Not a story, but a current events sort of post:

I talked to WarmDeck on the phone for about an hour yesterday, and talking to him I realized I may have some life leaks I'm subconsciously avoiding. WD has a good thing going and should make for some great upcoming stories. I'm going to try and meet up with him when he gets back - I have family coming in town and I am finishing up my new shadehouse so I hope I can make the 3+ hour drive up there.

Also, any2cards was nice enough to offer to recover the data from my old hard drive which contains pictures of basically my entire life from 2003-14. I don't think it will be easy, but I hope he can get some of the older pictures of stuff I wanted to post on the forum.

Thanks again to those who PM me about liking the stories, I will respond to all of them as long as I have time and am glad people are enjoying it.

Enjoying it? For a few minutes every week I'm able to step out of my mind numbing boring, miserable life and pretend I'm TST living the dream.

Well done and keep up the good work.

I stopped saying this a couple months back because I felt like a broken record.

This is such an amazing story. Thanks so much for sharing. Every update is golden and I appreciate every one.

I know my paint skills are lacking, but this is good stuff, thanks for taking the time to write all this out for us, takes me away from my broke life for a few minutes. That being said, I wish I would have stumbled upon this 6 months from now, the waiting after getting caught up sucks!!

Keep Your Friends Close....

As the next Tuesday rolled up, I had found a couple new players to come and play in the game. Since I was on the southside of town, I was looking for other people on the southside to come and play. North side players would rarely drive through the city, past the track, and come and play over 30 minutes away. If they did it was usually because they needed credit at some point, and Paulie made it very clear any credit was going to be on me in this game.

There were, however, a couple of no shows, which was odd. People who were usually good for the game - Nazi, car salesmen, etc. were nowhere to be found the second week, they said they had a movie to go to. Who chooses to go out to a movie over a good poker game? It seemed a little odd until I realized that they had all told me that Mike had invited them to the movies and to eat dinner. What was this, date night? Mike had been at the game last week and now he's telling players to go out to eat with him and watch movies. It was an obvious ploy to keep players away from the game so it wouldn't run well. The day of the game, I let Paulie know what was going on and he wasn't too happy about it either. Then again, Paulie wasn't doing a lot of the legwork in keeping the game running. He was the host and the food prep, but he was a 2/5 reg at the local cardroom and respected by the players there, he had gotten one player in two weeks. What kept us going that week was Tim came with Willy, and two of my tournament pro friends, Dustin and Gary, showed up after I covered their gas from Tampa. They were hesitant to play because they had heard of high rake cash games and I assured them that I ran this game and it was 10% up to $5 and another $5 at $200. They were not cash game regulars but were very competent.

The game started around the same time as last week and again ran until just after 2, with some PLO flips at the end. Dustin ended up $3k that night after making some sick hero calls, and thanked me for inviting him. He told me he was in makeup to Gary for $5k, but kept $800 for himself, and asked me about Bookie.

"Is Bookie legit when it comes to payouts?" He was always a skeptical character.

"As far as I know, anything under $5000 he has paid out immediately, and anything above that was paid in a week." I still had faith in Bookie - to be honest he wasn't that smart, he just only knew the streets and this was his way to make money with his family inheritance. Dustin had some baseball picks he wanted action on, and sure enough, 15 minutes later I had Bookie calling me asking me if Dustin was good for the money if he lost. I told him I had known Dustin for 3 years, that he was a winning player, and that his family had money that seemed to back him up when he was running bad. To be honest, I didn't know his financial situation, but he seemed to make +EV life decisions. Bookie let him bet a $500 line with a bunch of games over the course of the week, and seemed a little worried. Dustin lived further away and was younger than his usual customer, but Dustin had an air of confidence that it would almost be an insult not to accept his action at whatever stake he wanted.

Another thing that had caught my attention that night was the interaction between Nicole and Sally. Sally was in the game most of the night, and Nicole, as she has done for the past month and a half, had been sitting in the back area watching TV, playing on her phone, just generally hanging out. This week she and Sally were talking regularly, and it had started to interrupt the game, whether it was me telling Sally action was on her, or me trying to pay attention to what they were doing. It went so far as for me to prematurely burn and turn a card in a big pot. Thankfully, the pot would have ended up being chopped no matter what as both Bookie and Nice Shoes had KQ on an AJ10xxr board, so I got really lucky there. As a host I may have given a decent amount of money back to the loser as a way of saying sorry.

My mind that night was not in the game, which was in retrospect very dangerous. Paulie was the handler of money and the chips since I was dealing and me taking money and getting chips would slow down the game. He was playing in the game, however, and he really wasn't looking for anyone trying to scam, angle, or in any other way cheat the game. Although I had only run into this once with Donnie while he was dealing at German's game, I had this nightmare scenario in my head where I had several respectable players to pay out and we were off by a ton, having to dip into our own pockets. The fact that Mike was not present, but I felt like choking him out in a dark alley in a bad part of town for the **** he tried to pull tonight with dinner and movies with some of the players, had me slowing down the deal as well. I had to give him some credit, for a guy who had screwed them over week after week with rake, credit, and then couldn't pay out, he still had their confidence - a true con man so to speak. When people mentioned the other game, and all the debts owed, it made for a somber mood at the table.

At the end of the night, however, I had put some of the anger to the side as I had another $1000+ night, and told me that anyone who received a text from Mike to go out to dinner and movies could show it to me and get $25 at the next game. If I had to give out my first hour of rake and tips to keep the game going then I was willing to do it. At the time I would have given up half my profits for Mike to stop this. After realizing this was such a big deal to me, I decided to approach Mike about the situation and snuff it out once and for all.

TST, next time you're at the THR hit me up and I'll try to join you to buy you a beer (or godfather). Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.

sounds like mike's kneecaps need to meet the soft side of a pipe

JCorb-

Glad I can get you out of the daily grind, as I know how it can be, and I just don't think I could do it full time. My life is way too unpredictable, it has been since 2003, and I would say if I could do it again I would. I still have a year's worth of material that is just related to the home game, not to mention side stories and flashbacks.

Wombat-

No worries about saying the same thing. I started this story as sort of an outlet to tell people about the inside life of underground poker, and if I am doing it well it is just a plus in my book.

DeathCab-

I live about 130 miles south of HR now, but I still go up that way, usually has been passing through on trips. Every time I hit I-4/75 and see HR off to the left it feels nostalgic, I will definitely let you know ahead of time. Feel free to PM me and I'll keep in touch.


I wanted to run this by you guys, as I had been thinking about it for a while. I thought certain stories like flashbacks, current events, and side stories, not entire chapters, might do well in a vlog. I was intending on keeping this somewhat anonymous, but I watched a few of the Trooper "Storytime" videos and him talking about the time the cops shot up the home game in Greenville and I was kinda hooked on them. What do you guys think? I don't have video editing, it might be me just sitting in my car talking. It might bring an element of emotion and personal feeling about it?

I have to drive to Sarasota tomorrow for a lawyer/doctor appt. (no spoilers) and work from dawn till dusk Tuesday putting in all the hardware at the nursery, so I may get one more chapter out between now and Tuesday night. I can probably do a vlog much faster for a side story.

Donnie-

LOL - I have bad very bad MS Paint/photoshop skills as well, that's actually not bad at all.

vlog works for me. try to put random shots of cleavage in.

I've never understood vlogs, I think audio format for this is much better, no need to download all that extra video of you standing in front of a mic. Maybe I'm a little too contrarian but I think audio is a much better format. Another thing to to think about is that your mind will operate differently when writing vs talking so unless you write it up beforehand you will likely lose a lot of the edge your writing brings up. Going to be lots of awkward pauses, lots of "oh wait I forgot to mention" and just leaving out lots of key details or otherwise having an elogent way to telling a story just being summed up into "so this dude was like 'I can't make the game' and I was like hell no that ain't right you committed" somewhere I'm the writing that would have been an interesting paragraph but it spoken format it's more at home on the Jersey Shore.

I used to operate a news studio for tv broadcasts - witnessed over and over again people with great writing skills utterly fail at commuicating effectively once you took the keyboard away. For reference, almost every interview you listen to on podcast/radio that isn't live has them scrubbing out every single awkward pause and stumble in post production because it can otherwise be pretty unpleasant to listen to.

Not saying that'll necessarily happen to you but you got a good thing going in writing style that could be lost in video. Furthermore, it's a lot more work that it sounds like, probably more so than writing everything up beforehand (which you'll likely still do anyway).

I'd first do a test, record a short story in audio format and then afterwards write it up and compare them.

these are awesome, cant wait for the next one

Your writing style is far too impressive to be wasted on a vlog, imo.

Plus, this format is more easily reached for us sitting at work in a cube. In between TPS reports and contemplating which method of suicide is most EV I visit this thread and am calmed down.

Just my .02. You could do a vlog in pig latin and I'd still listen. Just prefer reading.

Also, to your earlier question. LA, and it's not close. If we're talking about rich poker games and loose women, every other location is playing for second place.

I would look into doing a podcast on Tunein or iTunes. If someone has art skills and do a cover then release chapters weekly it would be widely listened to

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

agree with rickroll.

tl;dr your writing is great. video (production, editing, on screen pauses, etc.) could turn out bad.

tl;dr of the tl;dr - if it ain't broke...

I did some thinking, and if I am going to vlog, it would probably be about something unrelated to the storyline. I'm thinking plants - a few people messaged me about plants and stuff, I'll try and get a video down about it.

This. It would be nice to put a face with the stories though. Either way I'm really enjoying the thread. Keep'em coming!!!

The Art of The Deal

Dealing poker is more than just throwing some cards around the table, announcing bets, flipping cards over, and pushing pots. For those of you who deal for a living, may God be with you. A dealer has to be good with math, fast with action, friendly with players, and always correct. Otherwise, at the first mistake, you will get pummeled with nasty names and a ****ty reputation. I am by no means a professional like licensed card room dealers should be, but I dealt at almost every chance I got. In home games, where the tips were greater and untaxed, you were literally lighting money on fire when you weren't in the box. What I made in one night most dealers had to deal three to four nights thanks to Uncle Sam, other employees, and the bossman.

I was sitting at the local cardroom doing my usual 1/2 grind for player recruitment and I had been staring at multiple dealers' hands, their movements, what they did when they were not burning cards or pulling chips, and looked for the traits that made them the fastest. Derek was fast because he literally was a freight train with the cards, chips, etc. moving as fast as possible. I would have liked to have used Derek as a dealer in the game, but he was fading away from the scene. His wife was getting wind of what was happening when he was dealing, including the drinking, betting, and when he was coming back with nothing, she chained him up. He used to spend weekends at Mike's house because he lived so far away clogging up the toilet and taking their bedroom while they slept on the wraparound couch, and now he was just a daily commuter. I didn't talk to Derek as much, but I knew he was probably dying inside. Although Derek had made some mistakes, he was always honest about them, owned up to them, and moved on.

"It's on you ******." I looked up like I had been dreaming and could hear the familiar tone of Ted the dealer's voice. There was only one person I knew that called me that, and I was okay with it because that was his way of communication. He called everyone ***, **********, dumbass, idiot, pussy, you name it, it came out of his mouth. Ted had no filter anywhere, anytime and I'm sure it affected his tips. Everyone has that one friend who can't ever shut their mouth and has to speak their mind, kind of like a social tourettes. That was Ted, and he was a legend in his own mind. I quickly looked down at trash and folded, realizing I had been staring into space like a baby and had been focused on people dealing for over an hour.

It was Friday, and I had come to the cardroom for multiple reasons. First, it was the night of the best $50 donkament of the week - it usually got 80-100 entrants, and every one of them was a possible customer in my mind. The rake in this tournament was almost 30%, with first place usually being anywhere between $850 and $1200 depending on the time of year. Season was winding down and it had barely cracked $1000 according to the board, but I didn't care about the payouts. I wanted people to bust so I could find people that would be good for the game, or if they weren't, I wanted recreational players to short buy for $60, raise to $20 with AK+ and watch in amazement as they get no callers. The best in my opinion however were the tourney pros who bought in for the full amount and who did not or could not adjust to cash game play. They would never play hands that had little to no showdown value preflop such as small pairs, suited connectors, etc. and played a little too TAG.

I looked through the sea of players looking for familiar faces. A few home game regulars, Donnie, Willy, Tim, Bookie, everyone was looking for action from some angle. Tim was looking for players too but didn't realize he was stuck on one table. Willy was looking for a stake from Tim, Donnie was looking for any score he could get to prove he was a winning player, and Bookie was looking for people who wanted action. As much as I wanted to get players, I was looking for something else as well - Mike. Friday was the best day to see Mike out at the room because he would get paid Thursday night and he knew he was getting paid something on Saturday too. After Ted sat down to deal I knew I was only focused on that tonight. I tried to focus on the game a little by killing outside noise. I had a pair of Parrot Zik headphones I had gotten for playing long sessions back in 2012, and although I was not a fan of headphone-wearing hoodie and sunglass players, sometimes you need to focus by zoning out other noise and distractions. If a guy next to you wants to tell you about a bad beat with his dragon breath, or there's some obnoxious drunk at the table, its better to isolate yourself with music.

I had a great view of the main door to the room by sitting in the 8 seat, and around 9pm I saw Mike stroll in and get a seat card for a table a few rows down. Now was not the time to approach him - I couldn't start a disturbance in the middle of the room as there was a sheriff posted at the door and 3 security guards, though normally useless, one of the bouncers there I was actually afraid of. I had approached him once and asked him what he carried, knowing full well he had a Glock 21 on his hip and he replied with a simple "40 caliber son." I let him know he actually had a .45 and when I told him I thought it was a little excessive for a poker room he took me aside and said, "I ain't afraid to use it." He seemed like he was itching to get that thing in action, and a guy with a itchy trigger finger is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I knew Mike had to get up every dealer down to go smoke and bull**** with some of the players and dealers, so I was going to wait until I saw him get up from the table. He hadn't noticed me as his focus was on the action, but I got to see a few winces out of him as I am sure he made a hero call or two. I also knew he could go broke at any second, he may only have $100 on him. Finally after an hour, Mike went to the door, and I folded out of turn in the middle of the pot and apologized and walked behind him to the door. I knew he was going downstairs to the dealer smoking area, and I didn't want him to get that far. By the far end of the bleachers was a staircase that went downstairs, was dark, and was away from any other players. I walked quickly and by the time I got to the top of the stairs I was right behind him. I had my headphones around my neck and Eddie Money's "Two Tickets To Paradise" was just coming on.

"Hey, where are ya going so fast? We gotta have a talk about date night."

"What date night?"

"You know, that convenient Tuesday night dinner and movie you have with the guys? I hope you offer free handjobs too for the amount you've ****ed them over for."

"Oh, that...." He had developed a smirk on his face like he had played one over on me. That put me into a rage that was so bad I was getting dizzy.

"You know you could just have an accident on these stairs and there's no cameras, no security, nothing." A plane was flying overhead and I was being really loud because no one could hear us over the roar of a passing jet. "You pull that **** again and you'll wish you had fallen down these stairs. I..." I heard running coming from the cement above us and a large figure was at the top of the stairs.

"What the **** is going on down here?"

I'll be honest, story would have been better if the second time you threatened his life he just snapped and pushed you down the stairs. I'll tell you straight up, your a pussy who's never going to murder anyone so stop bluffing. Nice writing though keep it up.

Sorry to hear about the troubles with the crazy gf's fam. I had a bad feeling we were going to hear about the end when you mentioned fights over Thanksgiving. Always good to get away from things. Can definitely help clear the mind. My vote would be Vegas of course because of the poker aspect. I'm also very bias of Vegas so my vote probably shouldn't count. I'm sure whenever you end up, it will be for the best.

Cheers.

UGH stick to tents and bad BBM it's so much more fun.

just read the whole thread in the past day, really great read for me its up there with the legendary matt moore and warmdeck threads, top quality stuff

Thanks for the comments guys - I don't want to spoil anything, and don't think I did, but she and I are still together, she's about to get a rude awakening as I have to hit the road at 530am to Tampa to get there and break down a plant collection. I would take you up on your offer DeathCab but I am not driving, I am meeting Ken at a crossroads in the Everglades and we are shooting up there in his new Golf GTI. I might be able to finish a chapter tonight but I have no idea when I am getting back. I will hit you up for sure when I am up there on my own time, but they are paying me good money to do this - can't pass it up!

You got it mang, get that $$$$. I'll be there tonight, tomorrow night and possibly sunday PM.

I think this makes a lot more sense as camera footage could focus on the plants - in which sense having a visual presence could help out significantly as well. Furthermore, youtube would be a decent source if used as an indirect marketing channel for your business - more and more people are heading towards youtube as their primary search option - in many ways because the results are much better. Any company can hire a content marketing agency to spam the ether with dozens of astroturfed websites with hastily written crap just to grab search engine attention and have 1-2 companies dominate most "exotic plant" searches but making those thousands of videos would be a lot more expensive so there is more room for an independent operator to work in video for marketing purposes.

Just please don't be a tool and dumb it down to the median viewer age of 13 and use the "like, comment and subscribe" at end of every sentence - although I hate to say it but that stuff is actually fairly effective