and my last months in Australia had given me a hint of how to play winning sit-and-go poker. I knew that if I lost this money, I wouldn't have a chance to re-deposit. I decided to devote all my free time to poker, to play with great bankroll management and to study as much as possible.
During the past few months my blog had got immensely popular. I can't remember how many hits it had got during the 3-4 months of its existence, but it was in the six digits. In a country with probably less than 100 000 poker players at the time (these days the number is between 100 000 and 200 000 as far as I know), that was pretty decent. I remember looking at all the other blogs, that had like 1500 hits. I wondered what the heck was going on, as it was certainly unplanned.
With my blog, everything worked out from the beginning. I can say without any exaggeration, that me being here now is very much because of my blog. This all has been such a ridiculous chain of events, and it feels almost funny how it's all worked out. Without my blog I wouldn't have touched the absolute rock bottom in my life, as you will read in the future parts of the series, but without it I would also never have learned the things I've had to learn to become both a good poker player and a good person.
I hadn't even planned to start a blog. I remember having lost my roll in Star City for the 5th time, and using my last couple of bucks to get an hour of internet time in some internet cafe. I logged into Pokerisivut.com, which was one of the two large poker forums in Finland at the time. I ended up there, because it was the first result google gave when I typed the Finnish word for "poker". I noticed there was a "user blogs" section, and I randomly decided to create one.
I wrote about my habits of losing huge amounts of money playing poker (in 2007, losing $1000 was considered huge). I only told the readers that I was somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, but at first refused to tell where exactly. I wrote about the trips I had done when in Australia, such as my trip to some islands in the Pacific Ocean (I'll write more about this later, basically I visited some of the most remote places you can find on Earth. I met people who hadn't heard of electricity. I gave a kid a chocolate bar, and he didn't know what to do with it. I made a gesture pointing at his mouth, and he tried to eat it without removing the wrapping paper, etc). I wrote about women, and my past gambling addiction. In fact, it was called "The Poker Diary Of A Gambling Addict."
It took a few days for it to get noticed. In a few weeks it turned into a phenomenon. One of Finland's top actors, who's also into poker, read it and made an encouraging comment at an early stage. I had seen plenty of his movies, and now he's reading my blog? Insane.
Many of Finland's top pros, such as Ville "Isokala" Wahlbeck and Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies read it and told me they liked it. It wasn't even intentional, but somehow the mixture of mystery and my lifestyle made it a visitor magnet. I was a very private person back then, and I wanted to make sure none of my friends or my mother would find it. I even lied about some irrelevant facts just to make sure no one would realise it was me, for example I wrote I was born in 1987 (in reality, 1986), and that I was living in Brisbane instead of Sydney. I don't feel bad about any of this even now, as it was just a way of protecting myself and my family. I never lied about anything meaningful, or anything that would've changed the way people viewed me.
So, the blog got really popular. If the 2011 me could somehow travel back to 2008, one of the things (along with everything else I'd change, such as starting to study MTTs immediately, and somehow trying to figure out a way to get close to my now-girlfriend, who would've been 15 at the time) I'd do would be to try to charge something for my blog. Basically all Finnish poker sites at the time would've been insane to turn it down, as poker was a booming business and I was the most read of all bloggers.
Anyway, back to the story. So, I started working at the gas station (or actually the cafeteria part of it) almost immediately. In one of my first shifts I heard two colleagues discussing my blog. Of course they didn't know it was me. I had just written I'd returned to Finland, and that I worked at a gas station. They said something along the lines of "how cool would it be if he worked here?", and I grinned. For a minute, I considered revealing them my identity. I decided to say nothing.
Back then there was a lot of speculation considering that much of the stuff I had written wouldn't be true. I wanted to prove myself, but I didn't know how, because I was extremely worried about people learning about my identity. It's hard to stay unknown yet still prove things.
Pokerisivut holds an annual party for its customers in early winter, and I was invited too. They sent me an email, saying I can come incognito. No one has to know who I am. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to set the record straight. I still didn't want anyone to know my name, but to cut the speculation I told in my blog I'd come to the party, and talk to a few previously selected people without revealing my name. I'd basically just come and show up, so it'd be easier for people to believe I actually existed.
On the night of the party, I got extremely sick. Of course no one believed it when I wrote about it, but it's true. I struggled until the last minute, and pumped myself full of painkillers, because I really wanted to go. I had a feeling that something good might come of the situation, maybe some writing jobs somewhere. There were a couple of poker magazines in Finland already, and I thought maybe someone from those would be interested in my writing. Writing had always been my dream job, and alongside with poker I wanted to pursue a career in that. I knew this would be one of my best chances to get to meet people in the industry, who already worshipped my blog. So despite having 39,8c of fever, I put my finest party clothes on, and got ready to head to the party. The moment I almost fainted in the stairs heading out, I just knew I couldn't go. It was a shame, but it wasn't meant to be.
There was another popular blog at Pokerisivut at the time, written by someone who went by the name "Fungahz". He was also a regular poster on 2+2, but I've forgotten what his name there was. He was a massive sit and go grinder, and he made absurd amounts of money. I think he multi-tabled the juicy Ongame games, like 25 tables at a time, and beat 1-table SNGs with a 15% ROI. He made a five-figure sum every single month, never seemed to catch a glimpse of variance, and was at the top of the Sharkscope leaderboards. I knew I must get in touch with this guy.
I started posting in his blog, asking for hand advice, while I was trying to make something of my $120 bankroll. I'm never going to forget the time when I had about $80 left, and I went all-in with top pair, second kicker on the first level of a $5 SNG, and lost. I posted the hand, and he said I was playing too loose, that I should basically just wait for other people to bust out and play only premium hands until near the bubble. Lesson learned. I asked for his msn, which he gave me. We talked on a regular basis. He never coached me, but he helped me a lot with small things. I think I watched him play once or twice, and then just mimicked his style as much as I could. I didn't understand any of the difficult calculations he told me about, but I quickly got a feel of how everything works. I hate to admit it, but to this day I still don't know how to do most of the important poker math on paper, but I still somehow get it right almost every time in my head.
After about a week of following Fungahz, I started beating my own games. I miraculously avoided going busto, as I was down to about $20 at my lowest point. I sometimes wonder how different live would've been if I had just busted the last $20. I wouldn't have been able to deposit for months, so maybe I would've just got over it and forgot about poker (well, probably not).
For the next three months or so, I spent all of my free time grinding, and I worked 40 hours a week at the gas station. As a result, I managed to grind back the $20k I owed. I remember when I looked at my first SNG graph, I was just so proud of myself. It was my first true accomplishment. I still have it. It shows just the actual profit from the games, back then I had a great rakeback (oh 2007, how I miss you), and most of the profits came from that. But still, I had beaten the games, and with a pretty good ROI for 1-table SNGs.
My first SNG graph. Still fills me with joy! (edit: I don't know, it might have some HUSNGs mixed, but it's almost entirely full ring 1-table SNGs for sure).
I had also started seeing a Finnish girl, got a ton of new friends from my workplace, and I felt my life was in perfect balance. My blog kept getting more and more popular, and it reached 500 000 clicks after about six months. I still hadn't told people my real name, and the mystery just kept growing. I had been in Helsinki for months, but no one had seen me. I had so many stories from my backpacker years, that I kept the saga growing by posting a story every now and then where I reminisced some of my hey day-era adventures.
The attention and all the applause I got for my blog started turning me into something I wasn't, and the process had already began. I didn't know it yet, and it would take me two more years to realise what the blog ultimately made me become. At the time, I thought the bad times would be behind me, and I could keep on writing the most read poker blog in Finland, making a steady income of a couple of thousand per month playing SNGs, and working on the side to make for a nice living. This could easily have happened, if only I hadn't screwed it all up.
PS. A couple of pictures I was trying to include in #1 and #2 but failed:
Sydney preparing for Australia day in 2007.
From the Brisbane riverfire celebrations in 2007. I'm glad it was free, as I couldn't have afforded to pay $1 for a ticket.
After returning to snowy Helsinki, life was tough. I was 20, $20k in debt, and I hadn't kept in touch with old friends as much as I should have. My life had consisted mainly of poker, eating, sleeping, and occasionally getting drunk and chasing Aussie girls. I hadn't planned of returning home, until it suddenly became clear that I'd have no choice but to return almost immediately to get my stuff together. When I got back, everything felt cold. Not just the temperature, but the people - after spending time with the warmest people on earth for two years, getting used to grumpy Finns took some time. I didn't have many people to contact, and I had no money.
I've never been the type to wallow in self pity and hope for a miracle, so despite reaching mild depression after just two days of the - to quote Thom Yorke - frozen winter **** Finland had to offer, I decided it was time to get my life back together. The first logical step was to get a job.
I sent applications to many places, and I got phone calls from at least four different companies. So, at least I could get a job. Good. I went to a couple of job interviews, and finally picked up one of the largest gas station/restaurant/cafeteria/grocery store complexes in Finland. They all offered pretty much the same wage, so I picked the one that had the nicest looking girls and the most young people working.
At the same time I was completely busto, and I knew that everything I'd earn would go straight to paying my debts, so my only shot I'd have at playing poker for a long time was the $120 I had on my poker account. I believe it was my MansionPoker account dryyoureyes1, back when Mansion was still a part of the Ongame network. It was my last rakeback payment, the only thing I had left from my endeavours busting bankroll after another in games I was massively -EV in.
I wanted to play poker real bad, and my last months in Australia had given me a hint of how to play winning sit-and-go poker. I knew that if I lost this money, I wouldn't have a chance to re-deposit. I decided to devote all my free time to poker, to play with great bankroll management and to study as much as possible.
During the past few months my blog had got immensely popular. I can't remember how many hits it had got during the 3-4 months of its existence, but it was in the six digits. In a country with probably less than 100 000 poker players at the time (these days the number is between 100 000 and 200 000 as far as I know), that was pretty decent. I remember looking at all the other blogs, that had like 1500 hits. I wondered what the heck was going on, as it was certainly unplanned.
With my blog, everything worked out from the beginning. I can say without any exaggeration, that me being here now is very much because of my blog. This all has been such a ridiculous chain of events, and it feels almost funny how it's all worked out. Without my blog I wouldn't have touched the absolute rock bottom in my life, as you will read in the future parts of the series, but without it I would also never have learned the things I've had to learn to become both a good poker player and a good person.
I hadn't even planned to start a blog. I remember having lost my roll in Star City for the 5th time, and using my last couple of bucks to get an hour of internet time in some internet cafe. I logged into Pokerisivut.com, which was one of the two large poker forums in Finland at the time. I ended up there, because it was the first result google gave when I typed the Finnish word for "poker". I noticed there was a "user blogs" section, and I randomly decided to create one.
I wrote about my habits of losing huge amounts of money playing poker (in 2007, losing $1000 was considered huge). I only told the readers that I was somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, but at first refused to tell where exactly. I wrote about the trips I had done when in Australia, such as my trip to some islands in the Pacific Ocean (I'll write more about this later, basically I visited some of the most remote places you can find on Earth. I met people who hadn't heard of electricity. I gave a kid a chocolate bar, and he didn't know what to do with it. I made a gesture pointing at his mouth, and he tried to eat it without removing the wrapping paper, etc). I wrote about women, and my past gambling addiction. In fact, it was called "The Poker Diary Of A Gambling Addict."
It took a few days for it to get noticed. In a few weeks it turned into a phenomenon. One of Finland's top actors, who's also into poker, read it and made an encouraging comment at an early stage. I had seen plenty of his movies, and now he's reading my blog? Insane.
Many of Finland's top pros, such as Ville "Isokala" Wahlbeck and Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies read it and told me they liked it. It wasn't even intentional, but somehow the mixture of mystery and my lifestyle made it a visitor magnet. I was a very private person back then, and I wanted to make sure none of my friends or my mother would find it. I even lied about some irrelevant facts just to make sure no one would realise it was me, for example I wrote I was born in 1987 (in reality, 1986), and that I was living in Brisbane instead of Sydney. I don't feel bad about any of this even now, as it was just a way of protecting myself and my family. I never lied about anything meaningful, or anything that would've changed the way people viewed me.
So, the blog got really popular. If the 2011 me could somehow travel back to 2008, one of the things (along with everything else I'd change, such as starting to study MTTs immediately, and somehow trying to figure out a way to get close to my now-girlfriend, who would've been 15 at the time) I'd do would be to try to charge something for my blog. Basically all Finnish poker sites at the time would've been insane to turn it down, as poker was a booming business and I was the most read of all bloggers.
Anyway, back to the story. So, I started working at the gas station (or actually the cafeteria part of it) almost immediately. In one of my first shifts I heard two colleagues discussing my blog. Of course they didn't know it was me. I had just written I'd returned to Finland, and that I worked at a gas station. They said something along the lines of "how cool would it be if he worked here?", and I grinned. For a minute, I considered revealing them my identity. I decided to say nothing.
Back then there was a lot of speculation considering that much of the stuff I had written wouldn't be true. I wanted to prove myself, but I didn't know how, because I was extremely worried about people learning about my identity. It's hard to stay unknown yet still prove things.
Pokerisivut holds an annual party for its customers in early winter, and I was invited too. They sent me an email, saying I can come incognito. No one has to know who I am. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to set the record straight. I still didn't want anyone to know my name, but to cut the speculation I told in my blog I'd come to the party, and talk to a few previously selected people without revealing my name. I'd basically just come and show up, so it'd be easier for people to believe I actually existed.
On the night of the party, I got extremely sick. Of course no one believed it when I wrote about it, but it's true. I struggled until the last minute, and pumped myself full of painkillers, because I really wanted to go. I had a feeling that something good might come of the situation, maybe some writing jobs somewhere. There were a couple of poker magazines in Finland already, and I thought maybe someone from those would be interested in my writing. Writing had always been my dream job, and alongside with poker I wanted to pursue a career in that. I knew this would be one of my best chances to get to meet people in the industry, who already worshipped my blog. So despite having 39,8c of fever, I put my finest party clothes on, and got ready to head to the party. The moment I almost fainted in the stairs heading out, I just knew I couldn't go. It was a shame, but it wasn't meant to be.
There was another popular blog at Pokerisivut at the time, written by someone who went by the name "Fungahz". He was also a regular poster on 2+2, but I've forgotten what his name there was. He was a massive sit and go grinder, and he made absurd amounts of money. I think he multi-tabled the juicy Ongame games, like 25 tables at a time, and beat 1-table SNGs with a 15% ROI. He made a five-figure sum every single month, never seemed to catch a glimpse of variance, and was at the top of the Sharkscope leaderboards. I knew I must get in touch with this guy.
I started posting in his blog, asking for hand advice, while I was trying to make something of my $120 bankroll. I'm never going to forget the time when I had about $80 left, and I went all-in with top pair, second kicker on the first level of a $5 SNG, and lost. I posted the hand, and he said I was playing too loose, that I should basically just wait for other people to bust out and play only premium hands until near the bubble. Lesson learned. I asked for his msn, which he gave me. We talked on a regular basis. He never coached me, but he helped me a lot with small things. I think I watched him play once or twice, and then just mimicked his style as much as I could. I didn't understand any of the difficult calculations he told me about, but I quickly got a feel of how everything works. I hate to admit it, but to this day I still don't know how to do most of the important poker math on paper, but I still somehow get it right almost every time in my head.
After about a week of following Fungahz, I started beating my own games. I miraculously avoided going busto, as I was down to about $20 at my lowest point. I sometimes wonder how different live would've been if I had just busted the last $20. I wouldn't have been able to deposit for months, so maybe I would've just got over it and forgot about poker (well, probably not).
For the next three months or so, I spent all of my free time grinding, and I worked 40 hours a week at the gas station. As a result, I managed to grind back the $20k I owed. I remember when I looked at my first SNG graph, I was just so proud of myself. It was my first true accomplishment. I still have it. It shows just the actual profit from the games, back then I had a great rakeback (oh 2007, how I miss you), and most of the profits came from that. But still, I had beaten the games, and with a pretty good ROI for 1-table SNGs.
My first SNG graph. Still fills me with joy! (edit: I don't know, it might have some HUSNGs mixed, but it's almost entirely full ring 1-table SNGs for sure).
I had also started seeing a Finnish girl, got a ton of new friends from my workplace, and I felt my life was in perfect balance. My blog kept getting more and more popular, and it reached 500 000 clicks after about six months. I still hadn't told people my real name, and the mystery just kept growing. I had been in Helsinki for months, but no one had seen me. I had so many stories from my backpacker years, that I kept the saga growing by posting a story every now and then where I reminisced some of my hey day-era adventures.
The attention and all the applause I got for my blog started turning me into something I wasn't, and the process had already began. I didn't know it yet, and it would take me two more years to realise what the blog ultimately made me become. At the time, I thought the bad times would be behind me, and I could keep on writing the most read poker blog in Finland, making a steady income of a couple of thousand per month playing SNGs, and working on the side to make for a nice living. This could easily have happened, if only I hadn't screwed it all up.
PS. A couple of pictures I was trying to include in #1 and #2 but failed:
Sydney preparing for Australia day in 2007.
From the Brisbane riverfire celebrations in 2007. I'm glad it was free, as I couldn't have afforded to pay $1 for a ticket.
08-18-2011
, 12:40 AM
08-18-2011
, 12:43 AM
Vol.5: A Rollercoaster Ride, Meeting Future EPT Winner and 2+2 Legend Jeans, And The Pulling PA's Pants Down Bet
May came. In Finland, we have something that could be decribed as a National Drinking Day on the 1st of May. I had massive hangover on the 2nd, just like everyone else. I went to my nearest McDonald's, and queued 30 minutes for a hangover meal. I barely managed to keep it inside. After finishing my burger I had nothing to do, so I decided to grind.
I had a little over $20k online. I had hardly met such thing as a losing day yet, and still blinded by my false assumption of a 20 buy-in bankroll management being standard, I took my first shot at 5/10. Or, actually I can't really describe it as a shot, it rather felt like a logical next step. I thought crushing 5/10 would be as easy as crushing 2/4 and 3/6.
I challenged a Swedish reg. I lost my first buy-in after a fairly brutal bad beat where my flush ran into his runner-runner boat. The next few buy-ins I can't remember. It all happened pretty quickly. Everytime I tried to value bet thin, he raised forcing me to fold. Everytime I had the nuts, he folded. And of course every time I tried to bluff him he snap called. He totally owned my soul, and won all the flips too. Without the deck helping me, I quickly dropped him $10k. I was still a bit dizzy because of last night, and hardly even noticed how much I'd been losing. My judgement had always been poor, but on this night it was even poorer than usual.
Of course I took dropping 10 buy-ins to him as a massive ego hit. After all, I thought I was invincible, so losing to someone felt terrible. I asked him to play higher, and we moved to a 10/20 table. It didn't take me long to lose the rest of my roll. I lost pretty much everything except for a few thousand to him, running really bad at 10/20 too. He hit and ran me when I had my last $4k left. I was furious and just wanted to get rid of the rest of my roll, despite the money I had left forming about 80 per cent of my entire net worth, and I was looking for a way to do it. I went to 25/50, but for some reason I still can't understand everyone refused to play me.
I looked around in the lobby. If no one gives me action at high stakes, what would be the easiest way to either lose my $4k or get back to $20k? This is how I discovered internet casinos. I did a few $1k roulette flips, didn't hit and that was pretty much it. You're welcome, Whitebet casino.
As a side note, I later found out that the player I lost to was involved in a superuser scandal. He knew people in high positions at Ongame, and got them to do basically whatever he wanted, and many regs claimed to getting cheated by him in multiple ways. I never looked into it, and if I had to estimate I still believe I almost certainly lost in a fair way. It's just kind of funny that my first big loss was to a known cheater. Live and learn.
The next few days were difficult. The first thing I remember feeling was a mixture of numbness and freedom. I had lost $20k, about the amount my mother makes in a year, in less than an hour degening it up. But I also knew I was free from the stress, and it didn't feel too bad at first. I thought I could easily sky-rocket through the stakes again with my next deposit. I thought I'd be back in no time. Except that I didn't even have a job, and I didn't know how I'd be able to deposit again.
Next up was guilt. I felt bad because of my poor background, and I kept imagining scenarios of how my loved ones would react if they knew what I'd just done. Then, desperation. After a few days of not being able to grind I wanted to get back so bad I kept playing play money games. Just when I was considering taking some fast cash loans again, I got a major rakeback payment. I had no idea rakeback could be this huge. In 2008 it always took affiliates ages to make the rakeback payments, and I had a 60% deal with Whitebet. I got basically all of the rakeback I had earned from my HU adventures at once, and it was almost $2k. Time to get back on the grind.
The next few weeks I played like a maniac. I grinded day and night. My results weren't as good as last time, because variance caught up with me, but I kept winning. I studied a lot too, and watched almost every single HU video I could find on CardRunners. These weeks were the first time I think I was actually playing well enough to beat the games I was in, 0,5/1 up to 2/4. It wouldn't be enough in today's games, but in 2008 playing like all the pros did in the videos was enough, you didn't actually have to be able to think on your own. I still didn't have a HUD, I still couldn't have explained what I was doing if someone had asked, I was just clicking buttons. Every now and then I stopped in the middle of a hand, and asked myself questions like "What would Brian Hastings do?". I spent some time thinking about spots, and even if I wasn't doing it the right way (thinking about ranges), I somehow seemed to get it right most of the time. There were definitely tons of better regulars than me in the games back then, but I was still good enough to get my share.
When I had turned my rakeback into close to $10k, I started grinding 2/4 again, and again I hit a heater. I found J.Braddock sitting, and I coolered him for $5k. I hope he's not reading this, because I must've won at a rate of like 30ptBB/100 hands against him. It was ridiculous. He must hate me. By June, my bankroll was back at $20k.
In June, a series of events happened. First, my grandmother got diagnosed with cancer. She lived in Northern Finland, 800 kilometres from where I lived with my mum. I had been thinking about moving on my own somewhere, but I never had time do it before my mother had to leave. She's a nurse/geriatrician (the kind of doctor who works with old people), and she almost instantly quit her job to be with my grandmother. She moved on my grandparents' couch, left everything behind, just like that. I still admire her courage for that.
So, now I had the house for myself. It wasn't fancy, but naturally I was planning to stay there for the time my mum would be away.
Next up was the second Pokerisivut.com party. For the first time they also held a summer party, to celebrate The Midnight Sun tournament series in Helsinki. I was again invited, and this time there was even more pressure for me to show up. My blog had well over half a million hits, and more and more people had started questioning my existence. It was suggested I was a random nerd living in a closet making things up. I was accused of all kinds of stuff. For example, when I told about my $20k swings, people demanded graphs to prove it. I told them I didn't have a tracking program, and they didn't believe that someone could play so high without one. I think I actually tried installing PokerTracker 2 once, but it was too difficult for me with all the PostGreSQL stuff.
I tried to make sure I wouldn't get sick again, but sure enough, I got sick. It's ridiculous, I've been invited to these parties twice a year since January 2008, for a total of eight parties always held at the same dates. Eight out of eight times I've been sick either during the party or just before it. In June 2008, I was lucky to catch the flu a few days earlier, so I was just able to go. I took a massive package of napkins with me, and I remember feeling tipsy after my first vodka because I had taken a couple of painkillers to help with the symptoms, but I went there.
I didn't know anyone. By this point, I had 0 poker-playing friends. I had never met a single Finnish person who played poker, apart from my two ex-workmates who were micro stakes players and didn't know about my identity. It was so hard. I wasn't anywhere near as social as I nowadays am, and I was terrified of talking to people. I wasn't generally afraid of talking to stangers, but how could I actually start this conversation? "Hi, random person. I'm that Interpol (my screen name for blogging) guy. You can look at me, or even touch me, to see for yourself that I'm real". I decided to take a few vodkas.
I spotted the actor, called Jasper, who had commented on my blog earlier. I also knew that he was involved with organizing the party. He had actually sent me an email where he especially asked me to show up and said that he'd like to meet me, so I thought I should start from him. So I walked to the most succesful actor in Finnish history, and introduced myself. He was really nice, and despite being shy I managed to somehow handle the situation. He introduced me to more people, including many well-known grinders, and I hit it off with many of them. I had no idea there were so many people who thought the same way about poker and life. Many of them said they lived abroad for a few months a year, something I definitely wanted to do. I even got an invitation to join one of them in Thailand in the following autumn to grind together. I ended up getting really drunk and had the time of my life.
One of the people I talked to was Jens "Indigenous89" Kyllönen, who less than 9 months later would go on to win EPT Copenhagen for a payday of over $1,1M. I would be the person to write a 12-page article on him for a magazine, and us both would be linked to a blonde reality tv star in various gossip magazines, claiming we had offered to pay her for sex (as you guessed, I'll get to this later). It's funny how the universe works. Things just happen at random, and every minor thing you do (such as talking to a stranger at a party) can lead to crazy stuff happening later.
Jens had already won the ECOOP Main Event online for $200k and was grinding 10/20 and 25/50 6-max with good results. When the party was about to be over, somehow me, Jens, Jasper and some other people ended up in the same afterparty. Patrik Antonius was also there. He had already moved to United States, and he was just visiting family in Finland. It was a huge thing that Jasper and other people at Pokerisivut.com managed to lure him to the party.
At the afterparty me and Jens discussed a bet considering pulling PA's pants down. We agreed that if either of us did it, the other person would have to pay 500 euros. Jens already had a fortune of half a million, when I had just $20k. I was pretty close to doing it. I'm happy I didn't, because PA would've kicked my ass, and I would've been sent home, and everyone would've thought I was an idiot. Many things may not have happened had I made a fool of myself pulling down the pants of Finland's most succesful poker player of all time. Jens didn't do the trick either, so Patrik got to keep his pants on. Although Jens made a 2+2 post that night suggesting otherwise, when he saw PA talking to some random dancer chick who was also at the afterparty, claiming that Patrik might be up to something despite being married (for the record, neither of us saw anything actually happen, but being drunk it felt like a great idea to post it). I tried searching for the thread but couldn't find it, it's quite likely Jens (2+2 name Jeans) has got it deleted. We met for a hangover meal the next day, and I remember Jens being worried about PA kicking his ass. To my knowledge, it never happened.
Soon after the party I got an email from Jasper, saying they were a starting a new poker magazine. He wanted me to write a regular column for them. This was a dream come true. I'd have an actual job doing writing, and I'd get to write about my favourite subject on earth, poker. I've never replied to an email more rapidly, and I remember my hands literally shaking. When it took him another day or two to get back to me, I got increasingly worried and paranoid. Maybe they had found someone else? Maybe they had decided that I was too much of a wild card? Luckily, that wasn't the case. The next email came from their chief editor, asking to meet me.
I'm the kind of person who's always late from everywhere, but that meeting was something I refused to be later from. The trip was about 20 minutes, but I left 40 minutes early. We met in a high-class cafe, and I had no idea what to say. I didn't know if he knew anything about me, I didn't know if he wanted me to write strategy or what. I didn't know if it was a done deal or a work interview. Just in case, I printed a few pages of blog to show him.
None of that was required. He basically told me that he was impressed with my blog, that I can write whatever I want to. More controversial the stuff is, the better. He said the first issue would be out in two months, and he gave me a month to come up with my first article. My first published magazine article, ever.
I ended up writing about prostitutes in poker, and the headline for the article was "SuckMyAAs".
My first magazine article, published in Pokerisivut 1/2008. The pic was taken when I was 20 and still had my eyebrow piercing.
I ended up going to Las Vegas a couple of weeks after the party. It was partially to participate in my first WSOP, partially to see the city and party hard, and partially to get material for my first article. That trip deservers its own post, so more on that next time!
May came. In Finland, we have something that could be decribed as a National Drinking Day on the 1st of May. I had massive hangover on the 2nd, just like everyone else. I went to my nearest McDonald's, and queued 30 minutes for a hangover meal. I barely managed to keep it inside. After finishing my burger I had nothing to do, so I decided to grind.
I had a little over $20k online. I had hardly met such thing as a losing day yet, and still blinded by my false assumption of a 20 buy-in bankroll management being standard, I took my first shot at 5/10. Or, actually I can't really describe it as a shot, it rather felt like a logical next step. I thought crushing 5/10 would be as easy as crushing 2/4 and 3/6.
I challenged a Swedish reg. I lost my first buy-in after a fairly brutal bad beat where my flush ran into his runner-runner boat. The next few buy-ins I can't remember. It all happened pretty quickly. Everytime I tried to value bet thin, he raised forcing me to fold. Everytime I had the nuts, he folded. And of course every time I tried to bluff him he snap called. He totally owned my soul, and won all the flips too. Without the deck helping me, I quickly dropped him $10k. I was still a bit dizzy because of last night, and hardly even noticed how much I'd been losing. My judgement had always been poor, but on this night it was even poorer than usual.
Of course I took dropping 10 buy-ins to him as a massive ego hit. After all, I thought I was invincible, so losing to someone felt terrible. I asked him to play higher, and we moved to a 10/20 table. It didn't take me long to lose the rest of my roll. I lost pretty much everything except for a few thousand to him, running really bad at 10/20 too. He hit and ran me when I had my last $4k left. I was furious and just wanted to get rid of the rest of my roll, despite the money I had left forming about 80 per cent of my entire net worth, and I was looking for a way to do it. I went to 25/50, but for some reason I still can't understand everyone refused to play me.
I looked around in the lobby. If no one gives me action at high stakes, what would be the easiest way to either lose my $4k or get back to $20k? This is how I discovered internet casinos. I did a few $1k roulette flips, didn't hit and that was pretty much it. You're welcome, Whitebet casino.
As a side note, I later found out that the player I lost to was involved in a superuser scandal. He knew people in high positions at Ongame, and got them to do basically whatever he wanted, and many regs claimed to getting cheated by him in multiple ways. I never looked into it, and if I had to estimate I still believe I almost certainly lost in a fair way. It's just kind of funny that my first big loss was to a known cheater. Live and learn.
The next few days were difficult. The first thing I remember feeling was a mixture of numbness and freedom. I had lost $20k, about the amount my mother makes in a year, in less than an hour degening it up. But I also knew I was free from the stress, and it didn't feel too bad at first. I thought I could easily sky-rocket through the stakes again with my next deposit. I thought I'd be back in no time. Except that I didn't even have a job, and I didn't know how I'd be able to deposit again.
Next up was guilt. I felt bad because of my poor background, and I kept imagining scenarios of how my loved ones would react if they knew what I'd just done. Then, desperation. After a few days of not being able to grind I wanted to get back so bad I kept playing play money games. Just when I was considering taking some fast cash loans again, I got a major rakeback payment. I had no idea rakeback could be this huge. In 2008 it always took affiliates ages to make the rakeback payments, and I had a 60% deal with Whitebet. I got basically all of the rakeback I had earned from my HU adventures at once, and it was almost $2k. Time to get back on the grind.
The next few weeks I played like a maniac. I grinded day and night. My results weren't as good as last time, because variance caught up with me, but I kept winning. I studied a lot too, and watched almost every single HU video I could find on CardRunners. These weeks were the first time I think I was actually playing well enough to beat the games I was in, 0,5/1 up to 2/4. It wouldn't be enough in today's games, but in 2008 playing like all the pros did in the videos was enough, you didn't actually have to be able to think on your own. I still didn't have a HUD, I still couldn't have explained what I was doing if someone had asked, I was just clicking buttons. Every now and then I stopped in the middle of a hand, and asked myself questions like "What would Brian Hastings do?". I spent some time thinking about spots, and even if I wasn't doing it the right way (thinking about ranges), I somehow seemed to get it right most of the time. There were definitely tons of better regulars than me in the games back then, but I was still good enough to get my share.
When I had turned my rakeback into close to $10k, I started grinding 2/4 again, and again I hit a heater. I found J.Braddock sitting, and I coolered him for $5k. I hope he's not reading this, because I must've won at a rate of like 30ptBB/100 hands against him. It was ridiculous. He must hate me. By June, my bankroll was back at $20k.
In June, a series of events happened. First, my grandmother got diagnosed with cancer. She lived in Northern Finland, 800 kilometres from where I lived with my mum. I had been thinking about moving on my own somewhere, but I never had time do it before my mother had to leave. She's a nurse/geriatrician (the kind of doctor who works with old people), and she almost instantly quit her job to be with my grandmother. She moved on my grandparents' couch, left everything behind, just like that. I still admire her courage for that.
So, now I had the house for myself. It wasn't fancy, but naturally I was planning to stay there for the time my mum would be away.
Next up was the second Pokerisivut.com party. For the first time they also held a summer party, to celebrate The Midnight Sun tournament series in Helsinki. I was again invited, and this time there was even more pressure for me to show up. My blog had well over half a million hits, and more and more people had started questioning my existence. It was suggested I was a random nerd living in a closet making things up. I was accused of all kinds of stuff. For example, when I told about my $20k swings, people demanded graphs to prove it. I told them I didn't have a tracking program, and they didn't believe that someone could play so high without one. I think I actually tried installing PokerTracker 2 once, but it was too difficult for me with all the PostGreSQL stuff.
I tried to make sure I wouldn't get sick again, but sure enough, I got sick. It's ridiculous, I've been invited to these parties twice a year since January 2008, for a total of eight parties always held at the same dates. Eight out of eight times I've been sick either during the party or just before it. In June 2008, I was lucky to catch the flu a few days earlier, so I was just able to go. I took a massive package of napkins with me, and I remember feeling tipsy after my first vodka because I had taken a couple of painkillers to help with the symptoms, but I went there.
I didn't know anyone. By this point, I had 0 poker-playing friends. I had never met a single Finnish person who played poker, apart from my two ex-workmates who were micro stakes players and didn't know about my identity. It was so hard. I wasn't anywhere near as social as I nowadays am, and I was terrified of talking to people. I wasn't generally afraid of talking to stangers, but how could I actually start this conversation? "Hi, random person. I'm that Interpol (my screen name for blogging) guy. You can look at me, or even touch me, to see for yourself that I'm real". I decided to take a few vodkas.
I spotted the actor, called Jasper, who had commented on my blog earlier. I also knew that he was involved with organizing the party. He had actually sent me an email where he especially asked me to show up and said that he'd like to meet me, so I thought I should start from him. So I walked to the most succesful actor in Finnish history, and introduced myself. He was really nice, and despite being shy I managed to somehow handle the situation. He introduced me to more people, including many well-known grinders, and I hit it off with many of them. I had no idea there were so many people who thought the same way about poker and life. Many of them said they lived abroad for a few months a year, something I definitely wanted to do. I even got an invitation to join one of them in Thailand in the following autumn to grind together. I ended up getting really drunk and had the time of my life.
One of the people I talked to was Jens "Indigenous89" Kyllönen, who less than 9 months later would go on to win EPT Copenhagen for a payday of over $1,1M. I would be the person to write a 12-page article on him for a magazine, and us both would be linked to a blonde reality tv star in various gossip magazines, claiming we had offered to pay her for sex (as you guessed, I'll get to this later). It's funny how the universe works. Things just happen at random, and every minor thing you do (such as talking to a stranger at a party) can lead to crazy stuff happening later.
Jens had already won the ECOOP Main Event online for $200k and was grinding 10/20 and 25/50 6-max with good results. When the party was about to be over, somehow me, Jens, Jasper and some other people ended up in the same afterparty. Patrik Antonius was also there. He had already moved to United States, and he was just visiting family in Finland. It was a huge thing that Jasper and other people at Pokerisivut.com managed to lure him to the party.
At the afterparty me and Jens discussed a bet considering pulling PA's pants down. We agreed that if either of us did it, the other person would have to pay 500 euros. Jens already had a fortune of half a million, when I had just $20k. I was pretty close to doing it. I'm happy I didn't, because PA would've kicked my ass, and I would've been sent home, and everyone would've thought I was an idiot. Many things may not have happened had I made a fool of myself pulling down the pants of Finland's most succesful poker player of all time. Jens didn't do the trick either, so Patrik got to keep his pants on. Although Jens made a 2+2 post that night suggesting otherwise, when he saw PA talking to some random dancer chick who was also at the afterparty, claiming that Patrik might be up to something despite being married (for the record, neither of us saw anything actually happen, but being drunk it felt like a great idea to post it). I tried searching for the thread but couldn't find it, it's quite likely Jens (2+2 name Jeans) has got it deleted. We met for a hangover meal the next day, and I remember Jens being worried about PA kicking his ass. To my knowledge, it never happened.
Soon after the party I got an email from Jasper, saying they were a starting a new poker magazine. He wanted me to write a regular column for them. This was a dream come true. I'd have an actual job doing writing, and I'd get to write about my favourite subject on earth, poker. I've never replied to an email more rapidly, and I remember my hands literally shaking. When it took him another day or two to get back to me, I got increasingly worried and paranoid. Maybe they had found someone else? Maybe they had decided that I was too much of a wild card? Luckily, that wasn't the case. The next email came from their chief editor, asking to meet me.
I'm the kind of person who's always late from everywhere, but that meeting was something I refused to be later from. The trip was about 20 minutes, but I left 40 minutes early. We met in a high-class cafe, and I had no idea what to say. I didn't know if he knew anything about me, I didn't know if he wanted me to write strategy or what. I didn't know if it was a done deal or a work interview. Just in case, I printed a few pages of blog to show him.
None of that was required. He basically told me that he was impressed with my blog, that I can write whatever I want to. More controversial the stuff is, the better. He said the first issue would be out in two months, and he gave me a month to come up with my first article. My first published magazine article, ever.
I ended up writing about prostitutes in poker, and the headline for the article was "SuckMyAAs".
My first magazine article, published in Pokerisivut 1/2008. The pic was taken when I was 20 and still had my eyebrow piercing.
I ended up going to Las Vegas a couple of weeks after the party. It was partially to participate in my first WSOP, partially to see the city and party hard, and partially to get material for my first article. That trip deservers its own post, so more on that next time!
08-18-2011
, 12:54 AM
08-18-2011
, 01:38 AM
08-18-2011
, 01:44 AM
08-18-2011
, 01:44 AM
