After graduating from University this year I'm finally ready to take the plunge into being a profession poker player. Hi, my name is Michael and I'm a 24 year old kid from Vancouver Canada. Poker has been my life for quite some time now and if you had asked me even a year ago if I was planning on playing full time, my answer would have been no. But hey, things change. I love playing the game. I love improving. And I love now that I get to play what many just consider a hobby as my profession for the foreseeable future.
(For those who want a short poker bio, continue reading. For those who just want graphs and goals, just skim to the bottom)
So how did this journey start? Like almost everyone, I started hearing about poker in the Moneymaker era. Keep in mind, I was 13 at the time. But seeing people win huge amounts of money by playing a card game was fascinating to me. The first time I saw poker on TV was in 2003 when Gus Hansen won a WPT. Then a year later I saw Barry Greenstein win a WPT. At this point I thought this was just an annual thing that only the select few people participated in. Like darts or pool. Something that everyone would only be a spectator for. But then in 2005 I saw that poker was way bigger than that. Poker programs were everywhere, everyone was playing, and I was addicted. Instead of being the teenager that was watching American Idol or whatever crap I was supposed to be watching, I was watching men sit in chairs trying to figure out what the twitch in someone's neck meant. Whether it was Joe Hachem winning the Main Event or 6 randoms playing a sit-in-go, I wasn't missing any poker programs. And I told myself that as soon as I was old enough to play, I was going to start playing.
Soon I was playing with my family. I probably drove them nuts with how much I wanted to play. Any time there was a family get together I'd always ask if everyone wanted to play poker, and I rarely got turned down. I was also playing play money online. Now, I wasn't playing play money on a poker site like Stars, but on an MMORPG called Puzzle Pirates. The cool thing was that eventually when I got a hold of a ton of play money, I found guys that would buy my play money for real money. I made about $5k doing this in my senior year of high school, and when I turned 18 I put $500 on Absolute Poker and I started grinding 25NL 6max. I had to quickly jump down to 10NL but within 6 months I climbed up to 200NL and stayed there for the next few years. I took some long shots at 400NL that didn't work out too well as you can see from my results (this is 2009-2011).
Black Friday hit at about the bottom of that $20K downswing, which wasn't the most terrible thing since everyone on UB/AP got screwed. The silver lining for me was that prior to AP actually getting shut down, they were still processing cash outs with a max of $250. Fortunately I learned that they were giving priority to those who were the most active on the site. And for some reason, sitting out on an empty table counted as activity. Every day I'd have my laptop up with 12 empty tables and me sitting out, which gave me probably more cash outs than almost anyone else on the site. I had $6K on there and I managed to get most of it out before it went under, I don't remember how much I lost exactly.
Anyway, during all of this, I still needed a site to play on. So which site did I turn to? Full Tilt of course! I had a friend transfer $10K to me, and well, you can guess how that turned out a few months later. I did eventually get my money back but I think it's clear that my site selection wasn't the best. So despite thinking it was the toughest site to play on, I made the transition over to stars.
At the beginning of 2012, I was still a break-even 200NL reg. I'm not quite sure what snapped in me but all I knew was that playing the same taggy style that I had for the past 3 years was not going to cut it anymore. And realistically, I hadn't been doing much to really improve my play. So one day I just decided that I was going to try and figure out new ways to play. I remember one day where I just told myself to play as many hands preflop as I possibly could and I went from 21/16 to 33/21. This style didn't completely stick but it did allow me to experiment with new stuff that in theory didn't hold up but in practise worked super well. I had also hired a coach, Tim, whom I had battled with on AP for quite a while and had a lot of respect for. During our last session, I asked him about some exploitative ideas I had been testing out and what he his thoughts were. He was impressed enough that we continued to stay in touch and started doing regular hand history and video review sessions. To give you an idea of how much these reviews improved my game, we started reviewing at about the point where this graph starts going up (this is 2012-2013)
I was still primarily playing 200NL 6max, but in 2014 I started playing primarily on 888 and started mixing in more 400NL and some 600NL. Results for 2014:
While happy with my results, my game was getting to a point where I felt like I was starting to plateau. I think it was because Tim and I had done so much work with each other, and our styles had become so similar that it was tough for either of us to come up with new ideas. So we both decided to get coaching from Nate, a pokerstars reg who was playing 500 zoom and up to 10/20 regular tables. His coaching honestly lit a fire inside of me that I didn't know I had. Not only did I improve a ton but he opened my eyes to a lot of concepts I could be working on that I know are going to take a ton of time to get a grasp of. But more than that, I was enjoying the work. Now I'm enjoying the game more than I ever have. And it's what has given me the drive and passion to play full-time. Nate was also a great life coach and gave me some great tips on how to create a structured poker life to not only to continue winning but also how to stay happy during the grind. I graduated university in April, went on Vacation in June, and now here I am: A full time poker pro ready to crush midstakes and beyond.
Here are my results for 2015 so far playing 400NL+ (final semester of university really crippled my volume but I can't complain about my results):
Poker goals for 2015:
-Win $100K
-Regularly review hands and videos with friends
-Constantly work on my game and never stop improving
-Start coaching
-Start playing tournaments (both live and online)
Personal Goals:
-Exercise Regularly. I'm way happier when on a regular basis I'm out running, hiking, playing sports, etc. When I don't exercise, I get lazy, and it bleeds into all aspects of my life. And I don't like that.
-Be proactive. This is a bit of an odd goal but it's one that I've struggled with a lot in the past. Usually when I wanna do something, it's because someone else has taken the initiative and then I just kind of tag along for the ride. Whereas now I'm doing my best to seek out more things that I enjoy doing whether it's outdoor activities, travelling, reading books, playing games, etc. The most important aspect is that I'm keeping my life fun and interesting to myself.
-Stay happy. I think that speaks for itself.
Last edited by Stupidhead; 07-05-2015 at 06:27 PM.