The Tornado That Was My Poker Career

It's sad to admit, but in order to even try to piece together my poker career in my mind so that I could accurately describe it, I honestly had to go onto Cardplayer.com and search through my live MTT results in order to figure out where I have been and what I have done in the last five years.  It has been such a tumultuous period of my life that aside from the major highlights of my career, I honestly couldn't much tell you where I was at any given time period or for how long.  My professional poker career started in a manner that looking back upon it now is pretty clearly foolish and entirely irresponsible. I was 23 years old, had been out of college working dead-end-ish jobs for about two years, and had run myself into yet another financial hole.  I was working at the Guitar Center at the time, selling keyboards and digital pianos; a job that I was quite talented at, but one that was not monetarily rewarding enough to combat the immense debt I had built up making poor life decisions.  I was about to make yet another such decision, and by some unknown blessing, this poor lack of judgement jump started my poker career.

I was basically out of money, had accrued quite a bit of debt and couldn't even afford to pay my rent that month.  This was in November of 2008.  I had exactly $25.00 in my checking account, $0 in my savings, and $3100.00 left on my credit line of my only credit card.  (How I got this CC and why on earth they gave it to me at that point in my life is still beyond me...)  It was a Sunday morning, and I was scheduled to work that day.  I decided that instead of going to my job, it would be a wonderfully intelligent idea to drive myself up to Foxwoods Casino and take a shot.  The only tournament they had running that day was a $3000.00 buy in NLH event that was a prelim to the then WPT $10,000 Main.  I didn't know it at the time but this event was by far the lowest E.V. event on the schedule, and its field was comprised of about 100 or so of the most talented players on the East Coast, of which I was not one.

So I did what any responsible adult would do...I took my last three thousand dollars of credit, took a cash advance on my card and entered this event with my last life equity on earth.  Somehow, (and looking back I still don't understand how it is possible with the skill-set I possessed at the time), I got through this stacked field to place third for around $27,000.  This was an astronomical amount of money to me at the time.  More money than I had ever fathomed having in my possession as a 1-2 cash grinder.  I no call no showed that day from work, and have not set foot in a work environment as an employee since.

The next month I flat bought into the 2k mega-stack at Foxwoods...(I clearly to this point of the story have still not comprehended bankroll management skills, as I had a $10,000 effective roll at the time after relieving myself of my life debt.)  I bought into that one on my own dime, and ended up getting through another ~150 player field and chopping it 4 handed for $44,000.  At this point I was pretty much under the impression that I was going to make somewhere in the vicinity of $100,000 a month playing live poker tournaments for the rest of my life.  After all, I had played exactly two big live events lifetime, and had Final Tabled both of them, and chopped one.  I couldn't fathom there was ever an easier way to make a living, and I was quite excited that I had found such easy, consistent, and high paying work.  I had arrived!

 It only took me about a year of not running like god, and realizing that I had a lot of leaks to plug (Both in game and outside of it) to figure out that this was in no way the reality of this profession.

In the entire year of 2009, I cashed for less money than I had in the last month of 2008 when my poker career began.  This was my first experience with a live downswing.  I would make deep runs, but nothing seemed to really pan out.  I took my first trip down to the Borgata in Atlantic City, which to this date has become my absolute favorite venue in the entire country to play at.  The fields were huge, the competition was tough, there was media present and the whole poker area was always buzzing with action.  This was the life I had aspired to live.  I was so excited with the whole experience and lifestyle, that the entire year of 2009 was quite a blur.  I didn't have much poker success, but I had a lot of what I thought at the time was fun.  I traveled around between my home poker casinos in CT and the Borgata partying, drinking, drugging, and living a completely "free" and independent life.  My entire existence was about getting high or drunk and playing poker.  My life didn't have much more substance than that.  2009 was more of a year of networking for me than any real poker success.  I was starting to make a bunch of good friends and contacts on the East Coast poker scene.  I had made several deep runs at Borgata and begun to become one of the "regular" players that would be seen at every series they held.

 In 2010, my Career really started to take off and I began to make a name for myself and start adding some notable performances to my resume.  In May of 2010, I got an awesome backing opportunity at the very last second to get flown out to New Orleans and play in the WSOP Circuit event there.  I received the phone call with this offer at about six pm that day, accepted and flew there over-night to make it to the first event which started the next day.  I ended up having a long layover somewhere that I cannot remember at this point, and showed up to the casino on no sleep about five minutes before that event started.  After an exhausting day of playing, I bagged chips and finally went to sleep for the first time in over 48 hours.  I woke up the next morning, and after about 9 more hours of play, I won that event and my first WSOP Circuit ring.

 It was an amazing experience and the first time in my career that I had outright won an event.  I can still remember that feeling like it was yesterday.  I took my ring and my winnings, put them in the room, and promptly went out top party on Bourbon street.  God knows what happened that night, but I'm sure that whatever it was, I exhibited horrendous bankroll discipline again, because when I woke up, I was $3000 dollars lighter than I had been the night before.  That was pretty much the pattern of my life at this point.  My drug and alcohol use was truly starting to become my number one priority.  I found myself constantly drinking, using, and making horrible money management decisions as a result of it, but I chalked it up to being young and just having fun.  Poker enabled me to behave this way for quite some time before it all came crashing down on me, but this was the point in my life where I really lost control of everything, and didn't regain it again until now.

Coming off of this win, I made the decision that I was going to finally fulfill one of my biggest dreams and fly out to my first World Series of Poker.  I was fortunate to have friends of my family and people who I had met in poker that were willing to help me make this dream become a reality.  I found backing for a few of the $1500 prelims, and my mother and a close family friend decided that they were going to free-roll me for 50% of myself in the main event.  I absolutely could not wait.  I had never been to Vegas, not to the World Series of Poker, and I was astonished that my dreams were becoming reality before my very eyes.

The prelims didn't go so well, but that didn't really matter all that much to me.  I was about to play in my first WSOP Main Event, and I was extremely excited for it.  I remember sitting in that seat on day 1 and standing up to look around the room.  I remembered a time in college where I drunkenly proclaimed that I was going to play in that event one day, and how all of my peers laughed me off.  I took in that moment and still can remember that feeling as one of the most fulfilling moments of my life.  I ended up making a fairly deep run in my first ever main event, making it to day 6, and busting in 131st place.  I remember being absolutely devastated that day when I busted, being so sad for myself and claiming that I put my absolute all into that event.  Here's the part of the story that very few people know, and that I have had to live with for the rest of my career.

The night before that Main Event started, I was out with a bunch of friends at Gold Coast Casino bowling.  It was about midnight and everyone was having a few beers and hanging out as we did most nights.  About half of my friends, including myself were scheduled to play our day 1 the following day.  The other half had either already bagged chips, busted, or were scheduled to play the day following the next.  At about 1 am, everyone that was playing the next day decided that it was probably time to go to bed, as tomorrow was a huge day, and a great opportunity.  They said their goodbyes, and I decided I was going to stay out for one more hour with my friends who had the day off tomorrow.  I went to the bar and grabbed another pitcher of beer for us, and we played one more game of bowling.  That game turned into 8, and so did that pitcher, and by 6 am, I was still at the bar, blacked out drunk and I had about 5 hours until I was scheduled to play my first Main Event.  My good friend David Zeitlin and I had an auto swap for any common events we played, and he happened to be one of the people that was at the bowling alley with us that night.  The only thing of that night I remember was Dave trying emphatically to talk me into unregistering the event and playing it on a different starting day, as I was in no shape to compose myself in time for the tourney.  I told him I would be fine and that he need not worry about me, that I would unregister in the morning if I woke up and wasn't feeling up to playing.  He told me (and texted me to confirm given my state of awareness) that if I played the following day he would cancel our swap in the event and that he did not support my decision to play that day at all.  I woke up the next morning drunk, and on about 3 hours of sleep, and went to play the Main Event.  You would think that I would have the wherewithal and intelligence to take the advice of someone who I know to genuinely care about me, and of someone who I deeply respect both as a poker player and as a human being.  I didn't care what he had to say.  I never cared what anyone had to say.  I was a shining example of self-will run riot, and I operated in my life that way for as long as I can remember.

This type of out of control behavior and decision making was prevalent throughout my entire six day run in that main.  Every night after I would bag chips, I would immediately go to the bar or bowling alley, drink, smoke weed, do cocaine and party all night into the wee hours of the morning.  I would then drag my withered hungover and/or still drunk/high ass out of bed and go sit down at a poker table and try to play high level poker for a 10 Million dollar first place prize for 12 hours at a time.  I look back at it now and I can only shake my head.  Yes, I made a great run in that event.  And yes, I feel I played very well throughout its entirety.  But I can't help to think what the result might have been had I given myself every single opportunity to do my best.  I think about that in regards to alot of situations in my life at this point, but this was probably one of the more blatant examples of exactly how out of control I had become of my own choices.  I really cannot define this behavior as anything but complete insanity.

So life went on, and as a result of that deep run I got more and more opportunities to play.  I found attaining backing way easier, and I pretty much got to play any event I wanted to for the next few years.  My drinking and drug habit had become at this point an every day thing.  I really didn't like the person I had become and no amount of poker success really ever seemed to fill the void inside of me.  Between that main event and the middle of 2012, I only had one real significant score to speak of; a win at one of the January Boragata series in the 1k six max.  There was much more damage and wreckage being created in my life at this point than success.  I had begun a downward spiral that I really didn't know how to stop.

 In this time period, I cannot even fathom how much equity I lost as a result of alcohol and drug use and poor decision making.  I was now drinking deep in big events, during every stage of different tourneys.  On more than one occasion I blacked out an entire half of a day during a tournament only to hear third person how poorly I had played as a result of my drinking, with no recollection of the actual events that transpired.  I got myself banned from both Casinos in my home state of CT as a result of my behavior while drinking.  I got disqualified from an event at Foxwoods of which I was massive chip leader with 24 people left playing for around 40 thousand dollars.  I woke up 4 levels late to day three of a Borgata WPT Championship event at Borgata because I went out partying the night before and slept through my alarm, too drunk to even get out of bed.  You would think that at some point I would have been able to take a look around and see how unmanageable my life had become at this point, but I was just too full of fear and too lazy to take any of the required actions to make a change. 

Everything I described above is the history of my career to date leading into the events that I described in my first post in meeting Amanda and finally being inspired enough and in enough pain as a result of loathing myself to start making some changes.  This is a paraphrased version of my experiences to this date, but I think that what is far more important than my past experiences are my current ones and what I'm doing differently these days to ensure myself a future void of any of these nightmares I described above.  This is the likely the last description of the past that I will provide in this blog, because these days I am all about moving forward.  I believe it is important to understand where I have come from to be able to understand how different a place I am in currently, and how amazingly different a place I am aspiring to get to.  I hope you all continue to follow my journey with me as I move forward into a new and much more fulfilling and rewarding chapter of my life.  :)

To thine own self be true....