My Poker Story

I've always loved poker. As a child, I excelled at games, and was very interested in them. Bridge, chess, monopoly. I even developed a unique strategy for Go-Fish, which is to just ask for the same card over and over again, so that you reveal nothing about your hand (it's not really that effective). So poker was a natural fit for me.

I came of age during the poker boom. WPT and the WSOP were on TV and poker was making it's way into Canadian casinos. I still remember those first, heady steps into the wild frontier that is online poker. At first I was a complete degenerate. I'd jump into games, way over my head and out of my bankroll. Usually I'd go bust. Every once in a while I'd spin up a roll and then go broke. Then I'd find some call center work and grind it out until my next paycheck. 

My first experience being a reg came from Alex's game. This game originated at Scott's Corner, a bar in London Ontario. Every Thursday night we would gather at 7 pm and play .25/.50 NLHE. Despite seldom having more than $50 to $100 to my name, I was almost always a winner by the end of the night, as my opponents were all extremely inexperienced. We played at a big round table near the entrance. One night there were a few people there finishing up, and I asked them if we could trade tables with them. This pissed off the bartender, who kicked us out for the night. From then on the game was at Alex's place, which was just down the street. 

Poker night turned into poker weekend, and it was pretty epic. People would show up, doing blow, and dropping all sorts of money. Alex and I, as the tighter regs, would win simply because we folded the bottom 30%. Unfortunately the short handed play didn't really prepare me for full ring at the casino. I was adept at playing fast and loose 3 or 4 handed, but that style doesn't work with 9 people at the table. So my first few casino trips, when I would get a few thousand bucks to my name and head out to Windsor or Niagara Falls to try my luck as a grinder inevitably failed. Between hotel expenses and my own inexperience I never really had a chance,

Things changed when I moved to Kitchener. There was an add on Kijiji for a room to rent with some college kids and I moved in. The first couple nights I had to room share with some Indian kid, but after that I had a room of my own. They even let me chain smoke in it, so long as I kept the window open. Those guys were great room mates, but I was very introverted and kept to myself the whole time, just grinding online poker.

It was during this time period that I first had some real success, both online and live. I had been obsessed with poker for a couple of years at that point, and spent enough time on the virtual felt and reading all the strategic content available on the internet to have reached a modicum of competency. Through constant play, some risk taking, and a lot of dumb luck I managed to accumulate over $100,000. A lot of money for a kid my age. I was maybe 22 at the time. 

At one point I moved into a luxury condo with some spoiled rich kid from Toronto attending University at Waterloo. He was a decent room mate. I made most of that $100,000 on the World Poker Exchange. I had some decent runs on PokerStars and Party Poker, and built up maybe $10,000 or $20,000 in my bankroll, but WPEX was where I had some breakout success. They had a 100% rakeback deal, incredible as that may sound, and it was very popular. Even if I busted my bankroll, which I would often do, playing short handed limit poker, a high variance slug fest, my rakeback was enough to get started again next week. One week I just started running really good, and I kept moving up in stakes until I was playing 30/60 and 50/100 and crushing everyone in sight. Eventually I cashed out about $85,000 USD, and left another $15,000 on the site to rebuild. I busted that bankroll but had a nice little six figure balance in my bank account. I also had some success in live poker, playing in a 5/5 underground game where a legendary Yugoslavian whale named Bobby frequently donated. Bobby, high and drunk out of his mind half the time, seemed to have an unlimited supply of money to lose. I even started winning on my casino trips.

Unfortunately things changed. My roommate wanted me to leave, so I moved in with a buddy of mine, Eli. Eli was a great guy, but not a great influence on me at the time. I had a lot of money, and I spent a lot, on rent, on partying, on going out. And I donated at high stakes no limit games online. I smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot of booze, and lost a lot of money. Eventually I went broke. I moved out of the house I was renting into a bedroom.

The room I was renting at was a pretty weird house. One of the tenants was mentally challenged. The leader of the crew was an obese homosexual on disability. He tried to get me hooked up on disability too. I probably should have gone for it, since I actually do have a disability, specifically nerve damage in my left leg on account of a bike-truck accident when I was 10. Back then it wasn't a big deal, but these days it is a real bitch. Anyway I stayed there for a few months. At this point I got staked to play $4.40 tourneys on Stars and I was doing well. Did some profit chops. I also degened at 2/4 limit with my roll when I was losing in the tourneys. But my backer wouldn't let me move up. I tried applying for other backers but then he bad mouthed me to them cause he was jealous that I was searching for a new backer. So that got all screwed up. Then the homosexual guy sold my bed and when doing so discovered my ecstasy which he stole. So I got angry and broke a bunch of stuff and spread salt everywhere. I dunno. Left my computer behind too.

I tried to figure out something to do. That was when I got into writing actually. I didn't get a job. For some reason I never really wanted to work. I tried grinding online, which wasn't working out for me. A friend of mine was living in a luxury condo downtown, and his neighbours had gone back to Asia for the summer, so I squatted in their suite. It was pretty disgusting when I got there, and I didn't make things any better. Those were lean times. Supposedly I was watching the animals, although the gecko died a few days into my tenure as lizard-sitter. 

After that my friends let me move in with them. Chris and Dylan. Chris is now dead, bless his heart. Overdosed on ketamine. Dylan is still alive. We had some good times in that condo. Did lots of drugs. Chris loved drugs as did I. Ketamine was our drug of choice generally. Anyway, eventually Chris fucked off to Grand Bend, and I ended up in the apartment alone. Then after a few months there I left to Niagara Falls. I lived in a motel and started grinding 2/5 NLHE. I actually did pretty well, as I had some experience playing online. After a couple of months I was up like 20,000 or something in cash and had barely touched my bank account which had maybe $70,000 or something. Then I sat down at a blackjack table and quickly lost a large amount of money. Maybe $7000. Just betting big and losing. That was my introduction to blackjack.

So the next few months is a bit of a blur. I was basically a high rolling ploppy (ploppy being a pejorative term for losing blackjack player). Essentially, I was using a sort of martingale strategy where the more I would lose the more I would bet. And it was sort of working for a while. At one point I accumulated a ton of chips. Tons and tons of grey chips. I was still playing poker too, so I would bounce around from blackjack to poker. And I started reading about blackjack online, about counting cards and the hilo system. And I started to count cards. But then I hit a downswing naturally enough, since i was playing in a negative ev game, and I lost a ton of my profits. But my skills were improving. I was starting to count. Eventually I was playing a winning game, and I got into this rhythm where I would wake up, have breakfast at the cafe, cab to the casino, then I would drink coffee, cranberry juice, and water, and I would grind blackjack until I got sleepy. 8-10 hours or whatever. And I won a tremendous amount of money. By the end of it I had like $200,000 in chips and cash, plus my bank account I was loaded. I remember my last two shoes. The second last one went highly negative early on, and I played through it, breaking even. Then the last shoe the count go high. I ended up splitting and resplitting and doubling 33 v 4, which probably wasn't even the right play, but I won 6 hands at $400 each and that was it. I got backed off.

From there I took a cab to Casino Rama whic hwas like $300 or $400. I won another $20,000 there and got backed off. And then I hit up Caesars Windsor. Then I was back in Niagara Falls. At one point I lost $100,000 in cash in a briefcase. It was pretty stupid. Then I went to Montreal and I won like $70,000 betting really hard. 

So after a trip across Canada, by bus, hitting up all the different casinos, I ended up renting an apartment in London Ontario. 420 central. Loved that place. I got an electric bike a geo. Chris and I had good times biking around the city. Spent a lot of money partying. A lot. Ran for mayor. That was a bit of a disaster.