Hello Kids, My Name is John and I’m Still in Recovery

Man-law speaks of few times when a dude can cry and other dudes should understand the emotional outburst. For example, say your buddy’s dog dies, he gets kicked in the balls by a psycho ex-girlfriend, or he loses something meaningful like a Sweet Sixteen game; perhaps 60 percent of his bankroll in a crappy card room against crappy players . . . The path of this strange rambling behemoth is now known and you the reader can get out of its way or read on about a poker pro getting run over.

Every time I think I know what it means to be a professional poker player I find myself holding my metaphorical bankroll balls, swiftly kicked down a few thousand dollars, sometimes on the brink of tears. Amid “the Pain,” “the Confusion” and “the Anger,” I often fumble through the early morning’s events searching for the lesson to be learned.

And often, not every time, but often enough, that one lesson is this: I knew better.

What comes next is not bragging; it is a confession of ignorance, and 100% true. The more it sounds like I’m bragging, the more I’m punishing myself. You’ll see. Its penance for my poker sins and like a clean-but-now-fried junkie speaking to a classroom of high school students, I’m hoping my story reaches at least one of you and a lesson is learned from my Mistakes, my Excess, and my Ego.

I decided I was going to do this for a living and diligently turned $300 into $28,000 in about 2 ½ months doing what I knew worked well for me. My formula: beat the living shiz out of 1-2 No Limit and 2-5 No Limit cash games in Midwestern casinos by selecting tables where I would be the best or second-best player. I also refused to do what crappy low-limit players do once a night – pay off for large amounts of their stack. For two months I was scary. I just knew, just knew! I would turn my $300 buy-in into $1200 in a few hours. And I did just that, a lot. I paid myself out of my roll reasonably and settled off most of my immediate debts. I learned the first lesson of being a pro – crushing a game.

Then, I promptly flew to Vegas and beat the WSOP side games for 5K in eight days. I got so bored and lonely beating the 2-5 NL $500 cap in the Rio that I paid an extra $200 to fly home six days early. I didn’t care about the extra cost; I didn’t care about missing out on all the soft WSOP action. I thought every play I made was a good play. There were some minor mental meltdowns, some mid-level bankroll fluctuations, and some larger, longer-term debt to be paid off, but after 2 ½ months I held a $14,000 bankroll and I thought I knew what it meant to be a poker pro. I learned the second lesson of being a pro – excess amid arrogance. And then I got a sign of things to change. I took a flight home from, no kidding, Southwest Airline’s gate C7. If you don’t know about C7, ask Chris.

Upon arriving in Nashville’s BNI airport, I made up my mind – I wouldn’t play poker for the next four weeks, returning to the felt only after I’d completed a full-scale life move to Louisville, Kentucky from two hours south in a college-town called Bowling Green. Three days removed from Vegas I’m bored as hell in this small town and I decide to put some money online and grind out some entertainment and cash. I hate online poker. Hate it. I know I’m a loser online yet something drew me to it that morning. Meltdowns birthed by boredom.

Not much was running so I sat down at 5-10NL short on Party. This was a game a little bigger than I normally play, but I’m a pro, right? Four buy-ins later, I quickly erased an incredible Vegas trip. I had a bad month playing only six hours on my living room couch in my underwear.

Planning my trip to the bank to deposit the missing funds, I took solace in still being up a thousand from the Vegas trip AND I was heading to Louisville to find an apartment the next day. I could rebound by beating Caesars, the place I built my roll. I could, that is, if I possessed the ability to stop a bad run whenever it was convenient for my roll. It didn’t matter what limits I played, I got beat. 1-2 NL, 2-5 NL, 10-20 kill, 20-40 limit, even 4-8 limit. I tried them all. I even sat short at the 5-10-25 PLO game which is WAY over my roll just to try to parlay a small win into a good comeback.

One hand sticks out. It’s 1-2 NL $300 cap and I get it all in on the flop with a pair and an open-ended straight flush draw against an opponent I’ve played before. Believe me, he’s just horrible. He’s holding the low-limit nuts, a big over pair. Turn a brick, river a brick. I sit back, sigh and say ‘damn, that’s just my luck this week.’ He looks me in the eye and says ‘It ain’t about luck. It’s a game of skill.’ I just smirk and walk away from the table. In that hand I’m a 65% favorite and somehow I’m in no position to disagree! In three days my roll went from $14K to $5K.

To top it all off, most of the apartments I really liked wanted 6 months rent in advance considering I don’t have a normal ‘job’ with a consistent ‘paycheck.’ Don’t worry, I found a place, but had to front only 3 months rent. Now I have to play the 1-2 NL with a low variance style to build my stack back to 10K, where I can make normal withdrawals and feel more comfortable with my risk. With my roll like this, I can’t watch Rounders even. I tried but it feels too contrived.

I’ve realized one subtle but important difference between poker pros and poker amateurs – when bad things get worse, the pro realizes he knows better and will make adjustments to his level of risk or style of play. Yet when bad things get worse, the amateur remains delusional, cursing luck, dealers and online poker.

Because you know it’s rigged, right?

If you see my baldness on the 2-5 NL table, tell me to get my sweet ass back to 1-2 where I belong.