Hello 2+2!,
My names Carl Batista 28 years old and i am seeking someone who is willing not just to back me, but more important to me id really like it if i can build a mentor type relationship with someone and am certainly looking for long term staking.

-My Story- ill put some cliffs so feel free to skip its full of me rambling and could easily have minor gaps as i have kind of just thrown my words out there, but i feel it reflects my goals in poker

The way i found poker i guess you can say is the reason why i feel my work ethic and desire to improve my game are so important to me. In my early twenties i always felt i really wanted to make something of myself, i just never knew what that was and all that ended up happening was just no college education and bounced around from crappy job to crappy job basically learning lifes lessons the hard way. To make a long story short around 2008 a friend just wouldn't leave me alone always "hey man lets become poker dealers", i wish he knew how thankful i am that he never gave up on that idea for me not sure why he did this but i sure am thankful, mind you i had never stepped in a casino much less ever even knew how to spell any form of poker, eventually i googled "poker dealers" and saw there was some real money being made in this line of work as that was around the "dealer glory days in Florida", i immediately got super excited and within a week i was registered to a poker dealing school, it was around a 1 month course to get certified, 2weeks in i was helping the instructor as i was picking everything up really fast and actually was able to teach everybody in a way that they understood clearer through me lol i remember even making charts to help them understand the split pot games lol x2, bam got certified, helped the instructor remodel him and his wife's new sickkkk bathroom, nice guy, applied up and down Florida, never even got an audition apparently the boom was coming to an end right around my time and the demand was low for noobs like me as there was already people with experience and reputations to compete with.

When we would play the simulation games at the dealing school i pretty right away felt i really enjoyed the game but at that time it was never even close to a thought of trying to play for a living i was just like man i really like trying to beat people at this game and i was just a huge play chip buffoon bluffing my pants off every chance i got lol it was fun. I still remember like it was yesterday, always when i went to the casinos i would go straight to human resources, apply and leave, except that one day i said to myself hey i drove this far i might as well sit down on a table just to learn from the dealer and how they run their table, i sat down on a 1/2NL table with $100 and was the biggest nit on earth that day as i knew these weren't play chips and weren't really in play i just wanted to sit to observe the dealer in case i ever got my shot at dealing. It was about 2 hours into the session and my stack was around $140 really just noobishly going bet bet bet with my close to nut hands (sort of following the baluga theorem even though i had no idea what i was really doing) and just really slowing down almost just giving up based on scare cards+action, and then the AA 3 way pre flop AI came and i was covered by both!!!!!! one showed AQ the other didnt show, it held otherwise i am sure this story would not exist, i waited ONE more round and i am out dealer! wow the foolish texts i sent my friends after that were just hilarious when i look back at it "guys i figured it out i know what i am gonna do with my life!, wait get good hands and go all in babbby!". My vision was clear i shifted my energies that day from pursuing a career as a player rather than a dealer (LOL), i went on to basically loose the majority of my money in the following sessions before i eventually found FTP/PSTARS, that was when my life approach changed again , i was like awesome i can win on here and do not have to risk as much money so i stopped playing live completely and just dedicated to micro/low stakes tournies and some sngs but not a huge amount of sngs back then. I eventually found 2+2 and that was when i realized this is a game of work ethic its no get rich quick and easy bs and that is why my mantra is work hard for the results, i feel i have done well teaching myself everything that i can using all the free resources the internet has to offer, atm i am broke and i am still like just keep studying the game HARD, BRs fluctuate but skill is forever and its on me to analyze what i have done wrong and learn and grow from my mistakes, i wish my quality of life was better and i wish i was a more significant asset to my family but i am not miserable being broke as i am very optimistic for what the future holds and i love being a student of the game but i cannot let this just be a fun hobby i just cannot. It has been a long road and i am at the point where i am either confident or delusional that if i can team up with the right person or group of people that will not only help remove my BR pressures but will help me develope my game, and what i give you in return is the type of horse that makes the other horses feel like theyre not doing enough. I truly believe you only fail when you quit, and i am far from a failure. In a tldr fashion thats my somewhat summarized story, when it comes to talking poker i am a huge rambler i am sure i could keep going but to be honest i am not a huge liker of self promotion or talking about myself, but i understand the situation demands for me to adjust and for poker i have found a willingness within myself to adjust that in other areas of life i just dont have it.

Cliffs
-willing to relocate
-main game is sngs and mtts/ but looking to also grind live nlh and LO8
-atm my networth is $15 on bovada that i totally will be grinding until i find the right situation
-found poker through a friend trying to get me to become a poker dealer in 2008
-wasnt getting auditions for a dealing position, and one day while applying decided to play 1/2NL to observe dealer, while nitting it up for the session little more than quadrupled my initial buy in and thought i figured out life
-basically went broke soon after that
-around the time of all this i found FTP/STARS and committed to only playing online as i can brm way better, even though i wasnt calling it brm back then lol
-found 2+2 and found out poker is a game of work ethic if you want what i want out of poker, my game grew by leaps either directly through 2p2 or the references i have found to other strategy providers.
-eventually started doing decent on ftp that was my main site, BLACKFRIDAY happened
-busto again and not even a chance to play but kept studying
-found lock poker and did the best ive done in poker,had a little over 7k in profits
-lock died but i was able to get all my winnings off
-busted my 7k lock roll trying to play live mtts
-broke again
-bounced around from USA accepting site to site trying to do what i can with what i have
-found bovada in the beginning of this year and been trying to find my way ever since
-in between lock and bovada ive had some live runs beginning with a stake from a friend into $100-$200 live mtt, some were tracked by Hendon Mob some were just untracked nightlies and have ran it up to 2-3k before burning off twice
-currently dont have a car so car rental companies always kept tooo much of my roll while i foolishly played mtts severly under rolled, if i would have stuck to LLSNL i would have had a much more relaxed ROR but i had to go through that so i can learn from it
-i have committed to finding the lowest variance games where i feel i can have an edge and that has been turbo SNGs on Bovada, with the hopes of eventually playing live cash or possibly live mtts
-also am reading 2 books atm/railing/playing play chip/studying poker stars hand histories when i rail a table of Limit Omaha hi/lo, to also play that in a live setting and hopefully when online poker makes its grand comeback, i have some really high hopes for that game as i feel i can really punish weak players in that game

I am very much willing to relocate, and have always considered myself as a friendly easy to get along with person, even though the last 4 years of my life i really have not gone out much just stay home and work on or watch poker and when i feel i need a break i enjoy watching documentaries or watching cnn for current events going on around the world. I very much look forward to building some strong relationships through this journey.

-My results-
2 things to clarify, i had 2 s/n of ftp due to my fishy roommate getting my original s/n banned because his account went negative during there reload issues and they eventually closed his account and mine too because i had made alot of transfers to him so they said something like the 2 accounts were closely tied which i understand they probably though i was multi accounting i guess, but it was more like trading ftp money for food money or what ever nececities i had atm.
Also it seems i cant find my lock results, which i feel is quit unfortunate because i did very well on that site, however if you cant prove it it didnt happen and i understand why people feel like that.
BUT if you care, when i first made my usual $150-200 deposit i ran it up to around 4k cashed out most of it to play live cash, lost 1k playing live cash and at the time i had spent a ton of time sutdying/playing online mtts in which the dynamics are much different than llsnl but there i go again making great decisions, about a week or 2 after that i won a free seat in a free roll to the lock 100kgte and took either 6th or 7th for 4500, i now had a decent roll mixed with my remaining 3k, and said cash smash ive built myself for tournies from tournies lets grind some live mtts! and took an express trip to bustoville as not having a car forced me to rent cars for all my tourney trips, so half of the roll was left at the casinos and the other half slowly went to the car rental companies back then i was a car rental fish in a major way. I thought my most likely small edge at the time was enough to over come the variance, the much bigger buy ins, and the car rental+ fees and costs.

Original FTP-Cjbanks1 http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...5211E.html?t=2
Second FTP-Take420 http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...865BE.html?t=2
Pokerstars-Cjbanks1-http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...62877.html?t=2
Merge-Take420-http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...CEF9B.html?t=3
-Merge-024ekat http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...1BEE2.html?t=3
My Hendon Mob-http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=240074
and it seems i cant find my lock results, as on pocketfives it says my largest cash is $1,174 but i won a seat into locks 100k gte when they had the free 50 seat giveaway and got 6th or 7th for $4500.

please do not hesitate to ask any questions!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...-life-1186218/

That is a link to a thread i started 2 years ago that kind of shows my intensity/dedication for improving, but you can see that i dropped out of the convo at the end because i was no longer interested in pursuing live 1/2 once my roll hit 7500 and was interested in mtts instead, however if i had followed some of the advice in that thread who knows

also if you read this you will see when i made my initial lock money i had a job but i assure you the money i made at work was lolable litterally working part time at toys r us for like 7.75 just was not worth it. I forgot to mention in my original post, i willing and able to grind high volume full time.

well the grind doesnt end i should have done better at updating this mess of words, just about a month after this thread, i cashed for $150 in a $5 tourny on bovada and for some reason decided to cash out my $165 from there and take a shot at live 1/2 with my networth lol, i was very lucky looking back now, ill post my results here and mods lets lock this up after this. I tracked all my results when i started this journey through the android session logger app,
Session count:98
profit: 3712
hourly profit:15.71
standard dev: 132.05/h
longest session: 7h50m
best session:495
winning sessions:60
total of 236.2 hours
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Im currently on a brutal downswing which has affected my numbers, i hit my highest point right around 190hrs of $4751, however things arent easy as im using my bankroll to live off so the gap in my winnings and my actual cash on hand is very wide
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The biggest lesson ive learned through all this journey as im sitting here in my living room wondering where i went wrong as i have nothing close to what my graph says i have. BRM is the most overlooked thing in poker, seems simple and unnecessary to devote time to, wrong wrong wrong, no amount of theory or strategy is any good if i go broke or get super close to going broke. my goals for 2015 are to fix my issues that are preventing me from finding a good job and then to seek a good job that will supplement me until i hit a safe number which is around 10k maybe even more, ive learned alot about my self and what it means to never give up, i always thought if i took time away from poker to build a roll through other means i was giving up on poker and i couldnt afford to take my mind off improving, i was quite wrong, ive delayed my potential success for way too long by trying to build it up from zero thinking i had no other option, while things might be tough they are definitely not impossible, I will rise. thank you fo reverything 2+2,

gl bro