For those who have too much time, I will try to make this a interesting read for you.

Poker has been in my life for almost 10 years, before then, I used to play this trading card game called YuGiOh, for those old school guys who remembers; It was basically a Headsup match with 2 premade decks that has a identified strategy behind the card selection. I used to play it just with a few friends and my cousin whom I lived with back then. We would have played hours and hours on end just because we love finding “Leaks” of the other deck and adjust play, etc. My friend used to mess around and using cards that are really situational and suboptimal in his selection, and his reasoning is always “It’s just a game”, but back then, I always felt that if it’s not optimal, there is no reason to do it for the overall average of the deck function.

Moving on, me and my cousin continues to play everyday, investing and fine tuning our deck(Lets be honest, we were 15yo kids just buying shiny cards haha) and and eventually, through chances, we met someone on the trading website who recommend us to go to this local tournament around the Midland. So one Sunday, we decided to check it out and played what back-then was consider a decent size tournament. And to our suprised, we blazed through the tournament without any hiccups. I remember I won the entire tournament without losing a single round. Winning a box of card and a mini trophy, it was one of the best day of my life then. (Remember we used to have to save up just to buy a few packs. So it was big to me.)
Over the years, we start to come up with different theory of evaluating the game state (Card advantage/Field advantage, etc), it was the first time that I realised that a card game can have huge strategy component to it than just “Heart of the ****ing Card” (Thanks Yugi)

Fasting forward a few years, I have reached the bottleneck of the game, players started to get better, meaning our edge gets smaller. The cost of traveling to bigger tournament for a game that doesn’t have cash prize also starts to show and it just didn’t make financial sense to me for such a game. Since the bigger prizepool tournament would be held around Europe or even the US, and what you might win would be an Exclusive card + some console/laptop. First place basically pays about 7x or 8x of your initial cost. As we know today, if that’s the pay out for the tournament, you would be dumb to play in a 100+ runners tourney.

One day, my friend asked if we wanted to play holdem, without chips at the time, we just used our deck as chip count and just played a £5 SNG, and as you would have guessed, I obviously won it (I am definitely not bragging about this because I still go to him and say why did you introduce me to this stupid game and have things turn out as it did). We start to play more and more in our Sunday get-together and I gradually moved away from Home game and onto the casino tourney.

Now you might have thought “Okay, so this kid start crushing local tournament and build a roll to sail onto the sunset”, NOPE, I do absolutely terrible at them. And what frustrate me the most is the lack of understanding Why. This went on for about 2 years and I was just one of those punters who go every Friday/saturday for a poker night out with the lads.

While all these were going on, Uni fell through and I had to start thinking about options, I eventually found a job for Christmas temps as a Sales assistant. One night, through pure chance, I ran into my friend Ginge who used to play YGO with me back in the days and started talking, He had always been one of the threats back then in tournaments, we had fun catching up. But this guy went on to become a very important figure for my poker journey.

The year was 2011, Ginge would come to my flat couple hours before a local tournament and coach me, I remember we used to set out a table of 8 players and he would ask me what I would do if I had this or that, etc. It sounds silly now, but It was a big step for me. And he recommended Daniel Negreanu’s Power Holdem to me. Through fate, I got Bells’ Palsy in Feb 2012 and I had to go back home for 6months for Acupuncture. During that time, my friend invited me to go to their home game and play cash for fun, it was $5/$10 MOP deep stack, which is about the equivalent to 40p/80p, I was given $3k by my uncle as a gift, and I thought, you know what, lets see what I could do with this. We would play twice or more a week, armed with the newly attained knowledge, I felt invincible. This time, it worked out, the sense of edge came back just like back in the days of YGO, the red line must have been insane because they were just so tight, and I remember that I just keep on barreling and they would just fold, or raise with the nuts. So for about 3 months, I kept playing with them and just use the money to supplement my expense. But they stopped inviting me all of a sudden and there was that goldmine.

It didn’t matter though because it has opened my eyes to what’s important. Understand more than your opponent and you will have an edge. While the idea of doing this for a living haven’t entered my mind, I am pretty sure today that it has set its place in my head.

After Bells Palsy, I went home and when I was deciding what job to go for, I was recommended to O2 for my Bilingual ability and work as a Sales Adviser, meanwhile, I would play local tournament for multiple times a week, my girlfriend was really supportive to this notion, and while the ROI over the year isn’t crushing standard, I did pretty well.

Jan2013, the casino did their first £100 tourney, featuring a £10k guarantee and having a okay roll, I decided to have a go (Average buy in was £30 for the weekly ones, so this is quite “big” for me)
I remember crippled after a flip, I was down to 0.7bb after ante in the final 15, and One guy decided bluff off the best hand and Let me quadruple up, and I went on a mini heater and went to the final table as the Chip leader. (KK twice for a full double makes this game seem so easy at times.)

There was a familiar face on that final table. Ginge!! He was there the whole time cheering me on while I was just grinding my 5bb, and we went on to 3 handed, where we just bust the last guy and agreed to chop (We actually said it at the beginning of the tournament as a joke.), so no matter how much I don’t see this guy, he always has a special place, in the sense that He kept me going in that tournament. I was ready to give up as it was.

2013 had me cashing another online tourney, that was purely a punt if I think about it. I was just watching the WSOP coverage, and thought I really want to play too. So with the best bankroll management I know, I flicked in the $55 6max and went on to taking 2nd. This was important because of what I am going to tell you next.

The cash was for $770 if I remember right. And my friend asked me if I want to check out some cash game that he plays regularly, he said it was very soft, so I went and just use that £600 as a shot-take. My god, Watching my friend winning every pot and I was there bleeding away started to tilt me and obviously, I did off the entire lot and this was the first time I did the “Walk of shame” home.

I wish the story ends here sometimes, just so I could avoid all those heartache years after. But being as competitive as I am, instead, I dived right back into the books and determine to get better. Ginge was there to help as well. He was at the period where he was focusing loads online and trying to climb, so I would rail at times and just try to get better. I wouldn’t be here if things didn’t’ work out exactly the way it did, a few of my new friends asked me to go play this home game, there I met with a few new grinders who were clearly better than me, but because of the railing and coaching and reading, I was confident enough to play with these guys. And I made a Q high call vs a triple barrel and Win. (In a nutshell, it was probably the worst call coz I only beat like 3 combos lol) This gave me the false confidence to ask the guy for staking, and while we don’t agree or speak much anymore, I still appreciate what he once did for me.

I went onto playing cash part time for a few months, bought a new flat on mortgage (Nothing to do with poker, that was on my job lol), and just while things went on jolly, shortly before xmas, my dad passed away.

This was the Biggest turning point of my life, it threw everything I know of this world into chaos. Never once did I think life can be so fragile. I had been toying with the idea of turning full time grinder, but never had the courage to take the leap of faith, but because I had to be home for 4 months, O2 simply can’t keep me on the payroll for this long and had to let me go. After this incident, I was ready to take the dive.

So there, that’s how I got to be a full time grinder, I realised it’s quite long and I don’t write a lot, this might seem very long winded and boring, for that I apologies. I will keep how it went after I turned full time, How I literally became the laziest player for 2016 for another time. If you are interested, definitely let me know.