It's been a while since i registered on 2+2 and I made a lot of posts in this forum, learned a lot and hope that i teached something usefull in the past, here and on the cash strat, even if i'm sure i took more than i gave.
That said, I think that noone here really knows me well or what i do / play or my story except the few i had the pleasure to meet or talk on aim/msn, especially Braminc, Noodleman, Rodolphe and Siq, probably cause i don't post very often in the **** thread or maybe cause sometimes i just disappear so, here it is.
Usually people speak only about their poker story, i'll do that too but i think that poker is strictly connected with my life story and i can't just skip the first part if i want to write a decent thread, and i think one of the best read of poker i had in the last months was Rekrul's lifestory on his blog. For people who doesn't care and want to read only about poker, just skip the first part.


PART 1:

MY LIFE:

Let's skip the first 14 years of my life cause i dont' think nothing really relevant happened, i was just a normal child. In school teachers always said to me and my parents I was very good but i didn't apply (i really think they say that to 90% of the students but i really hated that everytime i heard it). BTW I really didn't care and i thought studying too much was a waste of time and i accepted the average/good results w/o even think about doing more.

High school totally changed my life (in italy it's 5 years from 14 to 18 if you pass every year).
The first year in high school I was in class with my best friends, we were a group of 4 friends that knew each other since we were 6 years old plus other guys i did the medium school with. We started very soon to hang out with older people from the school and we started to smoke weed everyday and drink everynight.
Me and my best friends were always wasted but it was funny and we didn't care at all. We also met some guys who were painting walls with spray and we started as well, legally. They were good and we had a deal with the city, they gave us some walls we could paint on cause they were already painted.
This went on for 1 year before i started to have some problems. I got busted by cops while i was smoking (i was 15) with friends, then a few months later i also got busted painting a train with 2 guys, 1 of us managed to escape, the other one got kicked hard and i got "lucky" cause they only saw him trying to escape and they started hitting him very hard on the ground while i was looking. That was like 10 vs 2, i couldn't do anything. They brought us to the police station and my parents came there to get me, my mother was crying when she saw me and my friend. They didn't say a word while we were in car and i thought "that's gonna be bad when we're home".
When we entered, they still didn't say anything and that was worse than everything i could imagine.
We had to pay 2k each for what we did and i worked 2 months in summer to get half the money i needed, my parents gave me the others.
After this, i stopped painting knowing that if i got bust again my life with my parents would be over and tbh that was one of the worst experience in my life, we were just 3 stupid children and looking at my friend get kicked on the ground while i wasn't able to do anything to help him and my parents so disappointed with me was really bad.

Without painting my life slowly started to deteriorate cause we just smoked everyday all day, and didn't do anything else.
I was ALWAYS high and my gilrfriend at that time was like me. I returned home just to sleep and eat, and my relationship with my parents, especially my father, was so bad i don't want to describe it.
I don't know how i passed the 2nd year of school but i did it, and when i was 16 i realized my life was just not i wanted it to be.
For 1 year this was my avg day: Wake up, go to school, smoke, go home, eat, go out, smoke, go home, eat, go out, drink and smoke, go home.
I know this sounds weird but i really wake up one day and decided to quit weed, going from 1000000000 to 0.
At first it was really hard mainly because all my friends were always smoking, they were always high and they were laughing at everything. I looked at them and i thought "wow, was I like that? i can't stand this anymore".
I realized i wasn't able to hang out with them anymore and when i finally quit smoking my life went back to decent, my results in school dramatically went higher, my relationship with my parents was good again, finally.
I started skateboarding every day in the afternoon and hang out with friends at night, drinking and having a lot of fun.
I started playing Starcraft at night before school, i had avg sleeping of 6 hours but it wasn't a problem at that time (now i can't really sleep less than 8 hours). I'm sure Starcraft really changed my life, i met a ton of great guys at live tourneys and on the internet and i started to use the pc everytime i was at home.
One day i finished the school, without even notice it. I was in the "real world" now and i had to decide what to do with my life, who i wanted to be.
I never seriously considered that and i had 2 months to decide if i wanted to go to university or start working. I had a scientific liceum graduation and i knew i wasn't going to find a decent job so i started university, "internet science".
Very soon i realized i hated every lessons i had, i also started to play world of warcraft (big mistake), and i had 0 will to keep studying math and economy and programming so i quit after a few months and took 6 months break, were i basically played WOW all day and all night.
I decided to start philosophy just cause i liked it very much even if i knew i was going to have problems finding a good job with that.
The truth is I wasn't doing good at university, never really met interesting people, i wasn't enjoying at all, and btw all i was thinking was WOW and playing all day with my online buddies to get some lol items.
I know this sound redic but one day i got a whisp in game and this guy i never heard of asked me if i wanted to sell my character. I replied "yeah, gimme 500 eur, lol".
I was kidding and i didn't knew anyone would pay that much for a character that wasn't even that good yet. He snap accepted, i sold my character and enjoyed the money.
I was always "broke" when i was younger, i mean, my parents just gave me money to "survive" and i never worked so i just had the money to buy cigarettes and a few drinks when we went out, so 500 eur was a big amount of money for me at that time. I started again playing WOW with a new character, and sold it again after a few months,at the same amount of money, but this time cause i really got bored of the game.
I started to go out again more with my friends, WOW is a stupid game and if you want a good character you have to grind EVERYDAY and that was just insane.
I was again going to university everyday and i was doing pretty good with exams and everything. I also started to work part time, mainly at a call center where i earned something like 5 or 6 eur / hour. I spent a good amount of money to buy all the stuffs i needed for snowboarding wich is the thing i like to do the most.
Finally, here comes the poker

PART 2:

POKER STORY:

It's summer 2007, i'm on my 2nd year of university and my life is pretty good at that time.
One day a old friend called me and asked me if i wanted to play a 5 eur sng at his house, i said "i don't even know what you're talking about, sng? what's that?".
He said that it was poker, the american one, texas holdem, very easy to learn and very fun. I Never heard of it but i accepted cause i wanted to have fun with my friends drinking a beer and playing cards.
Obv i was a total fish and i had 0 idea of what i was doing, but i liked it so much that i asked my friends more and more about the game, he said that he was playing online, on Full Tilt.
When i came home i went online and i saw people were playing poker, i read someone was actually living off of it. I snap bought 10 or 15 books and i deposited 100$ on Full tilt, My life roll at that time was 400$.
The first book i read was sklansky's, then i read harrington and Doyle Brunson' super system. When i read Super system i thought that I had to attack every streets and just be aggressive to win. I played like a maniac at microstakes cash and lost all the money within 1 week.
You had to see my face when i saw for the first time HSP. Brunson was playing and i thought "Ok i'm going to see this aggro genius and learn from him". He turned to be a huge nit and i realized that his book, wrote 20 years ago, wasn't useless for me but worse, it was making me losing money.
I thought "ok **** the books i'll read some stuffs online". I subscribed to the biggest italian forum at that time and started reading every thread, everything, and asking advice.
I started learning bankroll management, i thought i was getting good and i deposited again 50$ a few times, just to go broke every time very quickly.
I had my last 50$ and i realized i was a stupid fish, i knew i was wasting my time and money and i felt bad.
When i discovered THE i realized for the first time in my life that i found what i wanted to do, i thought that making money at pc was totally perfect for me cause i already spent a ton of hours in the past clicking my mouse for nothing, but i also saw that i was a bad player and i had 0 idea of what i was doing. The problem is that i didn't have an idea how to improve either.
In sept 07 i met an italian cash player of my city. I contacted him online asking if he was a friend of a guy i knew and and he said yes, they were playing magic together. We started talking, i explained to him my situation and he started to give me advice. He was beating nl1k on ipoker.com at that time and he said "You should deposit your last 50$ and play ONLY 2$ sngs".
I said ok no prob, i'll do that. I thought he was the god of poker and he was making a ton of money already, he was living like i wanted to live!
I had no idea of what ICM is or how i should play, at the start he only said me "basically play tight at the beginning and then start shoving when the blinds go high". I started playing and i was even after the first 300 sngs, i didn't know if i was playing good or not, then one day i asked him about one hand i played and he said "WTF I SAID TO PLAY TIGHT AT FIRST LEVELS". I called a raise oop with 33 with middle blinds and then spewed a raggish flop, i thought that was standard tbh.
He invited me at his house to let me see how to play. I didn't even think that was real, i went there and saw him playing and speaking about poker and it was awesome.
To make things clear, he's not really good at sngs, he's a cash player, and i doubt he would beat the 22+2 on FT, but i think that learning from a top cash game player is still an insane advantage at the time.
I'm still not sure why he helped me that much in the past, I started to go to his house almost every day and always playing with him like 4hours/day. He was coaching me for free for an insane amount of hours and even offering me dinners where we almost only spoke about poker.
My real life friends except a few were laughing about poker and they always said something like "lol what are you doing, you will lose everything and you will waste a ton of time!". I think that some of them really didn't want me to be happy and be a poker pro, prob cause they envy it? I dunno but after 1 year that i was playing i really had to have this conversation with one of them i didn't see for a long time:
"Hey what's up?"
"ahhhhhh i'm tired, i'm working 7 hours/day to get 800 eur/month, ****"
I just replied "hey you know, i did that amount today playing 2 hours, seems poker was not that bad afterall".

Going back to the story, I started to study (in a bad way) on wizard and started beating the micro sngs with 7% roi, playing ~700 games in september.
I was a "shove atc from the small blind no matter what" regular, i wasn't adjusting to other people, i had redic shove ranges from other positions, even BTN, but the people at the 2$ were so bad i still did good.
The only thing i was doing good was playing a lot of tables very soon and put a good volume. Starcraft probably helped me a ton with the multitabling cause it's a speed game where you have to take very important decisions in less than one second.
In october i thought i had to give everything to poker and i played 1.5k games with half 2$ and half 6$ played, with 8% roi overall.
I started thinking i was going to be a poker pro and i was going to make atleast the money i needed for living.
November 07 was an incredible month. I tried the 11$, had 3% roi wich i thought was good since i had just started, and at the end of the month i got 2nd in the ironman freroll, doubling my roll.
That night i was playing online with friends in a LAN and when i got 2nd i was like totally lifetilted by happiness even if i think i whined for 2 hours cause i lost Ax vs J9o hu.
Overall i played 2140 sngs with 5% roi and just moved up very fast at the 22$, almost skipping the 11$ cause i had 200 buyins for the 22$s after the iron man shot.
I also decided to quit university to play full time poker, I went to my parents and said "mom, dad, i'm leaving university to play poker. Please you know me enough to understand i'm not addicted to the game and i really think i can do good with this and have a happy life with a ton of $".
I thought that it was going to be pretty hard, even because my mom doesn't think $ are important but i'm lucky and they were great with me and my decision. She said "i just want you to be happy, try it", my father smiled and said "i already knew something was happening, you weren't going to university anymore since 1 months but i didn't want to speak with you yet about this. Let's try for 6 months and we will reevaluate after that".

I was totally happy with this, i can't even debscribe how much i'm glad my parents accepted this w/o going crazy or telling me "you're a ****ing ******ed, go back to school and we won't ever speak again about this".

Here it comes, december 07. One of the worst month of my life and the discover of 2+2.
I had 4k roll at the start of december, i was full of confidence and i felt i was going to crush the games and already thought i was going to have a rich and happy life.
I didn't feel like a genius or anything but i thought i was really good and that i wasn't going to improve that much cause i already learned a ton and sngs are solved etc.
Reality was i wasn't even close to good, i was using wizard in a bad way, i was playing too much w/o studying but i guess maybe it's normal cause i was doing very good and in 3 months i turned my 50$ into 4k.
The month started with a 82 BI downswing at the 22+2$ on FT, i lost half of my bankroll and for the first time i felt like **** and i seriously considered to quit. I don't remember exactly how i was during that month but i guess i was totally ****ed and all i was thinking was recovering the loss.
I recovered the downswing and closed the month playing 2.5k sngs with -500$ profit, but positive with rakeback and bonuses. I realized poker was not joy and happyness, i realized it was a stressfull job and that my happyness were based on how bad or good i ran.
I decided to go on and improve my game as much as i could, but i was still a bad player, i subscribed to 2+2 in january 2008 and started lurking and posting a little.
That month i won the sng madness freroll seat at the 11+1$ and i played with some "legendary" guys, atleast for me. I don't remember everyone and i could be wrong, i know for sure that HezBaller and Beanmo played that, then i'm almost sure about Moneyinthebank1, i think jonnycashout and mement_mori and 2 guys i can't really remember the name.
I was a 4% roi player with avg stake 15$ over some thousands sngs, and everytime i looked at beanmo and hezballer and the others guy's stats i felt really excited and i was so happy to play that sng with them. I also shared my AIM with a few of them, even Beanmo who were really a god to me at that time, he was the guy i wanted to be in the future, he was already crushing the 100+ but i actually never talked with him later.
In that sng i made a bad reship bvb and got lucky with Ax vs JJ while we were still 8 in middle blinds level (i think he was against mement_mori but again i could be wrong), won that and when we were five handed beanmo was on my small blind with 50 chips left. Guess who won that sng? I managed to finish third and got 1k, i was really happy about it and that was one of the day i played poker online i enjoyed the most.
I had my best month in January but i got tired of playing sngs cause i thought the game was boring and i wanted to try different stuffs. I played omaha8 hu (always really liked om8) for 2 weeks, did good but the traffic was so poor i had to quit.
I was still seeing my friend and "teacher" a lot these days and as i said he is an incredible skilled cash player, hu and 6max. I thought that cash was fun, atleast more than sngs and i tried. I played ~150k hands in 2 months at nl100, the first month i made 4k and in march 2008 i lost the same amount and had the first negative month of my life.
I was pissed off and i returned back to sngs in april where i had an insane month at the 33+3$, making 9k$ with 9% roi and got the platinum star on sharkscope. Then again i felt like i was freaking good and i was going to crush, i wanted to be the best player in the world etc etc.
I moved up very soon, and got totally owned at the 55$. The level wasn't that soft, with a good amount of regs at the same time and i wasn't really that good tbh. I whined so much in the *** thread that month i'm embaressed now to think about it, i found that thread looking for what i wrote and now i feel a total ******. I had a fought with Slim Pickens who prob just wanted to help me even if i never liked his manners, in my defense i can only say i was on tilt and the money i was making still had a huge impact on my life cause i was trying to build a good bankroll and live a decent life at the same time. I was prob losing 60 BI when i whined on 2+2, and in that thread i missed something i really needed to read carefully.

Braminc said and i answered I was a stupid apm-fan boy when i was playing starcraft and TFT so i'm used to the "speed" of decision etc."

I didn't know him at that time and i didn't even remembered he wrote that until today. Slim wrote They were so freaking right. I always played so many tables that i never tried to maximize my ev in every decision and every spot, i never tried to study the marginal spots that in the long run turns you from a normal/decent player into a great one. I was really playing 6 tables the same as 14, and this is BAD.
Unfortunately, i realized that only months later and i kept telling myself i was one of the unluckiest guy in the world and that i was good enough to beat the 55$. I ended losing ~140 BI at the 55$+ lifetime on Full Tilt, and now i know that MAYBE i had the skills to be breakeven and yes, i ran like **** but i wasn't good enough to beat the level anyway.
Again, my hopes went away with the last dowswing and i looked at Hezballer and Misclick's stats on sharkscope. I always though they were the 2 best regs at my stakes and they were killing the 33+3 with me at those times and they both didn't have great results at the 55$ over a decent sample size. I spoke with him on AIM and we both thought we were doing more $ at the 33$ than at the 55$, cause the level at the 33$ was so soft those days.
I turned back to cash again cause i thought that the 55$ were unbeatable with a good roi, i started hu nl100 on ipoker and full tilt and did good, soon moved to nl200 and made 20k in 3 months, i was pretty confident and i wasn't playing bad even if i had major tilt issue. I fixed that putting myself a 5+ BI / day for a while, cause i really tilted too much when i was winning more than that.
I left Ipoker in sept and again grinded full time on FT, i was playing nl200 6max and hu with good results, i made 10k the first 10 days of september, i was up 12k the 15th and then i made a very smart move, withdrawed 75% of my bankroll cause i wanted to make a real life investment, obv after the withdraw i started losing every pot and had a 50 BI downswing at nl200 that REALLY hurt my roll. I was angry but pokerev said i had 3 ptbb/100 adjusted so i didn't really care and i still played till half october.

The Golden Age and the .IT networks:

As i said, i was playing cash and i knew that there was this new italian site, only for italians, called GiocoDigitale that started the month before. I looked at the rake and WTF it's insane, it was like 88+12 or 90+10 i'm not sure, i laughed and i thought "nobody can beat this rake, **** it".
In Half october, a guy posted his graph on an italian forum, he had 46% roi.
I thought.....Running good man, mbn!
I looked at gioco digitale reg' sharkscope and they all had > 20% Roi at the 50 and 100eur sngs, i withdrawed all the money from Full Tilt and deposit on GD.
The traffic was low and i had more time to study and get better. If i think how bad i was when i thought "i don't have a ton to learn anymore on sngs" i can only smile today. I started playing less tables cause as i said traffic was low, i started to study all the marginal spot and get better and better and better. The lvl was incredible soft and even some regs who were making redic mistakes and didn't know anything about ICM were making money.
Then more and more people began to play, the regular became more and more, someone who was winning started having 200 BI downswing, someone went broke, someone turned into RB pro, someone is still winnings.
In feb 09 i went to Paris for 2 weeks, met Rodolphe and a friend of his, it was great to speak with them cause they were really great and friendly (even if they're french) and we had a nice evening at the casino and later at the restaurant.
In May 2009 i got a sponsorship deal with Sisal, Ipoker.it, we have a very good team and we're all friends, i started playing some live mtts and still didn't make a final table! It's true, poker is rigged.
The day before the sponsorship i won a freroll winner take all for the wsop main event, and in june for the first time i was in the capital of poker.
I can't really talk about Vegas cause this thread is already too long and i should write 10 pages only about that incredible experience, the only things i can say is that i really regret that i missed the chance to meet Noodleman and Braminc IRL cause they were there the same days as me but we didn't really have the chance even cause i had the house a little far from the strip. Also i'm sorry i only met Deurdy for a few seconds, but whatever.
When i was there i looked back at my life, thought when 2 years before i started playing and dreaming about making money with this game.... i did it.

Today I'm still playing sngs and mtts, do coaching and staking and i'm quite happy about my life and my job, even if sometimes i feel depressed and i want to quit and stop play poker forever.

After all this, i wanted to give you some advices, if 1 of you can learn something from my story and my mistakes, i did a good job writing this:

- about multitabling: you aren't a better poker player cause you can handle a ton of tables and still have positive roi. Grinding a ton of tables with roi < 4 % is stressful and you should do it only if you really think it's the way you will make more $/hour. Before doing that, you should study and learn the game as much as you can. Remember what Slim Pickens and Braminc said to me. If you sometimes have 88 postflop at lv 1 and you don't even know what happened preflop that usually means you're playing autopilot and you're not paying enough attention at the game, maybe cause you have too many tables or the tv on. Determine your A game and then decide if you want to put more tables anyway. I think i'm playing my A game if i have 9 tables (but i could be wrong) but i still play 12 to 15 cause my $/hour is better.
- Humans shouldn't be arrogant but sometimes they are answering your questions in a bad way just because for them the answer is so standard and stupid that they're pissed just cause you asked. Instead of flaming and get angry, try to learn from what they say anyway and say thanks to them if they give you some usufull infos.
- Get a coach that you trust as soon as you can if you're a middle level grinder or you're trying to move up. I do coach italian players and i realize that in a few hours i teach stuffs that i managed to discover in months of playing and studying, and that i wasted an incredible amount of money just because i didn't pay someone to learn very fast. Videos are ok but people won't really tell you THAT much in a video, atleast all the videos i've seen in the past for sngs weren't that great, they won't really tell you how to use wizard at 100% or give you VERY interesting spots, they won't tell you how to deviate from ICM and why, etc. Not that i saw so many videos in my life so don't be offended if you made one and tried to explain everything, but i really think a coach is totally different and better.
- Enjoy the money you're making but don't let them devour you or kill your personality.
- Poker is a stressful job, and most people won't understand that. Only a poker player can understand how bad we can feel sometimes. They will say to you "**** you're making 100$/hour or 20k/month, you should be happy everytime, look at me! I have nothing and i'm working for 1k$/month!" The truth is that those people never tried poker, they don't know variance, they don't know how you feel when you bust a major mtt final table bubble with 93% chance of winning the hand. Try to explain the situation to them, if they still don't get it, don't get angry and don't think they're ******ed, it's just a logic connection for them "you're making a ton of money = you HAVE to be happy about your job".-
- I think that the majority of poker players think that they were unlucky in their poker story, and tbh i'm one of them. I still think that i ran below expectation overall, and especially when it was crucial for me to make money or when i tried to move up.
While i was writing this thread and my story I really realized i can't consider myself unlucky, at all. How much ev did I "won" with the phone call of my friend that invited me to his house and teached me the basics of poker? How much did i ran over expectation when my friend/teacher told me everything and helped me a ton at the start of my experience?
I'm listening Chopin right now, with a glass of great wine and i'm writing on a ultramodern 30' monitor, it's 2.12 am and i don't have to wake up tomorrow morning if i don't want to do that. If i really want tomorrow i can leave my town and go around the world. How many guys from my age, 22, could do anything even similar to this, if they don't get the money from their parents?
Remember, you're lucky. If you're a winning poker player, that means you probably have an I.Q. over average, you have a smart brain and you found this Job wich is a dream for a lot of people, i think that you should consider yourself lucky only cause of this.

If you really read all of this, thanks for your time and i hope you enjoyed it.


A big thanks to Siq who helped me with some english errors in my story.

lots of good advice ITT

epic post.
you were really lucky with that $1k nl winnor being so kind to you, gratz on your success.

Awesome post. Glad I got to read it first

You're a great person and you should stop being a little girl and come down to Florida.

Excellent post sir, you were always of my favs around here. I really enjoyed reading your story (similar in ways to mine) and you brought up a lot of good points. Best of luck to you in your endeavors

Edit: Holy **** that thread is awesome lololol I stopped reading it before the madness started so epic

Great story, very inspiring. GL in the future.

Pocket-Pear from Paris (yes, french can be friendly )

nice post wish a 1knl reg would help me like that pretty lucky imo

Great post

I like that stuff about being lucky BEFORE playing seriously. Great point. Dude, that post is epic. Bashing you and jhub, omfg maxshark needs to mix some anthrax with his ovaltine.

great read ! gl in ur life sir

nice post - glglgl 4 your future !!

love your story, love the writing, love your avatar

Great post! Well worth the read, ty sir

Great story!

tl;dr

Nice post man, and thanks for being a solid contributor around here. Good luck in poker and in life.

good read, enjoyed it a lot!

great read, 'grats on all your success

awesome post, thanks a lot

I love reading life+poker stories keeps me motivated good job.

Nice poast, GL and thanks for the advice.

tl;raoi (too long ; read all of it)
Very good advice and very inspiring. Felt like a lot of sections spoke to me directly. I usually don't like italian players (especially on weekends) but I guess there are always exceptions, I mean there is even a good dutch player in STTF
Thanks for the post and best of luck in your future.

Nice post. I think this is a great point, if you are able to comfortably make a living playing poker you should remember you ran hot in life.

Very nice post.....

Ayo, easy on the Dutch there bro

Amazing post, really one of the best lifestory type posts on here I've ever read.

Cheers and all the best for the future.