Part XXI - Becoming the next Zima
Having got myself into poker thanks to the kind help of a few friends I started doing pretty decent. I was running at $7 a game over my first 2000 3r/180s and Id finished 51st and 21st in back to back Sunday Millions (the first post black friday and the one before it) but mentally I was struggling. Id built a huge stack and had done all I could in that chase for glory and if Id won one of these or even final tabled I might have followed the playing dream and not the staking dream.
Staking had always been something I had a interest in and I wasn't really happy with giving up 50% of my winnings to my then backers in Jackziyang and Spathic, sure they had been great to me but Id not got a single coaching session and I was offered nothing more then a bankroll. I moved over to play with Gavin555 and Chavarov on a deal that was very much in my favor after already sending them a friend in Semesa1. Semesa and I had done a fair bit of work together and I helped him get his first stake.
Having looked through the other horses in the stable I saw 3 or 4 guys Id seen in negative feedback!!!! So I offered to help out where I could and in the end we came to an agreement that Id join them as the Stable Manger even tho we didnt even have a stable! I spent hour upon hour coaching guys including doing nearly 20 hours in 3-4 weeks with m1ghtyducks and 10 or hours with syker12. My own game started to suffer due to coaching my "style" and showing people the 3betting hands I favored etc on mass so it seemed like staking was going to be my future.
I went back through the marketplace and read every thread for the past 2 years on there, I looked through id guess 60% of Zima's total post and I followed his posting to see how he went about. At this stage I was one if not the most well known poster in 4life and spent most of my day trolling 2p2. Id overcome my addiction but I was not yet mentally over all that comes with the love of a pipe.
As the staking moved forward we seemed to be having really good success with Chavarov and I focusing on coaching 3rs and Gavin and Semesa looking after the freezeouts. We had built our roll to around 20k when Semesa left to play for Baza and I was starting to really push the stable in skype chats. If you have been involved in a skype chat with me you will know I set my computer up to message me whenever someboday said Stake, Staker, Dean, Bogan, Bogan4life or busto so that every time someone was wanting to talk about staking or myself I was there.
Id looked into mtt's after Semesa successful start with baza and I needed to find a low risk player that could really help our roll. I took a punt on a little known German guy and gave him a great deal that saw him gain % with the more he made and locked him into a 5 month deal. This deal was probably the key to going from being small fry to becoming one of the biggest stables in the game.
As most of you could guess that player was Rowniwn. He joined the stable with a no frills mindset and was happy to grind out a little lower then he should have. Thank god that he never downswong because in his first 2 months he made more for us then the 20 odd 180s guys we had at the time combined!
I really wanted to move into mtt's big time but we didnt have the roll to do it and Chavarov wasn't really a fan of mtt's at the time so I started talking with my old staker Jackziyang and Spathic with the numbers and the facts on how at that stage after 4 months Id turned a $5000 inital roll into just under $100k and they thought I could grab a few horses and we could go from there.
With in a week id signed 12 horses!! Bare in mind I was a losing mtt player having played under 300 of them in my life but I knew if I followed the process of extreme coaching commitments (having to bring in mtt coach's this time with myself still coaching the 180 guys) and using my unique style to find players and be more like a mate/social worker then a boss it was the stepping stone to the next level of backing.
So hear I was running a stable for Gavin/Chav and for Jack/Spathic so I thought having one big chat where all the guys could work together would be great and this is when #teambogan Online was built.
The # tag was used due to a market research showing that due to the twitter fad it makes a company easier to brand, the Team part was to try to create a loyalty among players with a structure that made them see me the same way you would a Coach or Captain of a sporting team, a person they could turn to when needed with the big bad owners being the bad guys
I obv used my name due to my following from my troll days in 4life and the fact I could create a brand around myself and the Online part was due wanting to stand out that I was doing online backing only.
We started posting sweat threads for our guys in mttc with the #teambogan and flooded pg&c with threads from our players along with me telling the same funny story in every single skype group I was in. At one stage I think I was in over 20 group chats where most of the day id promote the group.
#teambogan had only just started to kick off when I had my first manic low from bi polar.... This was to be one the biggest test
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More to come clearly, when I write this part for my book Ill be changing it to not go into so much boring detail