I've been playing poker for about 4 years now...I started out playing with a few buddies that I had played football with throughout the years...$5 games just for fun and to obtain the inital uneducated adrenaline rush that you get from poker early on.
Once I got my first debit card at age 18, I went bonanzas with the $50 deposits on Pokerstars. I was a long way away from being able to spell bankroll management let alone practice it like a professional. I was an overdraft machine and found myself in the negative with the local banking branch quite a few times. My buddy Randy that I've chatted with online (mainly about video/computer games) taught me the meaning of the blinds and how to play my hands according to position and stack sizes.
After a few handfuls of victories in STT/Multi table SNG's, I began to realize that skill was the prominent factor in the game. So we started attacking the $5 SNG's, and even made a challenge between us to see who could profit the most in a months time. We had even made a website where we could blog and track our stats. It was a ton of fun.
Well a few weeks in, he hadn't seen much success and sort of fell off. Meanwhile I started playing $10 SNG's about 10 at a time and eventually burnt out completely...and ultimately went bust. It took a few months, but in early 2007 I was at it again. The challenge that we had was inspired by Gidders SNG Challenge on p5's (which I'm sure that you remember.) And for the next year and a half or so I had made many challenge promises to myself...but just kept breaking them and playing out of the bankroll.
We had a guy teach us how to play 7 card Stud, and eventually we mastered Stud 8/b and Razz. While I'm pretty good at the game, I only played it on the cash tables...and every time I would burn out from a stretch of SNG's, I would just put it all on a 10/20 table and eventually blow it. Somehow I could always convince myself that it was worth playing...since one time I took $30 and turned it into $3800 over 12 hours time. I started at micro stakes Stud, and was eventually playing 100/200 with Greg Raymer before I pryed myself away from the computer and passed out. I cashed some of those winnings out, but found a way to blow the rest of it between cash tables and higher buy-in SNG's/tournies. (This was around the time that I met you while we were both grinding $16 single table SNG turbos.)
I was living in Virginia for about a years time, and decided to move back to Indiana with my parents. I've had a handful of serving jobs where I would wait tables for very long fucking hours and just blow my money at the bars. (This was a problem especially when I was 19, servers usually have no problem getting into bars underage since bartenders know that they'll tip phatt.)
So as you can see money management is a problem for me in poker and life in general. It didn't help that I started poking smot when I was around 20...right before I started doing stand up comedy open mic's. It's been a fun 2 years and I still get very high most of the time...but I realize that it takes away as much from my wallet as it does from my motivation. I've backed off from smoking quite a bit over the last few months. Fucking rocks tho obv. However...after living in my own apartment down the street (for no good reason) and racking up more debt from damage resulting from all of the parties I threw there and just not being able to pay rent for the last few months...I'm back living with the parents. Currently I have a serving job nearby that I work a few shifts per week, but as much as full time.
I'd say during the last 4 years of playing poker, I probably have played full time about 10-15% of the time...the other 85-90% was time played usually after working a double in the restaurant...either a little bit drunk or high...trying to build the roll and let poker support me. I know that my attempts to go about it have been poorly managed and misguided. But a lot of times I wonder that if it's taken this long to get the hang of things, then I may never be able to go for it the right way and eventually have it lead to success.
I'm a winning player overall in SNG's, and have been able to turn a profit while 15-20 tabling with table ninja. But I'd be willing to bet that most of my losses have been at the cash tables (per usual poor gambling habits.) It doesn't help that I made the sarcastic poker lessons on the BuckLoX youtube channel either. Over the past couple of years, I've found myself playing poorly just for that bucklox entertainment factor.
I havn't had the cash to register for training sites, although I would love to be able to learn MTT's and start playing full time with a few SNG's on the side. I'd like to hear about how you conquered these issues that most poker players have to go through, and would get a lot out of any suggestions/advice that you might have for me. (Even if it's STOP NOW AND KILL YOURSELF) My dream is to play poker to support my finances on my own schedule, that way I could do stand up comedy at night and try and move up the ladder in the show business. Thanks for reading - Mark "BucKLoX" Lenington
Mark I have always counted you as a friend, and as a friend I am going to be completely honest with you. I get emails like this a lot and usually don't have time to respond to them, but your honesty is something I appreciated, and I think a lot of people could learn from this.
The first thing I see is a lot of dreaming and not a ton of focus. You assert you've never had the money for training sites, but you have made money from a specific type of game. You know what you excel at but don't stick to it, because you are yielding to a gambling urge, the same urge that usurps 90% of poker players.
While it's true it takes a certain type of recklessness to be a poker professional I think it's more accurately a numbness to the swings of the game. You cannot feel a rush simply because it's a ton of money and you might get lucky, you need to feel like you knew you were +EV going into the game and that excited you.
Focusing on that is what winners do. What you were doing is chasing cheap thrills, and gambling. The idea you might just win big and all your problems will be solved. That's not how a professional thinks. For those reasons I'm led to believe you are more of a gambler, seeking a larger and larger thrill, than you are a businessman.
I'm not going to lie, I've not had much success in convincing natural gamblers into becoming professional poker players, but it can be done. You just have to realize it requires reworking how you think about the game completely. You need to become almost addicted to seeking profit, not getting rich quick off of a random gamble.
Whether you can build this in yourself or not is up to you, and your conviction. If I were you I'd work up one more bankroll, say of $2,000, and say I'm going to start working on the lowest stakes SNGs or cash games or whatever it is you want to learn. I would give myself a large number of buy-ins, so if I was doing SNGs I would make it $5.00 and $10.00 ones, and if it were cash games 50 NL. I would make a list of small attainable goals, and brainstorm how I was going to reach them. Flexible attainable goals. Not "I want to be playing this limit by date X" just "I want my win rate to be better by this date" or instead of "I'll play Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays" instead go "I want to play X number of hours per week." Make realistic goals, and become addicted to achieving them. We're trying to drive our car in a controlled fashion down the road, not just drive a 150 MPH and hope to God we don't crash.
You say you don't have the money for training sites, and all you want is this. I say these are excuses. You're back in your parents' place, so most likely low bills. Stop smoking the weed. I didn't ever smoke coming up, it saps away motivation and money. Even now, I haven't smoked since I left Malta, I'm feeling better, and we don't want other things effecting us or controlling us. Drinking with your friends needs to be kept in perspective. Once or twice a week, not every night. Your definable days off.
Create a study schedule in regards to what you're trying to learn. Watch a video every day before you session. At the end take five hands and discuss them with friends, or post them on Pokerpwnage where myself or my colleagues will help you analyze them. This is your job now, treat it as such.
Tell yourself this is the last time you are going to try and become a professional. This is the time you either prove to yourself you can do it or not. Don't flounder, don't gamble, don't go "I could really become a pro if I just focused, but for now I want to chase this game." Again, bullshit excuses, put your mind to it and own this.
Achieving small attainable goals that you set for yourself will give you confidence. It all starts with baby steps. As my good friend Michael Baca says, "compartmentalize, focus on just what you have planned for the day." This is how I lost weight in high school. This is how I got to where I am in poker. Small attainable goals, slow progress, not chasing shortcuts. It's very hard to change ourselves in a week. It's much easier to do it slowly over a year.
If you put your best into it and it still doesn't work out (which I can't imagine will happen if you follow this plan), then you can always know you tried your absolute best. You will never have to wonder.
What I see happen 90% of the time is people realize poker is a seriously long haul and while they can make money at it going about it the right way it's not worth it to them. If that's the case then that's fine too. I love reading history books but I could never be a history professor because I do not love it that much. It's just a hobby of mine. I'd love to try to do stand up comedy but I am way too chicken shit to go up on a stage and try it. You love it enough that you got yourself through that fear repeatedly, that is your skill, that is your area., We all have different things we love more.
If you really do love it as much as you need to then you should be down for a slow upward climb in poker which could take years.
I hope this helps man. Good luck to you.
