iamalex

Now that I am playing poker again, Ive found all my all poker friends at much different stakes. I'm looking for some people who want to send hands to eachother and talk strategy.

I'm also going to start learning PLO. Seems like a really fun and great game that many of my NLHE will transfer over to. I'm going to start low, 25PLO, until I get better. I already know a lot about the starting hands and how 9987 is worse than 9877 for example.

Anyway, hit me up in the comments or in a PM if you play NL50-100 or PLO. I mostly use AIM but I can also get on MSN if that is more convienient for anyone.

Good Luck.

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Comments (16)

I quit poker some time last year for a lot of reasons. In high school Clay (MezmerizePLZ) and I discovered online poker together and moved up the stakes. He chose to pursuit poker as a career and I chose to go to CU - Boulder for engineering and play poker part time. Moving out on my own and trying to juggle school and poker just didn't work for me.

Since middle school, I had been plagued with depression. With my new lifestyle, it peaked my freshman year of college. I was very isolated, and hardly ever went to class. I had little motivation to get good grades and prepare for a 50k+/year job when I felt I could just go put in a session and make $200/hr+.

There were few people I could relate to. Other than Clay, none of my real-life friends understood poker, and many of them were just plain jealous. I hated how so many people thought I was deluded and that it's impossible to win at poker in the long run. Although I found it absolutely hilarious, one of my friend's mom was even convinced I was a drug dealer because of my nice car. I also hated hearing all the stupid ass stories of people who won 5 dollar tournaments with their friends, or some friend of theirs that thinks he's a professional roulette player.

My grades and my poker career both suffered immensely. I failed a few classes and I began to break even with massive amounts of unconscious and conscious tilt. I was lost and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't make money at poker, and I was destroying my academic record. I was a stellar student in high school. I took Calculus I and II at 15, and AP Physics a year earlier than any other student in the history of the school district. My high school didn't have weighted grades, but with them my GPA would have been something like 4.1. I was on academic probation, and my record had been destroyed. My best grade was a B and had failed two classes. I felt that all my hard work in high school was negated and I was left with nothing. My confidence was obliterated.

I decided that the best course of action for me was to quit poker and focus on school. I took a medium load of classes my sophomore year and took it fairly easy. I still didn't go to class often. I was still unhappy, but I wasn't in the suicidal downward spiral any more. I was stable but miserable. I was terrified to play poker because of the devastation of running bad and my lack of ability to control my emotions.

This summer, after over a year of introspection, learning, reading, and help from those close to me, I conquered my depression. I became confident, assertive, and I had my energy back. My eyes were opened to a new world. I've been much better about school this year; my effort is back up to the level of my high school years. I've been much more social and made new friends who share values that are very important to me. Everything was great, but I was still afraid to play poker. I wasn't sure how much poker contributed to my depression, or how it had affected me, ad I didn't want to take the risk.

In September, I became aware of the FPP cash bonuses on Stars, and I had over 100k FPPs I still needed to spend. I decided that this was my best chance to convert my FPPs into cash. I was still nervous about playing poker again, but I made it a goal to reach gold star by the end of the month. I played low stakes, but I started off down 14 buyins almost immediately. Strangely, this encouraged me more than winning 14 buyins possibly could have. It was almost alien to me that I still had my confidence. I was upset of course, but it was nothing compared to the gut wrenching pain of loss that I remembered. I made my goal of gold star a day or two before the end of the month, and I redeemed all of the September cash bonuses. I was about even for winnings over the month, but considering I started off down 14 buyins, I considered it a massive success.

In October, I still wasn't sure if I wanted to continue playing or not. By the middle of the month, the allure of check raising drew me in. I played more hands in October than I had ever played during a month of my depression. I had limited success, but I have improved greatly as a player.

I am very excited to explore poker again with my new mindset. Now that it's November, I want to set a list goals for myself:

1. Play a decent amount of poker, but keep school as the priority.
2. Never play more than 4 tables. At this point I want to focus on learning, not bringing in paper.
3. Only play when I want to. Last month I burnt out some, and I put in a few tilted sessions because I felt that it was most important to put in hands. It wasn't productive and I want to change that this month.


Good Luck.

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Comments (16)

Last night I was playing 2/5 NLHE in Dublin. No other NLHE games were running, only two PLO tables. If anyone considers playing an EPT even I suggest playing multiple events and touring Europe, otherwise it probably isn't worth it. Anyway, in my 2/5 game last night GOD himself sat down. That's right, Lee Jones sat directly to my right. I introduced myself, we shook hands, and proceeded to chat it up. He was there for about 2 hours, and I have to say he is a really nice guy and it was a pleasure playing with him. I didn't even mind when he cracked my aces. I think I should have folded pre, but even against Lee it's a tough lay down.

2 votes

Comments (23)