This is Where I Live

This is my new home - a T@B CS-S I bought brand new in Mississippi. When I am in Miami I stay on the farm where I do my consult work, and then I will tow it back to the West Coast, and I can pretty much stay anywhere. The back opens up into a kitchen, I now live on the road alone. Nicole will come with me on my trips to Miami, but we no longer live together at the moment.

A large room with bathroom, shower, pull out queen bed, two TVs. There is a table that goes in here, but I forgot it in Miami so TV tray will have to do.




It opens like a clamshell into a kitchen in the back and the cabinets pass through to the living area.


Sideshot with the new truck I bought. Also, a picture of the setup while plugged in on the farm in Miami.





Life has drastically changed, but work is good and keeps me pretty busy. I couldn't ask for a cooler job, just a lot of driving the past couple of months. This is part of the reason new chapters haven't come out.

TST- great writing of your life events, thx for sharing. I’m relatively new to the poker world (never played poker in a casino or cardroom, only very low stakes home games but I enjoy reading about poker) and only found these forums a short time back and got hooked on your thread. This is my first post on 2+2 and I created the account to say thanks!

I am from and still live in SW Florida (FtM) so I know some of the areas you are describing. Glad you made it out of Irma relatively unscathed. Good luck with the job down in Miami and repairing your relationship with Nicole if that is the route you choose!

thanks for sharing pictures and congrats on the new purchases! both the truck and home look very nice!

Thanks, I actually am looking to get a larger travel trailer, this one is very nice but just not big enough. I probably have a trip to Tallahassee in the near future coming. I might need to take someone up on a home game offer in the area.

My last story was intended to be a precursor for a flashback where I would talk about a certain pro that I personally had negative experiences with, but I feel like it would derail this thread. It would be relatively obvious to most people who it is because of the details involved, and I would rather continue with the story. I have most of a chapter written about this particular time - my experiences with this "Pro" from 2012-2014, but realized it is not really part of the home game or my peripheral life. I would hate to erase what I wrote, so I am thinking of putting it elsewhere.

I don't think it would derail the thread. It doesn't seem like you are hesitant to share it because of his potential reaction to it; so if thats a non-issue, I think I speak on behalf of all readers in this thread....Share it!

Glad you're still updating. I hope you made up with Nicole and discovered why you were so triggered the night you told her to leave. Plz hmu if you ever make it to Broward with some extra time on your hands.

It’s part of your story. Throw it in. The real, the unexpected. They go together.

on behalf of everbody, plz post it, ty

I just erased it....but you guys have convinced me to rewrite it. Its in the 40s here now and no chance I am going outside to work on plants the next 48 hours.

...... still waiting

Anxiously awaiting said installment, TST!

Run Ins With a "Poker Pro" - My Experience

NOTE - This story is not in any way meant to attack any one person or poker pros in general. It is merely an experience I had playing with poker professionals in the past.

A Florida Poker Room, Winter 2014.

It had been a year since I had been in any meaningful relationship. I had finished selling off all of my nursery stock a few months back and had a nice nest egg tucked in, finishing up a BS degree while still living with Jenny at the time. I had considered the idea of playing poker full time, but knew I couldn't come to that decision for a number of months of really putting time in. 2013 was a roller coaster poker-wise - I had run like God for the first half, and the second half was "dust", as Mike would always say. I wasn't putting in the real time required to see if I could really make the money I wanted as well as handle the swings, barely rolled for 2-5 and 5-5 PLO games. It was Thursday night in season, the best night besides the weekend, but for some reason it was just not that busy. I walked in to find no PLO running and an interest list in the 2-5 game. I didn't drive 30 minutes to turn around and go home, so I put my name on the 2-5 game, and within 10 minutes the game started as I found out soon why there were no higher stakes running.

My friend Skip walked by from a table in the back of the room and I asked him what he was playing.

"It's the WSOP Main Event seats, we have a sit-n-go every Thursday. Wanna join? We need more players."

He proceeded to explain that with an initial $1500 buy in, and $60 each Thursday, they played it out to see who would be staked for the main event, and everyone got a share of any winnings. I was not a tournament player and the Main Event wasn't of that much interest to me, so I declined. I did see that a number of pros were in the group, and figured I was dead money anyway. I was also surprised that this group wasn't just putting up $10K each, as many certainly lived a life that was typical of someone who had that kind of money. Then again, I wasn't a tournament pro so what did I know?

It started out 7-handed, as one player was sitting out but had a stack of $350 in a triangle with the extra 50 in red on the top. I noticed a few familiar faces on the table including a few regular Asian businessmen as well as a South African acquaintance. Both she and her father played regularly and she was a nice person, but was a big fan of flaunting her father's money and was relatively new to the 2-5 world. She was a social butterfly, making "friends" with most players at the room, and as I was in the SB, she was on the button and straddled to 10, and first to act I had picked up AQ and made it 45, and it folded around to the cutoff, who had now taken a seat at the table with her 350 stack and proceeded to make it 90. At the point she put the chips out, she had just realized it was a straddled pot and had minraised. She laid her head up against her arm resting on the whole table as if she had no interest in the game or making any effort to lift or move anything. She appeared very disinterested in the whole game, looking over at the sit-n-go, running over to some guy every other hand. Normally if I get minraised by many types of characters I think it's either AA or just a button clicker messing around, but she had wanted to make a legit 3-bet, so with that info I just stuck in a stack of green and she snap called and turned over her 88 like it was the nuts. As a red Ace hit the board as the window card, she was already out of her chair and halfway back to her boyfriend. I took it on myself to slide the stacks of red over myself as she went to see him and talk about "some donkey who wanted to get in 70BBs with ace queen". I guess she still had it in her head that it was not a straddled pot. As she brought back 500 to buy in with that clearly wasn't in her possession before, the South African proceeded to say to me, "well I guess I don't need to introduce you to my friend (who I will refer to as Mrs. Smiley), you guys seem to know each other!"

"I don't know this guy, I don't play at this place really at all!" Smiley said this in a tone that inferred this was a place not worth playing in, either due to the lesser action or just being on tilt and taking it out on the establishment.

"So you don't remember me as that crazy PLO guy?" As I said this, she seemed to remember who I was, and the fact that we had played at Hard Rock on a semi-regular basis for at least a year before this.

****, I didn't mean to post this yet, it is obviously incomplete. I guess I can just write a second part? Sorry about that everyone.

Nice teaser

yes great first half of the story; MOAR plz!

Finally powered through this after 6 months away from poker. Need MOAR.

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I'm guessing Mrs. Smiley is Natasha Mercier ?, just a guess......and holy **** people are not used to losing flips in Florida.

I hope you didn't ruin gender reveal night!

Its a Degen!

Didn't know a honda was considered a truck. lol

Them new ones actually look pretty slick.

I do get the "its not a truck" from a number of people, but I drove the Tacoma and Frontier and they were just kinda cramped and rattly. The Ridgeline is essentially a Honda Pilot front with a chopped back, but it rides more like an Accord and is also fast-ish. It's AWD so it tows what I need to tow and I just like cars that are different, faster, fun to drive. Almost bought a G35 from Warmdeck but I haven't pulled the trigger on any car.

I haven't gotten to writing the second half yet thanks to literally looking for a vehicle for a month non-stop, doing database management for the garden I work for, binge eating Panang Curry and watching RegularCarReviews on YouTube.

I would love to comment on the person in the poker pro story but I would rather not for multiple reasons. It wouldn't be hard to figure out who this person is, however.

A little update - I managed to settle with the car accident situation, not life changing money but its tax free. Nothing is better than money the Feds can't touch.

I really think that with some editing, I could have fun doing this in a storytelling format that parallels the rest of the story. I don't know the first thing about editing though so that's going to be a little rough.

Glad you get some $ out of the accident; panang curry homemade?

"Mrs. Smiley"

My previous experiences with Mrs. Smiley were at Hard Rock in Tampa - a usually crowded, loud room, much unlike the quiet room we were in now. Even though the room is crowded, the 2/5 crowd, especially late at night, were a small community of competent regs, leftovers from the tournament, and a decent number of inebriated tourists/whales that kept the regs around. Though my game was PLO, I found myself often at the 2/5 table before I could get a seat, and after the games would break in the back corner in the "high limit" area of the old room. During these sessions, which would last a few hours, I often had the "privilege" of playing with Mrs. Smiley. One of my first memories of playing at the table was when a nice businessman to my left called a 3-bet in position with KK from Smiley, and on a K high board, he got it in with her for $550 effective against her K10 which proceeded to go runner runner broadway. The man was understandably a bit tilted, to which she replied,"Sometimes you gotta fold top set.", with a big smile. He proceeded to ask the dealer what the max buy in was at the table, and pulled out a wad of hundreds that seemingly had no end. He was there to have fun, enjoy himself, but she was not particularly accommodating. I found her humor to be about as pleasant as taking a used Keurig K-Cup after it had just been used, opening the carton, and chewing on the used coffee grounds slowly, as if to savor the taste of the hot bitter grit.

There were a group of guys that she was "friends" with who were either unaware of her antics, or just didn't care because they were attracted to a seemingly successful female poker player. At times I felt the waitress was at the table more often than she was, as she would disappear to go chat it up with one of the bros. Being social with this group was very important to her, as I imagine she felt it contributed to her upward movement in the poker world; she didn't, however, bring the same sort of positive energy to the table when playing with strangers, it was quite the opposite. I won't go into her relationship(s) as much of what I heard was second hand, but her significant other at the time was a nice guy who was fairly well known in the poker community, and though I wasn't personal friends with him, he had the type of attitude and energy that made a game much more entertaining - something like Bill Perkins. One could tell that the relationship was a bit one-sided and in the end, the guy definitely got the short end of the stick.

Her attention seeking behavior at the table was something that simply did not belong. Guys can attest to the fact that if you go to a bar/nightclub, there is always that girl or group of girls that seemed to show up to have fun by seeing how many free drinks they could get from just hitting on random guys then disappearing once they got what they wanted. The same sort of behavior existed at the 2/5 table when Smiley was present. When forced with any non-conventional decision, she would start flirting with her villain to try to maximize her edge - this was the only time I ever considered speaking up in the middle of a hand to pry a player away from her subversive tactics, but all I could do was laugh at this ridiculousness of the situation.

By the end of the weekly SNGs for the WSOP, something had gone down at the poker room, and money had gone missing. Skip was very quiet about this, but after talking to a couple other players in the league, it seemed apparent that Smiley had somehow made the money "disappear", much like German did with the Superbowl player pool money. Her significant other apparently made things right. A year later, she had moved onto greener pastures and found someone else to keep her poker pro persona at the status quo.

This is one thing I will never understand or be sympathetic about - when poker players loan one another money when they know that most of the time they aren't getting it back. You can't honestly be that naive to think someone who is asking for money is just going to pay you back because "they said so". So many relationships are ruined in life because of money mismanagement, whether it be a marriage, friendship, or business. The best thing that can happen if you loan someone money is that they pay you back. Staking is a whole different animal and I am not referring to that in this particular story. I write this not because I have been burnt particularly bad, but I have seen good friendships break apart because of money. It was one of the main reasons a number of people at the Home Game were no longer able to come back. They had borrowed way too much from many of those willing to loan, and there was now bad blood between them. For those whose friendships had not been severed, other players voiced concerns that soft play would happen between the debtors and the creditors and it killed a lot of action from some of the more recreational types and would break games early.

Before I go on too much of a tangent, I'm going to leave that there. This story is more geared towards people like Smiley and other people who masquerade as poker professionals but in reality are in debt up to their eyeballs with their poker playing counterparts, much like Greece and the EU. In my opinion, if poker players in the spotlight could keep the persona of someone like Andrew Neeme, we would have the next poker renaissance.

That's all I have to say tonight - thanks for watching.

Nice chapter!!!
Don’t tap the glass!!!

Hi, i have finally finished reading this after 2 weeks of jamming in as many chapters as I possibly could without being detected during work. I want to thank you for such an enjoyable read, definitely look into publishing when you finally finish, your writing style is very engaging.

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