Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir Huntington
Ya I was in the same boat reading and listening to those stories. It's funny looking back at how much of that "pro" thing was just an illusion.
sadly true for all but a few
I actually tried to go pro back in 1998 before the boom. I got obsessed with poker (at the time, all they offered was limit) so I bought a van and traveled across the country fishing, camping and playing poker wherever I could find a game. I won everywhere until I got to Vegas and after about 5 weeks of living like a vampire (going to bed at 5-6 am & waking up at 3 pm) and getting a bad hacking cough from all the smoke and also losing at the table, I threw in the towel, tucked my tail and left.
It was fun as a hobby but as a job, it was miserable (for me).
Funny thing is Negreanu, Karina Jett, et al, were in all the games I was playing which were at the Mirage since it was the epicenter of poker at the time.
I'll never forget playing in some miserable limit game at Sams Town trying to chase a bad beat jackpot that was up to $55,000+. It was all old farts and me (around 30 at the time). The game was playing tight as hell, pots were small and it was boring until some dude comes waltzing in loudly talking on his cell phone. IIRC, it looked something like this:
He sits down at my table right in front of me and proceeds to raise every pot and dominate the table all while obnoxiously talking on his cell phone. He ran over the table and won like $400 in no time at all (which may not sound like much but the game was 1/2 or 2/4 and there was little to no action prior to his arrival). I was completely confused & bewildered yet in awe of how he seemed to be printing money with no effort at all. And then he suddenly packed up and left after what seemed like only an hour.
I left shortly thereafter thinking WTF just happened and how the hell can I learn to play like that?
A few years later, the poker boom had started and I'm watching TV and lo and behold, there's that guy with the cell phone on TV talking just as loud & obnoxiously as I remembered him from the game at Sams town.
Turned out to be Mike Matusow