I have been asked a couple time questions about my background/story so after 5 years playing poker, here it is :


A stranger is being shown around a village that he has just become part of. He is shown a well and his guide says "On any day except tuesday, you can shout any question down that well and you'll be told the answer" . The man seems pretty impressed, and so he shouts down: Why not on tuesday? and the voice from in the well shouts back: Because on tuesday, its your day in the well.

I was just thinking how it's been awhile since someone did a well.

lets start with the usual:

howd you get into poker?
quick bio of ur poker career?
lifetime graph?
describe this years wsop experience

I was playing warcraft III during my spare time, like a lot, and after a while most of the people I knew from Warcraft went on to play poker. I always played cards since I was 8 years old but I didn't get into poker before 2005.

Started playing 3/6 LHE right away, busted my first deposit. Then I think I did redeposit about 600$ and broke even for a long time. Meanwhile I bought 2 books from slansky about how to beat SSLHE games. I kept reinvesting my rakeback despite breaking even and went up from 3/6 to 10/20 that way. Broke even some more and took a shot at 30/60 and didn't look back. I won a sunday million on party and took a shot at 100/200. I then played 100/200 LHE on party for 1.5 years during the "Holy" days, made a fortune.

Then the sky fell on my head, right after the US ban. I had just bought a house and managed to bust like 800BB playing 200/400 and 250/500. I could have sold the house and get a bankroll back but it would have been stupid so I dropped down a lot. Grinded back a while, SSNL but I didn't really like it. So I switched to PLO a some point in 2009... Playing 16 tables of PLO and doing somewhat good considering the huge downswing I had BI wise.

My HEM won't let me graph that many hands. But with the description over I think you can pin point what it should looks like.

Incredible. All my friends who railed the final table keep telling me how not stressed/nervous I was but it was great time. Winning a bracelet during the 2500$ plo was sick, finishing second in the 10 000$ plo on top of that was just incredible.

I think I was way more nervous at the second final table than the first one. 2 bracelet in a year would just have been so great. 1 is nice for sure but 2 in the same game would just have been amazing.

Had a great time this year but didn't get to go out much. I won't complain about that part ^^. I'm getting old for these kind of things anyway.

how old are u?
why PLO?

Describe your average day of grinding (ie. what time you wake up, etc.)

PLO or Live MTT's?
Fav tournament on the circuit?
How many 5 yo's?
Short-term poker plans, Long-term poker plans?

I'm a poker dinosaur. I'm not that old but for poker I guess it's kinda old. I look like 22 but I'm 27.


I played LHE for a long time after it crashed. I played a bit of NLHE in 2008 and a lot of people were saying that NLH was dying and PLO was the new trend. So I didn't want to miss that boat, since I thought I missed the NLHE boat so I jumped head first into the PLO games. Plus I was a bit of a degenerate at that time so PLO looked much more of a gambling game than NL...

who/what has influenced your game the most?

close friends you talk to?
major experiences?
books?
other posters?
2p2 in general?
training sites?

any sort of "ah ha" moments that really shaped the way you think about or approach poker...or life in general?

I have a young daughter and an other kid on the way so I have to get up early and go to sleep "early" too compared to most people here.

I have also been to school part time too for most of the past 5 years. So I would basically get up and grind a bit, then some school, then grind more and then take care of the family before going to bed.

I usually play like 3000 to 6-7000 hands of PLO 6 max per day on a grinding day.

Are you going to jump into the higher games online?

Which live players who you played with in your deep tourny runs impressed you, similary one who made you lol.

Are you planning on playing WSOPE and any epts?

what did you do to (re)gain confidence and during your huge downswing last year?
how did this downswing affected your life? (friends, family, $$)

Past 2 years, most of my play has been PLO cash game. I don't play many live tournament beside the WSOP. I think lifetime I have 15 tournaments in 5 years, and 6 of them were this year wsop. I played the biggest games online for a while, I made it to supernova elite 2 times (I'm at ~750k this year)... I wanted new challenges this year that's why I played more tourneys and less cash games.

I really liked Monte-Carlo this year... I also really liked to play in the PartyPoker premiere league, it's a very fun format but too bad I finished runner up. Would have been really fcin awesome to play against Negreanu/TonyG and the others.

Wut ?

Humm tough to say. I need to learn the HORSE game for next year. So I'm going to keep playing PLO and learn the Stud/Razz on the side before next WSOP. My boss (gf) is with me on that, so we should be in Vegas next summer for 45 days and I should be playing a lot of non-NLHE tournaments.

Join Date: Mar 2005

Seriously?

I'd say david slansky... I'm really not sure. Back when I was playing LHE there wasn't much out there. I never really watched videos, only read a bit during the start of my career. Watched a bit more videos lately for Stud and etc.

I often had a huge ego. Playing the best, no matter what the game was and who was in the game. Nowadays I'm a lot more down to earth. I'd rather have something steady over the swings I had before. I could win 6 digits in 1 month and lose 1/2 of that the next one. I could also lose or win that in 1 day. Now my motto is much closer to : "The harder you work, the luckier you get"... Not sure I could beat people like Durrr and Cole anyway.

Nah not really at least not for now. I'm not going to reinvest 1 penny into the bankroll, I'm going to keep my winnings as a cushion since I'll be starting school again this fall in physics... I'd be really pissed to lose 100k playing 25/50.

Goal is to get my online bankroll back on track and stop cashing out every time I need 100$ for the grocery you know. So maybe by mid-next year. Who knows.

One thing I did really hate when I was playing high stakes LHE was that you could lose a huge amount in 1 day and then you would have to wait 1 week to get "a chance" at winning back what you lost. Most games aren't as bad as LHE was/is but it's still worse than what it was before.

In the PLO tournament I don't think many players impressed me a lot. I think Daniel Alei is an under rated player. During the 10k plo final table we had a very obnoxious player at our table. He drank like 20 beers in 10 hours and he kept asking dumb questions and at some point he asked alei if he called the AI player (.5BB more to him) if Daniel would check it down with him. It was really lol. Daniel kept his calm the whole time and told him he couldn't do that. We had a dealer who kept misdealing and couldn't figure out what the pot was even tho it often was only 2x the raise + the small blind, he would just throw a random number and kept misdealing. Everyone at the table was tilted but Daniel kept his calm. I was really impressed.


I'm close to 100% positive I'll be at the London EPT. If nothing changes, I will be at the PCA and monte carlo too. I'd like to do 1-2 more before the wsop on my own too. We'll see.

500/1k shot bro?

Do you really like blueberry donuts?

hi mig. could you describe your plo experience before your SNE run. You modestly say you "switched to PLO" but I'm sure there must have been lots of reading/talking etc. thanks.

I'm also interested in how you got into the groove of grinding small/midstakes PLO. Did you first study 90%/play 10%, or 50/50, or more playing than studying? Also, what particular studying methods did you use? ie. Did you have a coach, did you mostly talk to people online about hands, read forums, read books, watch vids?


Thanks!

How many 5 year olds could you take in a fight?

I played more and tilted more. Definitively not the best way to handle it but I didn't really have a choice. When you have 1 kid, 1 more coming and house and etc. It was pretty brutal.

You get really depressed and the more depressed you get, the worse you play. etc. It's pretty much a cycle of self-destruction. Now, looking back, I started "running" bad pretty much when I stopped school and bought the house. Every time I started playing better/running better I would take a shot at much higher stake and get destroyed. At some point you just have to make a plan and stick to it, dump the ego down the toilet and just play the best you can at a limit you know you can beat. So played a bit less online, did more stuff outside online poker and started feeling better/doing better. Playing mid stakes again and feeling good about it.

How much is 1k yens worth anyway ? I'm already playing that big!

It's delicious ! By the way, when you lose a flip before the bill is out you shouldn't say stuff like "Go ahead and take the whole plate of donuts!"

Next time the donut is on me !

When I started PLO 2 years ago~ there wasn't that much stuff out there. I watched a little bit of cardrunner/deucescracked but it was kind of starting. The competition was so much worse than right now.

First time I played PLO it was on party poker directly in the 10/20 PLO game. The game was so good back then you could be super tight solid and win **** load. Only problem is when you do good 4-6max and start believing you are some kind of PLO genius and play the best regs HU. Things can go South pretty quickly.

What did your learned from Poker that you can use in other lifeaspects?

Can you give us one instructive example where you made a decision that you didn´t had maid without your poker career?