It was summer of 2003 when this guy aptly named "Moneymaker" started being featured on ESPN. We all know the story of how he turned $40 into $2.5 million, and on August 26th, 2003, I registered on PokerRoom.com under the name "rufebert" to familiarize myself with my new hobby. Little did I know at the time that poker would become more than just a hobby for me. Back then, it was merely a game of interest, something to help pass the time while I was waiting around between classes at Cleveland State University. PokerRoom.com was one of the only sites out there that didn't require you to download anything to play, hence why I chose to play there as opposed to Pokerstars or PartyPoker, two of the more popular online poker sites. Plus, PokerRoom hosted daily freeroll tournaments that awarded a real money prize to the top 20 finishers out of 2,000 entries. First place paid a whopping $20.00 - a small but satisfying reward for spending 5-6 hours of your life navigating through a massive field of n00bs and donkeys. Somehow, I managed to finish 4th in one of my first few freeroll tournaments played and just like that, I had $5.00 in real money at my disposal.
Talk about a confidence boost. I'm pretty sure I thought I was the best poker player alive after this tournament. Dare I say I was ready to put my $5.00 up against the best poker players in the world. Bring on Moneymaker! Doyle Brunson? No problem. Ivey? I'll school his ass on the felt AND on the basketball court!
Sadly, 20 minutes after PokerRoom deposited the $5.00 into my account, it was gone. I'm pretty sure I donked it off to the micro-stakes sharks in a 0.01/0.02 NLHE ring game. Before I could even think about a plan to turn my precious $5.00 into millions without having to a invest a single penny of my own money, I had learned my first lesson in bankroll management. To this day, I'm admittedly not very good at bankroll management. Not that I really have a bankroll to manage currently, but if I did, I'm sure I'd still be terrible at it. More on bankroll management in coming blogs as I recap specific events.
Despite losing my freeroll winnings, I was hooked on poker and eagerly made a small deposit to see if I could fare better playing out of my own pocket. Given how quickly I lost my bankroll in a ring game setting, I decided to avoid ring games completely and focus strictly on low-stakes ($1 - $5) tournaments. PokerRoom's sit-and-go (SnG) tournaments were appealing to me because the odds of cashing (3/10) seemed favorable and they typically didn't last that long. As a new player, I didn't exactly have the patience that I have today. Eventually, the lure of bigger prize pools drove me to play multi-table tournaments (MTTs) as well, but regardless of what I played, I was a losing player in the beginning. I seldom cashed in MTTs and didn't win SnGs often enough to keep my bankroll afloat for long. I made countless deposits in the $20 - $50 range before I realized that it wasn't bad luck that was leading to poor results.
Determined to become a better poker player, I became active in the "Pokah" community (ie, the PokerRoom.com forums) and started reading plenty of poker literature. I purchased several poker books, Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 1 and Super System 2 proving to be the most valuable and informative of the lot. I mention Super System 2 specifically because of its chapter on Omaha 8/better (O8), co-authored by Bobby Baldwin and O8 specialist Mark Gregorich. Upon reading this chapter, I took a liking to O8 despite the fact that it wasn't even available to play on PokerRoom at the time. I studied the chapter intently and as luck would have it, PokerRoom introduced Omaha and Stud games soon after. With a solid understanding of the game, I tried my hand at the new found PLO8 MTTs and found instant success, final tabling several tournaments. I even won a few. As it turned out, 90% of the field had no idea what they were doing as the fish routinely called me down with the Ace of spades on a 4 spade board, thinking they had the nut flush.
This was definitely a turning point in my poker "career" as I started to win more consistently and build up my bankroll. Something must have "clicked" for me because I wasn't just crushing the O8 tournaments, I was improving my NLHE game as well. I was going deeper in MTTs and winning a lot more SnGs, all while playing at higher stakes. My confidence skyrocketed with improved results, as did my passion for the game itself.
When I graduated college in December 2004, I was working part-time for Clear Channel Radio doing promotions for WTAM 1100. My hours each week varied and were dependent upon how many promotional events we had planned. One week, I would get 10 hours and the next I would next 30-40. Not exactly a steady source of income, but income nonetheless. When I wasn't working, I devoted my time to poker as if it was my second job. I continued to play and read about the game and persevered through a downswing in January and February of 2005, during which I had poor results. Fortunately, March came around and I had a breakthrough. I was playing mostly $10 and $20 SnGs and booked a string of wins together after starting the month off on the wrong foot. I was playing really well and took a huge risk by jumping to the $50 and even $100 SnGs. Fortunately, it was a risk that paid off as I was surprisingly comfortable playing at these stakes and ended up booking a few cashes. On top of my SnG success in March 2005, I had several significant MTT scores in the month as well, including a $428.00 win. Overall, I cashed out a total of $1,950.00 in March 2005 alone. Given what I was making at the radio station, perhaps poker should have been considered my primary job, but one good month wasn't enough to convince me to quit my radio gig. I enjoyed working for WTAM and was still convinced that I wanted to work in radio for the rest of my life.
Boy, was I wrong.
To be continued...
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