OP I can relate to the bad back thing. Had an injury in my teens and it's just surreal chronic pain. Been to countless orthopedics and get nowhere besides pain meds.

Worst part is its a "hidden" injury. So like for example a 60 year old lady asked me if I could carry a box of paper for her at work the other day. As a 30 year old in decent shape dude, I look like an idiot when I say "sorry I've got a bad back". Haha.

Also, I never met a dude who had a problem with chicks using him for secks and leaving before morning. Grass is always greener I guess

I just got back from an all day trip of plant slanging in Miami, showed up with a few plants, came back with 500 seeds, money, and bigger plants. Would post pictures but too hungry right now.

I can understand that life changes when you have a child. Hard to explain but will make more sense as the story goes on.

I have gotten used to people giving me bad looks about my back, but I'd rather take the looks than lying in bed all day with my neck on fire.

I wouldn't say I was used for sex (I mean its very possible), I tended to find women who were looking for something different, something fun. They found the game and the life intriguing. I hate to say that I am used to people coming and going in my life, it will make you feel empty inside after a while.

If you get a chance to post pictures of that stuff, i'd be interested.

and I as well

I wanted to get the last part of my flashback on here today - instead I had to deal with a lot of stuff going around here. I can give you guys some pictures, I went to Miami to deliver these palms, they are called Tahina. That is a 25 gallon pot full of limestone, it weighs about 200lbs. These go for about $500 each. I know, looks ratty, but is very rare.



They are grown into larger trees, which are grown on Ken's land, which is near Homestead and Key Largo. It is straight limestone rock, you can't dig a hole in the ground without power tools here. That palm is about 8 years old and isn't even close to full size yet - worth about $3000.



This is a palm from the Dominican Republic called Pseudophoenix ekmanii. That plant is about 20 years old and again is nowhere near maturity, it would sell for about $1500-$2500 on the open market.



These are seeds from some Central American palms I picked up from a local botanical garden, about 9000 in total. They all get cleaned, processed, planted, and grown.



These aren't the best pictures of nice plants, this is just what I did yesterday. Nothing too exciting but made good money off the deals.

Seeds way bigger than I imagined but I guess palms gonna palm

Those seeds are actually much bigger than average, probably top 10 of 3500 species of palms in size. Coconut seeds are about twice the size, just like the ones you buy at the supermarkets up north. Some are so tiny they will slip through your fingers.

I will get back to the story tomorrow, Im mentally exhausted and can't write up to par right now.

This is fantastic. I'm super sad that I'm caught up. Loving the side hustle content just as much as the poker content

I wanna live somewhere warm enough to plant a palm tree in my backyard.

How I Got Into Palms and Poker - Part 3

As 2007 rolled around, I had started to play on Pokerstars as "Psykadd" initially. Starting with .25/.50 NL, I had run up my initital $200 to about $900 moving up to .50/1 at 2 tables with not very much bankroll management. I didn't see the point in having a bankroll all online - if I had a problem, I would just deposit more money. At the same time, I was starting at .25/.50 PLO at the same time just getting my head wrapped around Omaha. I enjoyed the fact that the math calculations were more complicated and felt that this was in my favor, and the action itself just seemed more interesting. I was 100% a donkey in the game to start, but everyone is a donkey at some point in their lives. I was making classic NL/PLO transitional mistakes with bad hand selection, overvaluing hands and terrible reverse implied odds with small sets and flushes. It was all good though, the plant business was booming and I was getting calls from California for huge plant loads where no one else wanted to take the risk.

This was where my expertise in bypassing the ag inspections of CA took place, why Ken had me come along on the Texas trip. My first big customer was an IT guy from Vista, CA who over the course of 60 days had purchased $70k in plants from me or I had sourced it out from other nurseries at a good markup. The problem was he wanted it delivered, and I couldn't load or deliver plants personally in my physical condition. I had to set a route that got around these inspections, and hire a driver who was an electrician friend currently out of work. I paid him $800 plus hotels and airfare to make the delivery of a 26 foot box truck with a 12 foot trailer. It was loaded to the hilt, and I had to hope the weather was right so that it wasn't too hot, cold, or dry for the plants. I gave him exact instructions on where to drive, which included going right through Vegas. I really wish I could have gone and just played there, but maybe I would have never left. After 5 days of driving, I got the call that he was in California and all was good. Things worked out so well that I was getting calls from many of his collector friends to do more trips, and calls from nurseries that were mad I was offering a better quality plant for a fraction of the price. What sold for $1000 in CA I could offer for $350 delivered, and it was a much healthier plant. I eventually had to stop taking orders 6 months later because of the heat I was taking from these nurseries, but by then the orders had stopped from CA due to the incoming financial crisis anyway.

My biggest problem with playing online initially was I couldn't respect the money at the stakes I was playing. If I sat down at .50/1 with $100, I never cared about losing it because I felt it was just $100, it was just for fun. After burning through about $1k I decided to take things more seriously, went online, and studied PLO intensely. PLO was not an immensely popular game back then, but it was what I wanted to play. I finally deposited $2k on Stars and played .50/1 to start, and moved up to $1/$2. I was playing more poker than I was at the nursery, and I was finding myself in a predicament. I had a passion for both of these things, but in the end, I had to choose the nursery whenever the two collided.

These were the glory days of my nursery. Most plants were going for 2-3 times the price of what they go for today, and I couldn't keep things in stock. It was during this time that I met a few longtime friends. Casey's dad was the owner of the pawn shop, and he came by to get plants for his field and would pay me in guns, ammo, you name it. I had an arsenal before I knew what to do with it. I literally had run out of space to store them and they sat in a pile on the floor. I bought a brand new Toyota FJ Cruiser right when they came out amongst other toys. During this time I also met someone that would put a stamp on my life. My sister was at college, but she had met some local people, one being a girl name Giuliana that was around my age with a 3 year old daughter named Isabel, and she looked identical to the Izzy that was Sally's granddaughter. I had met a number of girls over the years since I moved to Florida, but she was definitely the first girl I ever considered marrying. She had dated my friend Frank, and when they broke up, she came to me upset. It brought us together, and after two weeks and a nice night in the hot tub, suddenly I was in love for the first time in my life.

Giuliana didn't understand poker, but she loved what I did at the plant nursery. She was an art major in college and felt that the plants were a form of art. I am terrible at drawing even stick figures so I was glad I was able to connect with her on that level, because if it came to critiquing Monet I was going to miserably fail. I soon was staying over at her house and when she went to sleep, I would get up and open up my laptop. I would play on her Mac but I had no idea how to use it and was afraid to ask because she might not understand that poker was a serious part of my life as well. It was like a hidden life after 10pm, she would take Tylenol PM and pass out, and I would creep out of bed slowly to get Stars running.

This relationship did not last that long, however. Her brother's best friend was one of the teachers in the VT shootings in April of 2007 and she was somehow never able to recover from it. She went a little crazy and told me a month or so later that we couldn't be together, that she needed help. I honestly found it to be a bunch of bull**** but there was nothing I could do. A month later I had found someone else who was not so serious, and felt like that was the way I would have to go through life - being with someone who didn't care enough to give me a hard time about my own life choices. Since 2003 I had decided I would do whatever the **** I wanted and was in no way ready to let a significant other slow me down.

While 2007 was my greatest year of growth in the nursery, 2008 gave me greater opportunity. During an event in Miami, I managed to impress a few of the world's leading palm botanists by showing them a palm from Madagascar that was recently discovered but had never been seen in cultivation. They invited me out to dinner after the lecture, and asked me to meet them at the local botanical garden the next morning. We drove around in a six seater golf cart where they proceeded to point at plants and ask me what they were. I would tell them and they would note it accordingly. After a while, I was curious what this was all about. We had stopped after I identified a palm and I got out to see if I was right. Looking over at the palm, I saw that were was no tag on it at all.

"Why does this palm have no tag on it?" I had asked.

"It's because we didn't know what it was, that's why we asked you."

"I don't understand, did you bring me here to ID some palms you were unsure of?"

"Well sort of, we actually wanted to offer you a job here as Collections Manager. You ID'd every plant we have tagged correctly, so we have no reason to think you got the unknown ones wrong. Are you sure you don't have a degree in botany?"

"No, I haven't finished college yet. My major is in International Relations."

As much as they really didn't believe it, they ended up offering me a job there with full benefits and a staff at the nursery. This was one of the most famous gardens in the world for tropical plants and 5 years ago I had little to no experience in the botanical world. I took the job on the condition I would sell my nursery, which I did for a hefty profit. I got a nice condo in Coral Gables, two new motorcycles, and when I wasn't working from 530-130 at the garden in the brutal humid summer, I was grinding 1-2PLO on Stars. Between the two gigs, I was pulling in over 100k a year, and I was also working with Ken (from the Texas story) on the side. The economy was starting to hit Ken a little - he had to trade in his Escalade and get a Jetta, and he wasn't pulling in enough to cover the overwhelming expenses of running a nursery. I would throw him clients that visited the garden, and he would kick me back some contract growing jobs that were worth a few thousand each. I took another interesting gig on which I will touch on in a separate story, as it needs a chapter of its own.

By the end of 2008 though, I was starting to get tired of working for what I thought was a non-profit organization. They were more concerned about pulling in money from donations and weddings than they were about acquiring plants and keeping up their status as having the best collection in the world. Classic Miami, everyone finds an angle to make extra money and look better than the next person. After two months of getting micromanaged by my one and only passive aggressive boss, I finally told them how I felt about their business dealings and put in 2 weeks notice in the middle of a meeting. I wanted to do my own thing again, grow what I wanted to grow, and I didn't want people hovering over me telling me what to do. I just wasn't cut out to have a boss, I needed the freedom of running my own gig. by November 1st, 2008, I was "unemployed", so to speak. It was the best feeling in the world. I was sustaining myself just fine playing on Stars and working independent gigs with Ken which paid more than the job did. I would spend days just riding around downtown Miami, thinking of what it was like here 35 years ago during the height of the drug trade, before the overcrowding. I would do anything to be able to travel back in time to see 1980s Miami.

OP, I happened upon this thread and, as has been said, you have a great way of telling your story.

I run a 1/2 NLHE home game that is quite similar (I think so anyway) to these home games in your story. We don't allow any house credit, and we don't rake. I've been toying with the idea of implementing a bad beat jackpot to help us grow and sustain. Do you have any experience with a BBJ in a home game? Thoughts? Advice?

Please keep up the good work. I look forward to reading more chapters.

I think if you are running a game with no house credit and it is running solid, you have yourself a business opportunity you might want to capitalize on. If these people are all your friends and it is a get together, it may not be something you want to take money from. If it is a bunch of guys who are coming to your house and eating food, drinking, etc. then I would charge a fee for that service. As far as a BBJ, we did try to implement a 1 dollar drop per hand for a BBJ, but the problem is no one wanted to hold onto the money week to week, and those who would couldn't be trusted. We ended up giving away $400 for a high hand one night from the BBJ money. Having a high hand rake is probably much easier and it accounts for the money by the end of the night.

Feel free to PM me about what your possible options are, and what is best given the crowd that plays.

TST- that botanical story of how you used your people skills and self taught plant knowledge at the seminar to land a very solid gig was quite impressive IMO. It must have been tough to leave a secure, lucrative gig doing something you love but on the other hand, I fully get not wanting a boss who was a micromanaging, passive aggressive dkhead. If you don't want to answer that's fine, but did you clear over 500k selling your nursery op? Also, I'm guessing this flashback is leading towards how you became a mid stakes boss at PLO who crushed snowbird souls and built a sick roll... Your poker content is great fun to read because of your memory and I'd love to hear some tales about huge PLO hands as you were coming up in the game.



No rake?? Or even a nightly entry fee? that's crazy. I guess it's mostly friends because your literally leaving 1k+ a night on the table. But WTF do I know, except that TX is known to hand down stiff sentences and I guess the big time fellas running clubs with 5-10 tables up to 10-20NL - who have political/LE connections - would probably have you shut down quick if word got out you were raking. Or maybe your just lying because it's a public forum 🤔

TST - Looking FWD to the installment brother. Hands down best thread I've read on here in a long time and quite inspiring to me as I plot starting out my own business. Just need a partner at this point. Rock on man.

The venue we use is owned by an elected public official, pretty straight laced, and not willing to risk being associated with a raked game. So we operate as a private poker club. Club dues are due upon taking a seat ($10 per seat, due every time we play). I organize the game and deal for tips. More of a legit poker room than "mostly friends" as you put it. And I used to run a raked game, so I know exactly what you mean about how much money we are missing out on. The problem I have is that the casinos in Shreveport/Bossier City are only about 40 minutes away, and the player pool that I'm currently pulling from is made up of recreational players (mostly...although we do have a couple of seasoned vets) that do not understand that they can win as much at our game as they can at the casino, but without paying rake. There are a few home games in the area that do rake, and therefore run a credit book. I have heard some of their stories of getting absolutely screwed by players playing on credit. I'm not willing to even consider a book, especially when all the credit I would be able to extend would have to be covered by my own tips.

I will try to give the best recollection of hands that I played at higher stakes online - for some reason I remember much fewer hands online because sometimes the play was much faster and you only get a quick peek at your opponents' cards when all in. I didn't keep HH, most of my info is basically lost.

When I sold my nursery I was in a pinch for time because they wanted me to start in a month and I had a full on nursery running. It's like trying to slow a train down, I had to take hits in the middle of growth cycles and before the spring sales. I probably made about 250k all said and done, paid off all my business credit, bought a few toys, and put about half of the rest in the bank. The other half I put in some choice investments through my dad, who I trust with money more than any bank.

Sorry about not getting any material out - I have been trying to do some large plant brokering, and it involves going back and forth between eccentric buyers and sellers. Between that and watching the ME I have been pretty short on time.

It sounds like running a raked game in Texas can be a big gamble. If people are frequenting your game, and you are putting time and effort into it, you should find a way to make in beneficial for yourself even if it is not monetary. As someone wise once said - If you are good at doing something, don't do it for free.

Pollo Tropicale

Having left the botanical garden, I was a free agent in life. I was doing plant deals with Ken, I was doing some consulting on the side, and whatever other deals came along. When people know you used to be big in the plant business, you can get a lot of gigs by just dropping the fact you used to be a manager at an 83 acre world class botanical garden in Miami. It sounded like I did a lot, but I really just enjoyed the free life. I had my FJ cruiser, a Honda Magna, a '68 Honda Super 80, and had considered a Ducati at the dealership, but they wouldn't budge on price, and I didn't want to buy a 25K bike only to **** up my neck again. The odd thing is, I rarely left the house unless it was to eat, go to Ken's down near the Keys, or head out to the beach. The rest of my time was on the computer playing PLO, this time on FTP.

Now my biggest weakness during this time was Pollo Tropicale. PT is a Caribbean "fast food" restaurant that is concentrated in Southern Florida, but there are locations in big cities up north. In Miami it was more common than McDonalds, including one two blocks away from me on SW90th Street and US1. When I say fast food, they have a fast food style ordering system, but almost all the food on the menu is healthy - roast chicken, pork, soup, rice, etc. It was cheap, easy, and oh so good. Just last night I ordered the same items I ordered back in 2008. I would eat it for lunch and dinner most days, I had 5-6 empty cartons of take out hanging around my apartment like a lazy son of a bitch.

These were the days that I really got to grinding PLO online. I was 2-3 tabling 2-4, and I would usually fire up a 5-10 table as I tried to breach the 25K mark on my account. Even at 5-10, the fishiness of PLO was extremely high compared to NL. People would stack off with hands as if it were holdem. Top pair top kicker, overpair to the board, 100BBs, no problem! Compared to today's game, it was a joke, I mean anyone who had adaptability skills could figure out who the unskilled players were and let them hang themselves. Still, variance was a bitch and runner runner comes often in this game. When I got stacked, I would try and go out for a ride on one of the bikes, especially if it were at night. Riding a motorcycle in Miami during rush hour was a death wish on any major road.

Now that I was no longer an employee of the garden, I could go after a couple of the girls that I worked with there without losing my job. There was the horticultural manager, a girl from Tennessee, but she was engaged to one of the Honduran garden workers, I never understood that, but I did try and got shot down very subtly. More importantly I had an assistant when I was a manager there. She was a few years older than me, born and raised in Miami, one of the few gringos left. I had taken her with me to go pick up my old bike from the shop on the garden's time, and we ended up hanging out on Miami Beach most of the day. I had tried to get her to come hang out when we were working together, but she really cared about her job, and I respected that. I did let her smoke weed out at the edge of the nursery, and we got along well. I invited her to come over and we could go out downtown, and she accepted.

I think I was slightly delusional at the time, because she showed up at 730, and I let her in and was still playing on FTP, completely oblivious to the fact that she was ready to go hang out and I was not showered or ready at all. I apologized and told her I had lost track of time, that I was playing poker. She actually had found it interesting and started watching, and asked if it was for real money. I showed her the account balance nearing 30k and she really didn't believe it until I had to show her bank statements of me withdrawing money from the site. She was a skeptical girl, but feisty and independent, I liked it. We decided to go to the UM area for a few drinks, and she started to ask me questions about life.

"What made you decide to leave? Was it poker?" She asked, almost as if the garden wanted to know.

"I came there to take care of the collection. There are plants there that are dying that are the only ones that exist outside of habitat. Mary (my ****ty boss) was trying to handcuff me to sales plants and I wasn't able to do my job. I couldn't take it anymore."

"We had always wondered why you took the job. I mean, it doesn't exactly pay a lot of money, and you're overqualified." Here come the questions again, I felt like I was being interviewed by the garden.

"I took the job because I loved plants. I don't even have a college degree, I am under qualified in their book. If I wanted to become the head of the garden, I would need to go back to school. It was a dead end for me, I am going to do my own nursery again." I hadn't really thought of that, but now it seemed like a great idea.

For being 5'2 and 100 pounds, she could hold her liquor. She was taking shots and seemed unfazed - must be the Irish in her. We ended up going back to my apartment and plowing her on my brand new Tempur-Pedic California king - it was oddly quiet. I hadn't had much social interaction since I had quit the garden, this was like Disney World for a child to me. We ended up hanging out for a few more months until I had decided to leave, it was just a FWB thing and we both knew it.

I had decided to go back to the West Coast and set up my nursery and take a part time job landscaping a 16 acre private island, it was an ongoing process I do to this day. The daily grind in Miami was getting to me - I didn't speak Spanish, missed my family, and wanted to grow what I wanted to grow, not what some garden supervisor wanted. I couldn't stand having a boss, much less a passive aggressive one. This was going to be an uphill battle - I had just sold my nursery a year ago, and now had to restart a new one in a niche market during a horrific recession. Poker seemed like my fallback, but I couldn't quit plants - I would go crazy.

(I have realized that finishing this backstory may take another 5 or 6 very long chapters, and I haven't gotten into stories within this time period. I will end this here as my intro to plants and poker, and do more specific flashbacks in the coming pages for a better read.)

Pollo Tropical is obv the stone cold nuts. I remember going there for the first time when I moved to sfla, it was walking distance from my apartment.

I just ordered one of the standard meals (grilled chicken platter being my go-to) and they push out a tray with like an entire chicken, rice for 3-4 people, bread, lettuce/salad etc. and say "that'll be $6" and I'm like, is this real?

That was my first impression too. The drive-thru guy at the place here knows my voice and hooks me up with Tres Leches whenever I make the trip. And it's not a sketchy place at all - I have seen Bentleys in front of me in the drive-thru in Miami.

I will try and get more out tomorrow after the WSOP.

Went through the whole thread while watching the WSOP. Good stuff. Looking forward to more stories. Kendra is 10-7 suited - looks nice and you wanna see what happens when you play it, but you probably shoulda folded pre.

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

Lol this

Kendra was sort of like 10-7 suited, haha. I am working on another post, I have been slammed this week, the whole house is sick, my mom is visiting and I found a new home game.

Hollywood Harry and The Gameplan

When I woke up I saw that I had a missed call from a 203 number. I knew exactly who it was - Hollywood Harry. HH was a friend of my dad's - he was sort of an assistant to him since the late 70s and still did our taxes. It was around April 10th. He was 100% Greek and furious about 99% of the time - he only calmed down when he saw well endowed women. He once visited me at college with my dad, they showed up in his AMG Benz and Harry was there to try and impress the ladies. He was 50 and in the cafeteria was gawking to the point that my dad had to tell him to stop. Harry had gotten his start working the streets as a hired muscle for some "people", My dad gave him a job that was passed onto him by Mercedes Benz of Manhattan to recover a 500SL from a known drug dealer's house in Harlem. This was the late 70s and Harlem was not a place that white folk were welcome. Harry walked right into the dealership and demanded they cut him a key, and he would be back the next day with the car. The guys there were all telling him it was extremely dangerous but Harry doesn't back down for anyone. He took an old police cruiser up to the address and with buddy, they blew right through the padlocked gate and he ran in the Benz and brought it back intact. If you have seen American Gangster, you can an idea how dangerous it was for a couple white dudes to show up and pull that off. The dealership was in shock and my dad took him under his wing.

Fast forward almost 35 years, and Harry had been doing my taxes, getting me all deductions I could from being a student, etc. He had also gotten a decent start playing extras in some music videos as a businessman and was hanging out with a decent amount of celebs and was high on his horse. When I called him back he was all pissed off.

"You wait until 5 days before taxes are due and you still haven't sent me ****. How the **** am I supposed to help you out when you can't help yourself?"

"I don't know Harry, I don't have much to show on any books for income."

"You have no W-2s, 1099s, nothing?" He made me feel like a loser just with his tone.

"No, just deposits into the bank to pay bills."

"So, you're putting money into the bank, but you aren't making money - how am I going to be able to help you here?"

"I don't know Harry, I just make money off the books, I've been sort of running a home game for the past year and playing poker too. It's all in a safe now."

"You can't just keep all your money in one place not making any interest. All cash is dangerous and the Feds love to seize that stuff. You wait until 5 days before taxes are due to call me to get this sorted out, you're a real *******. You live at your sister's house correct?"

"That's correct."

"So this is what you do. Buy some **** up with that cash, gold, silver, casino chips, etc. and keep it in a safe you can always get to. Since you live with your sister, she will claim you as a dependent and she will get a tax break. Keep your nose clean or you'll end up like Brewskie."

"Okay Harry, thanks."

"Don't thank me, just don't be stupid. I gotta go." I heard the phone click off and felt like I got off easy with him. Brewskie was a roommate of my dad's at Exeter. He was the first black guy to ever graduate from the school in 1969, and it was a big deal. He went to Yale Business school and made a ****load of money in the 80s and 90s, and started up his dice game in AC. He would come down to VA to visit us at our house before my parents divorced, he was a really cool guy. In 2003?, his fast life caught up with him. He owed a lot of people money and had a huge coke habit, and decided to graduate to armed robbery. He was the wheelman in a heist in Queens, and panicked during the getaway, hitting a security guard with the car and making him brain dead for life. He is serving 8 to 20? Upstate now and my dad still visits him from time to time, it was a big story in the New York times, and my dad testified as a character witness.

After all that mess with HH was sorted out, I had noticed a text from Nicole, and it was long.

"I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to say goodbye, I didn't want to wake you up. I had to take my daughter to school or I would have been a bad mom. I sprayed perfume in your room to remind you of me and keep other women out, lol. I hope I can see you soon."

Well, that was refreshing, but not as refreshing as the Thursday night game that week. I dealt all night, pulled off $830 in tips plus rake, and expecting a speech from Mike, I was paid in full. I was able to work Tim's game on Friday most of the night too, making another $300. This still didn't deter me from wanting to have a talk with Paulie. This couldn't go on forever, and I was only going to feel satisfied when I was completely in control of things. I need a new area of town, new people, new mission. On Saturdays, Paulie's deli had a traditional barbecue outside and it was frequented by snowbirds and locals alike. I walked in there with a gameplan, and I felt like this was the best time to make a move, while everything was on the up and up. It was going to cause a rift in the underground world in the area, but I didn't give a ****.

Please keep 'em coming...

I just realized how bad my grammar is first thing in the morning, lol. Hopefully get another out tonight.