Part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 2009 was a grand year. I am 23 years old, will turn 24 late in the year. I am starting to settle down on the drugs and alcohol (not completely but a bit). I log a lot of hours and am playing at my peak level.
There wasnt much in early 09 I can remember. So I will jump to the late spring/early summer. This would be known as “The Summer of the Israelis!”
As best as we were told this is what happened. A very wealthy Israeli man gets ahold of Carbon and wants to play online. Which is illegal in Israel. So Carbon obliges. This wealthy man wants to basically run his own Israeli group. So Carbon accepts massive deposits from this guy and this guy dishes money out to generic accounts that his friends used. All of the usernames were like Momo324 or Momo474. It was blatantly obvious who was Israeli and who was not. There is now dozens if not hundreds of Israelis playing decently big stakes and some were playing nosebleeds and they were all awful. Just fucking awful.
This would be the only time I break strict BRM (after the JERRY2009 incident, fwiw I play Jerry a lot more after that he holds his own but I am winner on him). The Israelis were dragging us up to 10knl. There would be 9handed 10knl games with up to three Israelis on them. I sat those games occasionally. I should have sat them more looking back on it. My roll at this point is 200k~ and I keep 100k on Carbon and cash out excess whenever there is some (basically I had strings of checks pending at all times) so 10k wasnt exactly a comfortable loss. I only log 1k~ hands at that stake and I win a couple buy ins at most. I look back at is as a shot I should have taken more, never has there been softer 10knl online. Scout326 (google if unaware of this guy) was better than a lot of these Israelis.
My friends made great money that summer. I did too. When it was dying down a bit I had a 300k roll. Made 100k in a matter of 3-4 months. This would draw some legitimate players into Carbon though. There was always more competition after this event but it was still the best site I was playing.
I email Poker Stars at some point in 2009 asking to be unbanned and provide details of what I am doing on other sites. They oblige and give me my account back.
I grind a bit on there but the games are just not as soft. I book small win rates in FTP and PS cash games. Under 3bb100 when I was doing 2-4x that on Carbon. Was much less stressful on Carbon also. Stars and FTP were mentally draining. Was a lot of really good players at 1knl. So I basically just play Sundays on the big sites and mix games or stuff just for change of pace.
At some point in 2009 I am on a big skid on FTP and have literally 1,061$ in account. I am not going to reload it as I honestly hated FTP. FTP had the smallest average win rates of all sites that were tracked (PTR or Sharkscope/OPR the studs of online and win rates were about 70% of Stars win rates). Now logically this is not crazy as FTP was a tougher field than Stars. Stars had more players and the bulk of people who play multiple sites are competent. I have some data that I think proved FTP is goofy. I want to conceal my usernames in this story but here is what I can show you easily. If you look at high volume MTT players, go back to OPR and dig through results. Wins come in bunches. In an earlier part of this story I mentioned I went 1-1-X-2 in the Sunday 200$ Horse MTT on FTP, then dont cash it for a year? I have looked through my MTT history on FTP and when I win one tourney I almost always have two more top 2 finishes on the same day or next day. DuckU wins back to back Sundays majors on FTP which is insane (he was a stud though).
Now for the final thing that made me hate FTP. This is gonna branch off into a lovely story about my mom. She wants to learn how to play poker so I give her a secondary FTP account I made which dons the same username as my Carbon name, so I keep it concealed. I dont have sharkscope so I cant go reverify the info but she plays almost exclusively 3$ 90 man KOs. She is a terrrrrible poker player. She color tags every single player she plays with with a base color and changes the color if necessary if she likes or dislikes you. The color tags are nothing poker related, and everything like or dislike related. Aggressive players were disliked because they raised her (or people who beat her in a pot). Passive fish were liked (they never raise her) and everyone else was just the neutral color she chose. My mother plays several thousand of these (I had to xfer her money soooo many times) and loses at an impressive rate. However, if you do detailed searches on those 90 mans an odd statistic is seen. She had considerably more first place finishes than ANY other position at the final table. Which is odd, shes brutally bad (sorry mom). I will say that I in no ways ever thought or think any poker site is rigged for anyone. All sites were beatable. The best players win the money, I just think FTP had a boom switch and doom switch I suppose but nothing was aimed at anyone specifically (I guess the claim would be fish gotta eat too to want to keep playing, fate was given artificially on FTP sometimes, I say this as someone who won a good chunk of money on there over my life)
Ok back to having 1,061$ in my account after a big downer on there. Havent cashed any MTT of substance in a while. I dont play much cash on there. Its Monday and I register the 1k Monday. Usually a 300-400 player field.
I remember nothing of the early tourney or even mid tourney but I remember a couple hands from the final table. (Yea I register for total account balance and FT)
6 or 7 handed and I had been card dead, blinding away. I open rip KQhh in early for like 10bb and guy behind rips his 20bb and a big stack jams over that. So we are all in 3 ways.
All three hands shown are my KQhh, the guy behind me has 99ds and the guy behind him has JJhd
Flop animations spread out 2s 3s 9x
Gooooood game me.
Turn 10s
Oh hey I have one out now!
River Jc
Oh hey I hit a one outer!
And just like that I am 30~ bb deep and back in the mix. The 99 busted so I jump a level too.
I have a friend who plays for a living who railed that FT who still brings that hand up. Wont ever forget that hand I dont think, just absurdly dead on flop.
We get down to 3 handed and I open button with J8cc bb defends get a J high flop and I end up stacking my 20bb~ to J9 for 3rd place. Was 39k. Not bad result for case money. I remember sending pic of my account balance to a friend after registering and it was like 89 cents or something.
Some time after that my FTP account crossed over 100k but I dont recall how. I think I had a bit of a cash heater and some marginal scores in MTTs along with trading money from other sites. Just remember having 100k on two different sites which I thought was cool as every dime I ever made from poker stemmed from selling playchips on Stars years earlier.
Pretty late in 09 I move into a nice apartment and for the first time in my life buy a nice vehicle. I was driving the same truck I had in highschool (a 98 ford f150 extended cab with 300,000 miles on it with original motor) and needed a new one badly. So i buy a 2007 F150 loaded up with every feature available (was still a used truck) for 25,000$. This was the moment I felt I had made it to be honest. It felt really good making that purchase. I squander money at the bars (a trip to the bar never cost less than 500$ buying shots and shit. My friends were all day laborers basically so I gladly bought round after round of shots, wasnt really showing off I just wanted to have a good time) and on stupid stuff like RC airplanes that I wreck first flight, telescopes, hockey gear etc but I never bought anything that made me flashier, this truck was the first purchase that did that.
Late in 09 I am at a local casino on the weekend of a 1600$ mtt. Get hammered drunk (live poker was still just a vacation for me) and lose like 10k. The next day I play that MTT. Bag. The next day we come back and I go on a tear and make FT as chip leader. Continue that tear literally making zero mistakes, everything I did was right. Obviously ran well as thats how you do everything right, but I made a few good folds a few 3b/4b/5b with air that were successful, just everything lined up. I win 80k which made me feel better about the 10k I fucked off on that Friday. It remains the only MTT score live of over 25k. I dont play a ton of them, just when they are local and I skip plenty. Id prefer to just play cash forever where I get no tax forms. After this tournament I am at my peak roll basically. I am just shy of a 400k roll when I peak. Had I been disciplined with my money and put more hours in earlier who knows where I would have been. I would guess at this point in my life I had made 700k playing poker, I spent stupid amounts of money had a few pit spews just was reckless in general.
2010 starts off with a trip down under. Aussie Millions is where I was headed. I had won a seat on Carbon. I pack a bag, grab 25,000 in cash, head to the airport and am on my way.
Flying to Australia is a bit of a trip. My flight route went Tulsa to Denver to LAX then to Melbourne. I departed LAX at 10PM on Thursday to show up in Melbourne early Saturday around 9AM. 17~ hour flight and from Oklahoma a 17 hour time difference, forward. Lose a day and a half on that flight. I had taken a few xanax with me for the long flight and had a drink or two right as the flight took off and passed out. I was sitting in a row of 3 seats on the right side of the plane next to a good looking young Australian couple who were headed back from an American vacation. I had the aisle seat (there was a ton of leg room though) and I literally fall asleep an hour ish into flight and wake up at a later time. My contacts were stuck to my eyes from the sleep, could barely open my eyes and I look over and ask them how far out we were. They said “the captain just came on and said were about half an hour out”. Sweet... I slept for like 15 fucking hours, yay xanax, the first time ever drinking and xanax ever did me any good.
I get to my hotel which is a block or two from the Crown Casino and I walk down to take a look. A couple 5-10 seats were open and I hand them some cash and they say I have to exchange for Aussie Dollars. This was right after the recession and the exchange rate at that time was strong for Australia. I think they were 93 cents on the dollar.
I play some cash for a few days. I drink excessively every day. One day at a 10-20 game I am at the table with LuckyChewy BalugaWhale and several other studs (they have zero clue who I am nor need they know) but my drunken self tries to set up a prop bet. I wanna bet 5000$ that I can have a cocktail every half hour for 12 hours and book a win in the game we were at. No one wanted it (I was drunk and they likely wanted me to leave them alone, they were all buddies it seemed).
So my bad ass self decides to just do it anyways. About 6-7 hours in I am pretty fucking drunk and up like 12-13k and my 14-15k stack was made involving 9 1,000$ chips. I remember getting bored of the game that had turned nitty and started putting those 9k chips in without looking. Did it back to back hands and no one called. The third hand I look at AJo and rip the 9 1k chips in the pot again (I kinda remember thinking that this was a value rip after the previous two hands. As if someone would just pile in A8 lol) and a guy with 6-7k calls off. He has QQ and holds.
This session that I was up 12,000~ ends up felting my cash for the trip. Literally go from 12k winner to 20k loser (I was down 5k on trip from playing the 5k HU tourney).
Fortunately for me my aunt was flying down with her girlfriend (yea shes a lesbian) in two days so I called my sister had her get 25k out of my safe give it to my aunt and she would bring me some cash. The next two days I play online in my hotel room. My aunt shows up a couple days later and were back in action!
I end up drinking relentlessly and losing most of that 25k. I busted the 10k main level one barreling three streets with air. I played excellent in Australia to say the least. Probably some of the least disciplined behavior I have ever exhibited. I was in one of the most unique countries on earth for 15 days and never made it more than a mile from the casino and the only reason I made it a mile was I met up with some chick who was an exchange student at my highschool and was from Melbourne (dont worry she wasnt cute). (As a matter of fact I was highly disappointed with the quality of the women in Melbourne).
The only other things worth telling from that trip was escorts were legal, I am pretty sure the strip clubs didnt allow you to tip money to girl on stage (only buy dances) and you couldnt tip the poker dealers. A funny story about the escorts. I hire one one night. I had done this in Vegas a time or two but was always shitfaced when I had done it. I do it sober in Australia. She meets me and I am thinking what the fuck am I doing. Was weird for me. Barely mess around (brief bj was peak) and I am like I cant do this. I felt bad about paying for sex. So I give her 800$ for nothing basically. Just weirded me out knowing how bad that life is. Drunk me would never had a second thought, but sober me did.
I head home stuck 45k or something. Was a bad trip to say the least. This is about the point where things start trending down for me. Im not long after having a 400k roll (I am still near that at this point) and having a massive year (2009 I won over 250k) but some future events will set in motion my downfall, and not hard to predict Black Friday will be part of it. Will post next one soon.
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