I guess I’ll start with a short introduction. My name is Mike Wang, which led to my screen name on 2+2, “wikemang.” I've been posting in microstakes since 2006, but I haven't really gone out of my way to become very well known. When I started writing this some 15 months ago, I was going to be a junior at UC Berkeley and I had no idea what my life had in store for me poker-wise and in general. It's crazy how much stuff has happened since then. After going from an Economics major to an Applied Statistics major, I have finally settled on Environmental Economics, and I’m graduating this semester. I’m planning on applying to law schools for the fall 2011 term after I take a solid year and a half break from schooling. On to the story of how I got to where I am today.

I started playing poker with my friends after school during my senior year of high school. I was really bad. So, I bought the cheapest Texas Hold’em book I could find, read it, and thought I knew everything. Sometime around then a couple of my friends introduced me to online poker, in the form of a website called Bugsy’s Club (unfortunately, Bugsy’s Club is now gone, their players absorbed by PokerStars). I began to play freerolls on Bugsy’s Club and worked up a real money bankroll a few times, but I always busted because of a lack of bankroll management.

For my birthday that summer my friend bought me Harrington on Holdem vol. 1 and I read that. Over that summer before my freshman year of college, I played a lot of poker on Bugsy’s Club. My fondest memory of the site to this day is of playing a WSOP freeroll with my friend. There were three rounds, and we made it to the final table of the second round, and ended up busting in ninth place, with seven people moving on to the final round. Obviously we got set over setted, but hey, poker is rigged!

Throughout the first semester of my freshman year in college I played freerolls on Bugsy’s Club. Eventually I got a $100 loan on Full Tilt from a friend of a friend (Bryce) who also introduced me to 2+2, which I joined in October of 2006. I used this $100 to play 10NL. I sucked and slowly busted it. Then I got $50 more and pretty soon that was only $20. I also busted countless cash game stakes given to me by Bryce.

In April of 2007 I deposited $600 to get the Full Tilt Poker 100% deposit bonus and I immediately repaid Bryce and withdrew enough to leave me with $350 on Full Tilt. I decided to play 25NL 6max and hovered around $200-300. I was definitely a losing player in those games, despite my adamant beliefs to the contrary. Then, I somehow placed 4th in Daily Double B, which boosted my roll over $900. I withdrew another $300 and continued to play 25NL 6max and lose steadily. Despite my reading on 2+2, I continue to lose at 25NL 6max.

Then, school finally got out for summer and I headed home to southern California. I make the switch to 25NL full ring and continue to post on 2+2 and read everything in the microstakes forum. The funny thing is, I don’t really know why I switched to full ring. Whatever my reason was, I started to win and gain confidence. This encouraged me to continue posting in the microstakes forum and made me even hungrier for poker knowledge of all kinds. By the end of summer I had made around $1800 from tournaments, 25NL full ring, my deposit bonus, and rakeback. I was the king of the world (or so I thought).

I continued to play 25NL and make withdrawals through the beginning of my sophomore year of college. Eventually I decided to make the jump to 50NL and I really had a hard time there. In fact, I still have a hard time there. I didn’t play particularly poorly, I just found that it was very hard for me to consistently win there. However, I eventually managed to win enough to move up to 50NL and I hovered at 50NL with $1,000-1,500 for a couple months. By the end of the semester I was still stuck at 50NL, I hadn’t gone to many classes, and I ended up getting the worst grades of my life, and I barely avoided academic probation. Uh-oh…My parents were hardly excited with my academic regression. I assured them that I would turn it around in the spring semester, and that poker was not getting in the way of my studies. I agreed to enroll in summer school to retake the class I had failed.

Throughout winter break and the beginning of spring semester I continued to play poker. By maybe a month into the semester my bankroll had reached $2,000 and I decided to take a shot at 100NL. I ran sick hot and ended up winning something like $1,000 in two or three days, which at the time was ridiculous to me. So now my bankroll sat at around $3,000 and I considered myself a 100NL regular. Two weeks later I’d lost everything I won in that handful of days, and I had no confidence. I ended up withdrawing $1,000 and I decided I would learn 6max. Oh, how things change…

After my withdrawal I was down to a bankroll of around $1,000. My exact bankroll during this time is pretty hazy, but I do know that in April, 2008, I won the $24+2 6max PLHE tournament on Full Tilt, which bumped my bankroll up to almost $2,000. Throughout the period up to my win I mostly dabbled in 50NL and 50PL 6max. After my win I switched to 6max for a week or two and won a little bit, but I still could not figure out the dynamics of 6max.
It seemed to me that my game meshed a lot better with full ring, so after I took a break to “study” for finals (I didn’t study) I moved back to full ring and just started crushing people’s souls at the tables. I ran well and I played well, and by the end of June I had been playing 100NL and beating it at a 3ptbb/100 clip. This even included a nasty one-day $1,200 downswing that occurred a couple days after I dumped $1,000 in the 2/5 game at Morongo, also known as the casino where only morons go, in June. Nevertheless I was proud of myself because I managed to recover my losses and then some by the beginning of July.

Then I received a letter from the University of California, Berkeley, stating that I was on academic probation…and **** hit the fan. I failed two classes, got a B- in a third, and got a pass in another class. Not only had poker kept me from studying, I had also decided to pledge a new fraternity on campus. Between poker, pledging, my girlfriend, and sleeping, I just didn’t do classwork. Lucky for me, I was able to register to retake one of the classes I had failed in spring. Ironically, the two classes I would be taking in summer school starting at the end of June were math classes. Maybe poker isn’t the right career choice for me?

My mom was incredibly angry and presented me with a couple of options: 1) drop out of school, but my parents wouldn’t pay for anything and I was totally cut off, or 2) withdraw all of my money, pay for summer school and room and board, pay for fall tuition, and pay for half of fall room and board. I went with option 2 because, oddly enough, I do like my parents a little bit, and I didn’t want to let them down. I also felt terrible about myself and this gave me a chance at redemption. I won’t lie, though, I did consider dropping out, but it was a fleeting thought. Getting a degree and having something to fall back on if poker didn’t work out made a lot more sense risk-wise than just playing poker and hoping for the best. As one of my friends told me while I was pondering everything and my life was a complete mess, “Poker will always be there.”

So, I withdrew everything except for $38 on PokerStars and attempted to move on with my life. I passed my classes over the summer, got a job at the school library, decided on a new major, and didn’t play any poker through fall semester. I ended up getting a 3.7GPA the fall semester of my junior year, and my parents were much happier. I continued to pay half of my living expenses, which ended up destroying my entire life savings. This was an extremely humbling experience for me, but I think I’ve learned a lot about personal responsibility, the consequences of my actions, and how valuable money is. It’s easy to lose sight of the value of money when you’re clicking buttons all day and playing with pixels on your computer screen. Once I started writing checks for my own bills, money became a lot more “real” to me.

Another consequence of my academic catastrophe was that it caused me to re-evaluate my entire life. I realized that I had been closing myself off from my girlfriend and my friends in general. I was allowing my bankroll fluctuations to dictate my emotional interactions with the people closest to me. Poker really had begun to take over my life. To say it simply, I was addicted. This was really troubling to me, and since then I have really emphasized keeping poker and my social life separate. I hope my girlfriend thinks I’ve been doing a better job. Obviously I still have problems, but I think I’ve been doing a much better job preventing myself from projecting my frustrations on other people. Furthermore, I have learned that I have an incredibly addictive personality, which has led me to proceed cautiously with my current poker adventures…which I guess I’d better talk about now.

After the fall semester of my junior year (fall 2008), I was off academic probation. My parents were much happier with me since I now had a job to help pay for rent and food each month, and my grades had returned to a solid level. When spring semester started in the middle of January, I began to feel the poker itch for the first time in months. It was then that I found the $38 dollars I had left on PokerStars. I decided to rebuild my bankroll starting at 2NL 6max, and once and for all I would learn to play 6max. Over the next three and a half months I managed to shake off the rust, retool my game, and turn my $38 into $3,500! I rebuilt to around $1,300 playing cash games, then I took second place in a couple tournaments that boosted my bankroll up to the final mark. During this entire period, I exercised good bankroll management, and even became more conservative with my bankroll. Once I got back to 25NL 6max, I switched back to full ring and I have been doing well since then. I am now playing 100NL and 200NL mainly, with some 400NL thrown in every once in a while if I see a good table. Recently I started coaching and staking, and overall I feel like my life is in a good place. I still need to work on some things, like keeping my girlfriend happy, but I think I’m finally hitting my stride in all parts of my life.

I’d like to give a shout out to everyone who has stuck with me through the best and the worst—Casey, Sheff, Winston, Ted, KLew especially. You guys are the best and I’m proud to call you my friends. Thank you for reading, I hope it was interesting. If you have any questions about my bankroll management, philosophies, graphs, dealing with downswings, or whatever (not necessarily poker-related), please fire away. See you at the tables…

Mike

ok really tldr, but first

wendol said he would share his mom with me and the tl'dr crowd

meh i actually read it. and i must say, you dont have any good degen stories about busting a few k or anything. wtf. just sound like normal azn dude imo. no warcrack or starcrack so pokerz for you.

what are you going to do with your 1.5years off?

I left out a lot of trip reports because I felt they were unnecessary clutter. I did engage in some Vegas degeneracy recently though. I was betting $100/spin at roulette, then I decided to bet red and martingaled. I lost 750 dollars in 3 spins. Black came 14 times in a row while i was there. Standard. Also, my friend's friend+girlfriend did 4 horsemen shots and she puked everywhere at a bar, that was hilarious. I also encountered a hooker yelling at 3 Mexican dudes in an elevator during that trip. Freshman year I went to Morongo in southern California with three friends and we got super hammered. One of my buddies thought he was the milf hunter and he couldn't see straight. He tripped on the way to the poker room and almost took out a slot machine.

During my time off I'm planning to play poker, travel a little bit, and get some random law internships I've lined up. I need some time to decompress

Edit: I dumped a ton of money on that Vegas trip...hahaha!

good read

Damn, good story man.

I learned that some people actually do win those "tournament" things! Weird.

It surprises me how much we seem to have in common. I didn't have poker when I was in college, but there was a term or two I was fed up with school and everything, failed a bunch of classes, and nearly dropped out. Followed by over a year out of school just workin' and payin' my bills. I was one of the exceptions though, in that I returned to school and got my degree. Apparently after getting a taste for being on your own, very few people return to school. Good on you for going through that and coming out the other side with both school and poker intact.

Can we see a graph of the rebuild, 2nl-200nl?

What thoughts can you share about simultaneously being a +EV poker player and a compulsive gambler? Is there anything specific you do to maintain balance?

Good read.

I noticed that you say you still have a hard time when you play at 50NL, but yet your usual games are 100NL and 200NL these days. What do you attribute this to?

good read. reads alot like my story.

Definitely not tl;dr. Good read, man.

good show, man. good show.

+1

List of things to do during year and a half off......

I am sure there are some degens here who would help with keeping gf happy....... since it's not a priority for you.

PICS or GTFO...... seems appro too

nice story....GL

o you s.o.b , but he is right

tl;dr: life is more important than poker.