this is better than the last few wells

pics of hot druggy?

Not going to happen. #1 dont have any handy. #2 dont want to slander anymore than calling her a druggie. Just trust me she was hot. Massive 38DD jugs, size zero waist, pretty face, some sick piercings and too much trouble for you to handle.

Are you reading this at all?

No, From the US. Been to Holland once, have a great dutch friend, I like bananas a lot.

not gonna lie i kinda hated on this at first but this story somewhat intrigues me, moar

nice story dan.

i remember railing that ftops event when i was first getting into poker, so exciting at the time. both u and the guru played so sick that tourney . those were the days. i miss full tilt

lookin forward to the rest of the story

Trying to figure out the best way to present the rest of the story because this is the really painful and personal part and I'm not really sure how much I feel comfortable disclosing at this point. This thread is not meant as a selfpityment but rather a cautionary tale. I honestly don't expect pity from anyone, I have made my own decisions and there have been great times and really low points, but I take responsibility, and I am actually moving towards being the happy, self-fullfilled person that I always have always wanted to be.

In my experience no one's life is perfect. It's how we deal with adversity and success that largely defines who we are. I don't blame my pops or friends for their influence on my life, ultimately I decided what I wanted to do with myself and I alone bear the responsibility.

In an effort to share some of the lessons that I have learned from poker before moving on to part 4 of my story here is a little list.

Poker is a mirror of the serious game that is life

1) money doesn't buy happiness - always thought this was a joke when people would say it. When I have been broke I often though "If I just had X more dollars I would be happy", but some of my lowest moments came when I had the largest balance in my acct. Happiness is largely a function of how much fulfillment you are getting out of your actions. Without a positive sense of self-worth and accomplishment no amount of money will truly make you happy. Watch a documentary about Tibet and you will see smiles on the faces of people everywhere you look in this dilapidated, technologically inferior, third world country atop the world. I'm not certain but I believe they are happy because they have a sense of purpose and fulfillment in their daily lives, their commitment to their families and daily work is all that they seek in life, and they are rewarded with the simplest sustenance and that is enough. Isolated from the advertisements which infer that we need product X to be better people, ignorance may truly be the gateway to bliss.

2) The people that truly care for you will be there when it matters. When you are flush with cash new friends seem to pop up around every corner. Be wary of strangers bearing gifts for the price will often be too great in the end. I wish that we lived in a world where people really wanted to help each other out of the kindness of their hearts, but I have yet to see such a place. The poker table is definitely not this place, even if you are a reg at a card room, you need to make a clear distinction between your poker friends and your real ones. I have respect for my poker peers, but trust on a personal level is not really there. Maybe its just me but I never really connected with many other real players because I felt like this would make me weak in playing against them. At the same time I don't like to play for real stakes against my real friends because deep down I don't want to take their money and this directly conflicts with the main goal of poker.

3) intelligence doesn't necessarily correlate with rationality - I tell my friends that I am the stoopidist smart person that you will ever meet. I too often allow my emotions to cloud my judgement on and off the poker table. If you have a big decision to make try to remove all emotions and objectively evaluate your options. This is easier said than done, especially at the poker table, but doing so can save you money, stress and sanity.

4) If you want to win big you are going to have to play big and sometimes you must gamble. The biggest ideas in the world were at one point or another uncertain risks. At one point in the 1970s the CEO of IBM said there were no more than 10 people in the world who would buy a personal computer. But the cautious pessimism of big brother was not an option for Jobs and Wozniak at the upstart Apple Computers. Working out of Job's parent's garage they saw the future and were not willing to be passive participants. Today I think most would rather own Apple, with its ever expanding market presence, versus the once dominant IBM, who today is little more than a service provider.

5) Trust your gut - If it doesn't feel right, fold. Sometimes you just have to trust your gut and fold a low boat on the river or AK pre. Even though most of the time this is a bad move, the times that you really feel like the decision is bad you need to listen to that inner voice and just lay it down. Don't let your ego get in the way of making the right play in cards or life.

came in here to hate on a nobody starting a well, now i just want moar

Nice read man, looking forward to the next installments.

Thank you for opening yourself up and sharing all this with us. Moar plz!

aaaaaaaa - I respect your game big time and we have probably played together more than you realize. In response to the first real question, pretty open ended and all, but still a decent question, here are a few poker specific strategies for going deep in MTTs.

I love the psychology aspect of poker and feel that this human element is really what elevates the game above all others. I have a BA in Psych so speaking from a (somewhat?) well informed position on the psychology of the game is the focus of this post.

1) Mindset is everything - Once you have a basic understanding of poker the game becomes much more about controlling your mental state. You have to play any tournament to win. Most of the time you will not win, you must accept this, but it still must be your goal and you must believe it can and will happen if you have any chance at succeeding. In order to give yourself the best chance at winning you must have the mindset that you are going to play your best, be prepared to deal with adversity (bad beats) and overcome obstacles on your path to winning.

Some say that winning a poker tournament is like running a marathon, it's not. Winning a poker tournament is like running a marathon with land mines littered along the path and the other runners throwing stones at you the entire way. (Plus most of your opponents look more like jabba the hutt than Hussein Bolt.) In sprite of all these obstacles you must maintain focus on your ultimate goal: winning; while also looking out for landmines and dodging rocks. Every now and then you are gonna catch a rock to the dome piece in the form of a bad beat, a cooler or a misplay. You must be able to shrug off short term setbacks and say, "alright, I took a hit, but I'm still in it and I learned x,y and z, so I will be better prepared in the future."

2) Pay close attention and use what you learn - You should be taking detailed mental and physical (if possible) notes on as many players as possible. Online I used to use a color coding scale to indicate playing style and also take notes on bet sizing, timing tells, and player responses to situational factors. Live there is a ton more info to take in and it can be even more valuable to be a keen observer.

Try to be as objective as possible in your observations. In Super System Dolly talks about the best players paying attention to the hands that they are not in as much or more than the hands that they are involved in. How many times are you watching a hand and say I would never call there? Or give me your cards and I will make the call for you, the villain is obviously bluffing. It is much easier to see tells, patterns and get an objective opinion of hand strength when you are not involved in the hand (premptive troll response - duh - we've all read super system when we were in diapers). What matters most is not the collection of this information but how you use it.

You must actively tell yourself: I just witnessed the villain do X, I believe or know that this indicates Y, therefore next time he does X and I am in the hand I will respond with Z. Try to anticipate your opponents moves and have a game plan lined up for your response given as many possible scenarios as you are able. If you don't have a game plan with how you are going to use info to beat your opponents then you are just wasting time and you might as well start shoving ATC and trying to put your opponents on life tilt cuz this is way more fun and less work than playing great poker.

3) Never Give Up - There is a reason why everyone who is short stacked says " A chip and a chair" because it is possible. As long as you are alive in a tourney you have a chance at winning, or at least cashing, moving up, etc. Unlikely but possible. What is more likely is that if you start believing that you are going to loose then you are really going to loose. It is much easier to get caught up in a self-hating, doom and gloom outlook than to maintain a positive, upbeat attitude. But it is much more profitable to do the latter. Try to have fun with the game and laugh off a bad beat if you can. Poker is after all just a game. Right?

4) Talk to your tablemates and neighbors between hands or read their stats and chatbox if u are online. This will give you a better idea of why they are playing, what their experience level is, and ultimately how you can exploit their weaknesses. In live MTTs I try to be as friendly as possible with my neighbors, especially those to my immediate left and right. They are the ones you are most likely to be involved in hands with and if you can get them thinking, hey this guy is ok. They might fold a couple of extra times to your light shove in a crucial spot, or they might just give you their blinds almost every time. Managing your image at the table is a potential gold mine.

Nice post

Took 1st in mini-ftops Razz earlier this year
Won the big double
Got highest average finish bonus in the daily double
Owns Halfrek, Jeff Madsen and Lynette Chan at NLH 9-max SNGs
top 40 finish (3k plus field) in $300k guarantee at the LAPC two years ago
Final Table at Southern Poker Championship prelim event at the Beau Rivage three years ago
(my live results suck so far)
Tittays and cheeseburgers
Donks off tourney wins in cash games
I think there are more but I can't remember

great read man cheers

These posts are incredibly tilting to read, I want the last 15 mins of my life back.

a m8 of mine said you were the most conceited kid ever. Why is this?

Who is Hussein Bolt?

Does everyone who binks an MFTOPS Razz tournament or has a few top 40 finishes in large fields deserve a well?

this + a gazillion

Who cares? He's got an interesting story imo. Quit trolling.

Damnhomie0 who dyzalot and made you king suckout? Gomukyaself.

YES. THEY DO.

Still not really sure how to present the next chapter of the story, thinking about the details make me very upset and I want to break things. Frak u whale and a dolphin!

Cliffs: I keep taking bigger and bigger shots, blow over 100k in less than a year, get close to some decent live cashes but constantly fall short, try to salvage relationship but end up realizing that my wife was just using me and let her take advantage of me for way to long, I had a mental breakdown and considered ending it all on several occasions. In the process I became a very humble person, aware of what a tremendous negative force greed and the love of money can be. I moved across the country to Cali with my last $2k and lived in an old friend's garage for a while, refocused on poker and life, read more, studied more, took everything a lot more seriously and started to get better at the game, still had issues with tilt control and bankroll management, got divorced, started to find my groove in live cash and mid-high stakes SNGs, binked miniFTOPS RAZZ, never got cash out of FTP (or my damn Jersey-LOLZ!), took another shot at WSOP this year with every cent I had and then some, no guts, no glory, no cheeseburgers.

I love this game so much and really feel that I am a decent player and could still be one of the best players in the world one day. I have played with the best of the best and held my own, but this game is just a game and now that I am not grinding online everyday I've had more time to reflect and get my **** together. I've lost like 20lbs. and feel like a more complete and happy person, doing good work on improving education practices at my day job, but every time I have more than a couple of hundo to my name I hear the call, get the fever and head off to gamble-gamble. Having won (and lost) so much and played at such high levels it is really difficult to be satisfied at playing 1/2 or 2/3, loosing still feels terrible but winning even a grand or so doesn't have the same level of satisfaction that I used to get from taking down a $20 home game.

I've been talking to a counselor to try and get my compulsive behavior and addiction under control, but its really tough to think of poker and gambling in general as a bad thing when at times it has provided the highlights of my life. Talking to someone who is not judgmental can really help if you are stressed out.

I hope you all have great luck in cards and life, and know how to deal with the swongs better than I do.

when exactly did u crush 9 handed sngs ?

the ego is strong in this one

im interested. go on..

somehow one of best wells ive read on here.

not sure the msgnitude of that complement but good luck homes.