Spent a whole day at work reading the scribd link /big thanks for that).

Awesome story - looking forward to next 4 years

Ha ha don't hold your breath

Bump. See some Wsop cashes this year.

Bad Debts

Driving to golf I anxiously glanced at my phone in hope of a check mark on the telegram thumb nail. An encrypted messaging app, this is where I hoped to hear from the Colorado doctor who owed me a healthy 5 figure debt.

How could I, as a professional gambler, allow a debt to get larger then the car I was driving you ask? Well, the game has changed a bit since the last time we spoke. The landscape in which I’d mastered my first five years was almost unrecognizable. My game plan had needed an overhaul, as the rules on the streets were no longer in tact.

Las Vegas had a code when I first arrived. It was a place where anyone and everyone who wanted to play a poker game showed up, and once nine arrived it was shuffle up and deal. May the best man win. Admittingly, I was of great benefit to this system. While never the best player, I was good enough, and determined enough to show up early and always leave last.

Then came the private game rush of ’15. All of a sudden, It was valuable to be invaluable. The regs with the lowest win rates banded together and sold the rec players on a game with more players like them and less players like me.

Right or wrong, I was forced to adjust or die on the hill i laid on. Opportunities I had previously deemed too risky, were now necessary for survival. Traveling for poker was now back on the table. There was a private nl game back east I was flying to once a month.

The more I won, the less frequent my invite to show up, even though I was breaking off my host a healthy piece of the winning action. “Sorry man” he told me “It’s not up to me, I’ll let you know next time I can get you in.”

I could tell by his tone that our little racket was all but dead. Which was fine, I’d been expecting this call since I was first dealt in. What I wasn’t expecting was my last payment of winnings to be tied to an outstanding debt from the games biggest contributor. I was given his contact, and while regretful and reassuring at first, his responses slowly became more desperate and infrequent.

There was no check mark, as expected. I was past the point of disappointment, as I turned up my XM Lithium radio; changing the subject on my internal monologue, I heard an unforgettable beat, long gone from radio play.

The year was 1997 and my family was on the road, somewhere between chicago and florida. An irrationally long road trip to which my dad justified as a ploy to distribute funding towards a hotel with a water slide. In truth, it was actually an excuse to appease his irrational fear of flight. A fear he confirmed years later, when the september 11 attacks put the final nail in my families air travel coffin.

This trip is meshed in my brain with countless other childhood memories, except for one footnote, which has provided a timestamp and as I get older an easy retrieval for one of my first memories. The windows were down and the radio was blaring on whatever local station my mother could find before the distance traveled would turn the musics’ clarity into constant fuzz.

One song ended as another began. Dm Dm Dm Dm Dm Dm Dm…Mmmmm…Dm Dm Dm Dm Dm Dm Dm….Uhhhhhhh . I recognized this one immediately. It was a chart topper, and played at least twice in our car since the last bathroom break. My 18 year old sister recognized it too, or so she thought as she sang along.

“Where is the money that I owe, yea so you can pay the bills” she harmonized, before I butted in.

“Here” I said, not even looking up from my original gameboy. “Here, is the money that I owe you.”

“No, idiot, it’s where” she shot back. “I own the CD”

This may have been true, but had she taken the time to conceptualize the lines that followed, she would’ve known that the question her brain had heard, was really just a poorly annunciated statement.

“Ill bet you five bucks” she said doubling down on her teenage tenacity.

Now I didn’t have 5 bucks, but that didn’t matter. This was about being right. And I may have only been 9, but i knew damn well you don’t go hunting down the people you owe, only to ask them where the cheddar at.

So, Melissa took out her new CD, disassembled the cover, which also contained each tracks' lyrics, and went to the third page.

“Told you” I said, returning my attention to the gameboy with an overwhelming glow of being right; a foreign feeling to me, not soon to be forgotten.

“Shut up” she shot back, pinching my earlobe; a tedious reminder that her reign of physicality still outpowered any battle of whits that would go my way.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W05cPXpUHGI

Twenty years later, that song was sent back to me like a bad joke from above.
Neither deadbeat ever did pay, though Im hopeful Melissa will get around to it.

MM

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

He's back!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I almost didn't click on it because I was like, why do I want to read about people whining about no updates. What a surprise!

Private game situation seems mega-sketchy.

He returns!

Man I love reading his story. Each time I get ready for a Vegas trip I read it and it never gets old! Always brings me so much entertainment!

Andrew Neeme discussed the whole situation of private games in Vegas at casinos for limits beyond $5/$10. It was one of his arguments, excuses for not resale grinding or trying to get into higher limits.

Clearly this seems like one of many reasons why a mid stakes grinder has no reason trying to make it in Vegas.

Long time no talk Matt, hope all is well, still love reading your blog!

+1000

I'll collect on this Doc for ya, whats his name?

hope you are up more than you are owed at least in that game, I would assume so...

I had to close down my Scribd account, they went to a subscription model.

Any ideas on where the edited PDF of the story could be posted/downloaded?

For years, anytime the thread was at top, I was so hoping it was an updated story, but always disappointed!!!!!!!!!! Awesome to hear an update and welcome back.

Moore money! Welcome back... Would you be able to really let it rip (Vent) on the private games in Vegas? Specifically... 1) you have any good stories/details of ridiculous scenarios this private game situation has caused? Maybe a table of mediocre 25/50 players private game laughing it up, meanwhile a separate 2/5 game with 7 awesome pros all licking their chops for the bigger game. But powerless now stuck at 2/5 forever? 2) what are you going to do poker future will travel be the norm? 3) do you think this situation here to stay forever and do you think poker "dream" rising the stakes is over with ? What a joey Chicago episode this would be!! thanks!

It would, but he is already fairly often on the Sessions podcast by DGAF.

welcome back

I didn't know that I'll check it out thanks

I feel like he was on once.
He does get mentioned regularly

It was 2016, my 5th or 6th poker tournament. I had just busted a good friend of mine. AAs vs kks. I 4 bet him all in and honestly would be happy to take what was in the pot. I just started playing poker a few months prior. It was still more of a fun game at the time rather than a serious competition.

But no one folds KKs.

Moments later, an old man sat down at friend's seat, with visible burn on the right side of his face. After a few friendly conversations, I asked about the burn, he told me his farm was on fire a few nights before, how his family bravely put out the fire, and how damaged things were. I of course felt bad for him, who appeared very friendly, and seemed to be holding back tears describing the traumatic experience. I genuinely wished him the best.

Then I looked down at 22.

Old man raised, almost the whole table called and so did I. Flop came j22, blah, blah. turn k. We put stacks in on the river. I busted him.

Yeah, no one folds KKs.

To this day I don't remember his face any more while he walked away, but I still remember how that made me feel. It could be the grey hair, could be the wound, or the withered eyes, but something got to me badly and I could not hold my tears. I struggled.

Yeah, I cried at a poker table, for busting someone I liked and felt sympathetic for. Just like when I was 13, I cried because a cartoon monkey got mistreated by his master and the whole English class laughed at me.

I'm sure if someone had noticed, they'd think I had never had quads in my life.

Fast forward 8 to 10 hours, I cashed for 11k at the end of the night. I was ecstatic. I had forgotten about all the tears, my busted friend, I had forgotten about the sad old man. In the 4 am casino, I was the sole poker queen.

Over the years, I have talked about that first time win with friends and relived it in my own head many, many times. Strangely yet not surprisingly, old man's face had never crossed my mind again until I read this post. The next three years, I have given, and taken endless beats at the tables, but have never come close to dropping a tear. But even with those tears, not for a minute had I wondered how his farm recovered. Doesn't it just make all the "feelings" seem worthless?

Yeah, it turned out, we were not in this together, old man.

Off the table, I might still shed a tear for those lost sheep and pigs tho. After all in that farm, going on is another kind of war of exploitation and preying on the weak.

^ Nice contribution, the sentiment is relatable.

Reminds me of a hand I played years ago.

Cash game and a gentleman pulls up in a wheel chair with an assistant. We end up getting in a hand together when he had been there for a short amount of time. I don't remember exactly how the hand went, but I had a strong hand that gets to showdown. I think about just mucking, but I show anyways and I'm good. The gentleman in the wheelchair's session is short and he leaves after that. It was a small pot, but regardless of the size of the pot, to this day, I wish I would have just mucked my hand, even if he got the satisfaction to play a few more hands after that.

I hope I will continue to put things more into perspective.

My name is called for a table and as I approach I notice the only seat open is next to a fairly young man in a wheel chair. He looks sickly, and is obviously disabled. As I go to sit down I notice a $5 chip on the floor. Under normal circumstances I just grab the chip and move one, but in this exact instance I know I would regret it. I kindly ask him if the $5 on the floor is his, he looks down at it, and quite comically says "nope, that's yours" with a smile.