Where it all began (tl;dr)

I recently read that Pokerroom.com will be closing it's doors and merging with bwin. It's kind of sad for me because my very first poker account was at Pokerroom way back in the day (early 2004). I don't think I've ever written about how my poker journey began so here it is.

I was on spring break with a few buddies of mine in Colorado in late February 2004 when Chris Moneymaker reruns were being shown all the time on ESPN. We decided to do our own home game ($5 buy-in) and though none of us knew the rules completely, we all pretended to know what we were doing. I hadn't grasped the concept that a call completes the action, so when I would bet and get called, I tried continually string betting again. My buddies tried telling me this wasn't allowed but I didn't believe them. Anton screamed out: "Dude I am a poker master. You know what these are called? Flop, turn and river! I'm telling you, I know all about poker!"

I saw that poker could be played on the internet and so I did a google search for "poker." Back then Pokerroom was ranked Nr. 1 at google for that keyword so I registered an account and began playing play money games over their java client. Players got 1000 play money chips and those could be refilled every hour (?)

I literally had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know the difference between limit and NL but the limit tables were the first ones that appeared in the lobby so those are the ones I played. After losing all my play money over and over and not being able to refill, I fell for one of the stupidest marketing tactics ever: Make a real money deposit and get 10,000 play money chips for free! I am not kidding. I made my first deposit in order to get a play money bonus. I used Firepay back then which was directly linked to my US bank account. $30 was the min deposit and as you can imagine, it didn't take me long to lose it.

This was around April/May of 2004, about a month before I graduated high school in Kansas and moved back to Germany to do an internship at a film production company in Babelsberg. The $30 deposits happened about once a week and usually I would be playing .25/.50 limit poker, my full bankroll at the table, hopping from one table to another if the "feeling was good." I thought Pokerroom was charging me a fee for changing tables (I didn't realize I was posting blinds every time I sat down).

Still completely naive to the fact that there was strategy to the game, I decided that Pokerroom was rigged and that I needed a change of scenery. Someone mentioned Pokerstars in the Pokerroom chat box so I went to their site. Immediately I saw a reference to Chris Moneymaker. Hey, I know that guy. But wait, I have to download the software? That seemed very scary at the time, but I overcame the fear and downloaded it anyway. I focused my attention to tournaments and realized that while my money was still disappearing, it was bleeding a lot slower than usual.

Around that time I also created a PartyPoker account and tried my luck at their cash games. Remember, this was 2004 and games were CRAZY soft back then. I was part of the reason why games were so soft. My deposit size had switched from $30 to $100 and $150 deposits. Finally I realized that there had to be something missing and that's when I ordered my first poker books. I also started reading through some poker forums. I then discovered bwin.com, which was part of Bossmedia back then. I had a very simple goal: Make 50 Euros a day playing NL25. It sounded simple and it was simple. The games were so ridiculously juicy that all you had to do was sit around, wait for a premium hand and get paid. Bossmedia only allowed you to play 1 table back then, lol.

This strategy worked for a couple months and I thought I had it made. I remember Sutti asking me why I didn't play higher than Nl50 and I said "cuz why should I when the NL50 game is so easy?" I don't even want to know how much money could have been made back then playing Nl100-400, though it would have been stretching my bankroll in the beginning.

I finally got bored and decided to seriously pursue SNGs. I'm not sure how much time passed but I eventually switched back to Pokerstars and PartyPoker and made a little money grinding low limit SNGs. Eventually I was playing $50 and $100 SNGs when I made the switch back to BossMedia, this time at CelebPoker because I had discovered rakeback. It was now 2005 and the games were still ridic soft. The 10-man SNGs usually consisted of 7 donkeys, 2 half decent players and 1 semi donkey (me). I was not good, but the others were just so much worse.

Online poker has evolved a lot since then, the games have become a lot tougher thanks mainly to training sites in my opinion. Books also had a lot of useful information but usually most of it couldn't be applied to online poker games. I'm really curious how the games will continue to develop in the next 2-5 years. It's still relatively easy to make money in online poker but everyone knows it's getting increasingly difficult. Anyway, not sure why I wrote this but I thought it would be fun to document what a stupid fish I was back then.

By the way, I just checked my Pokerroom account. Apparently my account is frozen because it's registered in the USA but my account page is still displayed. Real money: $0.03 Play money: $11541.50

"Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end"

Gratz Nico!

Congrats to Nico aka Bunkerlinho who just took 2nd at EPT Warsaw for €205k! Sooooo close to the win but an awesome result nonetheless. The plan is that now he'll be so satisfied that he'll forget about his weight loss prop bet!

I guess the only people happier than Nico are the shareholders at bet365 ;) I'm just kidding dawg, nice work!

lol DPMaments

The DPM was surprisingly well organized this year, props to the Spielbank Hamburg for actually running a professional tournament. The quality of play was just as poor as I expected, there are so many German "live pros" who burn money for a living and call it poker. I don't want to know where the money comes from, but it's great that they pump so much of it into the poker community.

I survived Day 1 with a short stack, none of the hands I played were all that interesting. Going into Day 2 with blinds of 1200/2400/300, I knew it wouldn't take me long to find a shoving spot. I think it was the third hand where it was folded to me in the CO and I shoved 17k with 53o. Moritz Kranich woke up in the SB with AJ and reshoved, the board ran out KK4AA and I was busto in 40th place or so.

I hopped on the next train back home and now I'll be here probably until EPT Prague. I really want to grind it out these next few weeks, with a little luck I may end up even for the month ;)

Broke

*Warning: This post contains hand histories that may not be appropriate for all viewers. If you hate bad beat stories, stop reading here.

First of all, no I'm not broke (yet). I've been shotting some of the higher stakes games lately with less than stellar results. In a perfect world I should be breakeven, but the tally looks more like this:

It's a tiny sample size and short term results are meaningless anyway, but it sucks that I hit my downswing inevitably after starting to play some higher games. November is rigged and if you don't believe me, I have evidence.

I've been known to hit a one-outer every once in a while, so I guess what goes around comes around? I don't even want to know what my flop equity was.

He must know that he can't be in too great of shape for 130bb on that flop, maybe he felt it coming.

Swapshop aka Hei K O goes for the classy hit n run. Hit the ace and sit out.

Setup I guess, got it in bad. This is when things were getting relatively frustrating.

In hindsight this is probably a river fold vs this particular villain.

I don't always run bad. When he ships the flop it's obvious he has a ton of outs, but every once in a while dodging works out.

LOLovich is all you can say to this one.

Here's me sucking out just for good measure. I'll call this a half-Heiko, hitting the ace vs KK but stay sitting.

He was crushed, I was doing the crushing. And then along came Mary.

I popped my €200/400nl cherry by shortstacking. I built up a little, then busted with 88 vs KK preflop, but I did manage to stick in one tiny gem. If you don't play at Boss, you won't understand:

So now it's time to lick my wounds and hopefully get this turned around. It goes without saying that this downswing is the biggest of my life numbers wise, which is fairly obvious considering the size of the games being played. Still I'm proud of myself for not letting it affect my real life mood, this is something I am getting better at with every downswing.

I go to Hamburg midweek for the DPM, I'll probably blog again when I get back on the weekend.