So 2011 began with me quiting my croupier job (for a second time) at The Star casino on the very first day of the new year. There were many reasons for this
#1 I had backing (+support and coaching) from David Saab -of note on David Saab, i meet him in October/November 2010 and was trailed by him in sitngoes, after he approved of my game he offered me staking, he was a top professional player from Melbourne
#2 I didn’t like the job
#3 You cant play at the casino your employed by it, and there is only one per state in Australia (states are pretty big in this country)
#4 I wanted to be a professional poker player and this time had the skill-set to make it happen
At the time i was grinding 50/$1 cash online, watching a lot of cardrunners videos and was doing fairly well (crushing low-med stakes home games). I really did hit the ground running and was absorbing information fast. Two weeks into the year i headed down to Melbourne with my previous city roommates Rhys Gould and Ryan Mckay + Jesse Mckenzie. I was in Melbourne with the purpose of wining 10k main event tickets, i had been working on icm spots and sitngo strat using sitngowizard primarily and due to the avg level of live players i was very confidant. On top of this i was there to clean up in some of the softer cash games.
In the satellites i pretty much broke even (i had a main event ticket which had cost me 10k in buy-ins and a lot of time), but i won a fair amount playing cash (almost 10k). So i entered the main event and after 6 or so hours of building i played a pot badly, lost way to many chips and soon found myself on the rail. Iwas about break even for the trip and by the end of day 1 of the main event all the group including David Saab had busted the main event.
We went out and had some drinks and then we all went our separate ways. The next day David Saab was arrested for drug importation!. The poker players who were lead by him were in shock, at the fact we did not have any knowledge of this and with the weight of the whole situation. It was a lot to handle, and now the support and coaching i had were gone amongst other major issues.
I headed back home to Sydney to re-evaluate (In this same period Jesse Mckenzie had his big anzpt score) and decided the reasons i had quit work still existed and most importantly #4 I wanted to be a professional poker player and had the skill-set to make it happen. With this in mind i played a lot at home games and online (got coaching from fooz- a cardrunners coach) while i waited the 3 month ex-employee cooling period before i was allowed to play at The Star. I began building a bankroll and as soon as i hit 3 months i was on the live felt playing pretty sharp.
Across the early mid part of the year i did very well on the cash tables making 30k in May and June but was under backing as the variance was to much for me to handle. In July i decided to move out of the city to (the outskirts of Sydney) live with my good friend Ashton Cartwright and grind tournaments with Jesse Mckenzie. I got more then i bargained for as i found the other two house members Pip Hun and Aaron Wallis to be great people to live with, they both have very different life experiences but are both willing to learn and share anything and everything.
The reason i moved out of the city was Jesse told me i should be playing tournaments and i wanted to follow his lead and learn from his experience, i also knew he was linked into many of the top Australian’s and i definitely think to be the best you must learn and be around the best. Also i figured if i was trying to be an online mtt grinder then all i needed was an net connection, living in the city is rather expensive and did not seem like a good choice while i tried to build. With that said i played some tournament on my own dime and had a instant big upswing, then a crushing downswing. I decided i would prefer to be backed and made arrangements to get in with the top guys.
I quickly met Brad Bower who is an excellent player from Dubbo (of all places), i was fortunate enough to get to spend a few days with him which involved as much golf as poker, i tried to soak up as much as i could quickly and really understand what made players guns in the mtt world. I also got to talk about goal setting and life in general as a professional poker player. On the last day i was in Dubbo a dinner was hosted by Matt Lindsay (one of Brad’s good friends/pretty awesome guy) and the local poker tournament organiser in the area, it was here that i meet Matt brown and Ben Agg, both well accomplished players. I felt things were heading down a good path at this point but was struggling to put runs on the board.
I spent October and November floating around, having some deep runs but not winning anything which for the most part is how mtts go. You lose and then you lose and then you lose a few more times, then you suddenly put it all together and win a tournament and those loses all go away rather quickly. I was pretty frustrated overall with tournaments as things had not really gone my way and i had been living off my savings. At the end of November through December things started to pick up and i finally had a few significant scores. I was now only in a really small amount of makeup going into 2012. At the end of the year i pushed through to supernova grinding out 18 man sitngoes.
I think 2011 was a big year for me on the learning front. I feel my mtt game is in a good spot moving into 2012… so what do i expect from poker in 2012
#1 to make money (maybe enough to leave staking and consider staking others myself)
#2 to play more volume then 2011, i think i should be able to achieve well over supernova in a year of grinding
#3 to regularly blog and coach players (in 2011 i did work with arietm, AddictionA, mattindahat, abnOx and iriveru16)
#4 learn from more good players (in 2011 i recieved coaching from fooz, Onthemac, Bazza88, Ben Agg, David Saab, Protential and Risk2Dupside)
#5 zero situations involving shady people
all that is left to say is good luck on the tables 2012 grinders
