The Switcheroo, The Limit, The Winrate: The Story of Epicbubbles

As I near the anniversary of my 100th blogpost, I decided that now would be a good time to not only reflect and maybe organize, but give the reader some insight into my background, why I am here, and where I am going.

The first thing I want to say is that I am going to delete all of my older posts and start fresh, new if you would, because I feel one of my bigger leaks is that of bitching too much about super standard variance. In any case, I feel it is not only a flaw but something I need to work on. I ask any of you who read to please stop me, if I IM you simply to complain or bitch about a cooler/bad beat.

With that out of the way, I will tell the story of poker and how I found it, and conclude with where I am today and an update of where I've been the last few weeks. The excitement is killing me, let's go!

The poker boom came and stayed and in 2003, I was struck by it too. Every holiday we would have a poker game with my family where my uncle would just run over the table, and when we would play some .01/.02 HU, he would take my 5 bucks and that would be it. However my thirst for poker never really went away. I guess you could say it is my competitive nature and heart of a gamer that drove me to poker anyway, success as a Magic: The Gathering JSS player and someone who qualified for two Pro Tour's drove me, and it somewhat fed my happiness. It was a good thing, I was only 15-16 at the time and here I was about to embark on playing on the MTG Pro Tour on a semi-regular basis at the top level.

Things didn't go well though.

I come from a strict conservative Jewish family and my mother saw something that wasn't there, she had seen that because I was devoting time to Magic that she thought eventually I would drop of high school to play it (beat) Regardless of being a straight A student who played 2 sports she somehow though I'd lose sight of education, which obviously I never would. At 16, I took my SATs and was made to graduate from high school 1 year early, in an effort to get my "real life on a running start" that led me to where I am today, a junior at the University of California at Davis. My journey to law school (and maybe not anymore) is another story, perhaps I will tell another time.

By the time fall quarter came around and my mom had forced me to stop playing Magic altogether, I decided I was just going to sell off my cards and buy myself something nice.

I dumped $300 in a freshman homegame in one night.

Regardless to say I was terrible at poker but my entire freshman year of college I spent playing poker, sucking, and never REALLY realizing it. Never cared about learning, I saw it as just gambling. It was weird, you would think that someone who took a serious approach to Magic and also school would take poker the same; not me. And so I played and continue to dump money to everyone. I remember one AWFUL beat put on me by Mark (buckbomb56 on 2p2) near the end of that school year. I 3bet AA preflop, he called from the button we see a board of 833. I bet he jams, when I snap he goes "OOPS" then says "I lose"....until an 8 hits river. Turns over J8o, laughs and says "not anymore". You douche. haha.

This is where my story gets serious. I never knew much about online poker, never deposited, and never really talked with anyone. Two poker buds, Amar and Andrei, take me to this homegame at some guy Brett's house. I didn't know who Brett was, but we walk in to his room and everyone is railing him at his dual screen computer.

He was 12 tabling 2/4 or 3/6, and I was amazed! HOW on earth could someone play that many tables? Unreal, I thought, until I discovered it myself.

I'll never forget that homegame, where I had my first big score. It was a .5/1 100max game where I bought in for 60 and cashed out for 230. It felt, so nice. Ate breakfast than back to the dorm to sleep all day and dream about success.

Fast forward to sophmore year, where I am discovering more and more success with poker. At the end of freshman year, Mark told me to start reading twoplustwo, and I lurked for nearly a year and a half before joining. I was playing 25NL 6max, and making a nice little amount to where I could afford little things, never before moving up to 50NL 6max or busting. This process went on all year, where I would grind and make a bit then bust, or just cashout for live roll. I really didn't know much (or what I thought I did) until I "met" Matt over summer.

Matt is who told me to start a blog, began to coach and stake me, and taught me how to control tilt issues. Matt is a very solid guy and I know he's busy with school and shit, so after killing 25NL for 4 months I decided I would look for a 50NL stake/backer and hopefully start progressing my game.

Enter WCGRider.

FULL RING? 100NL? WHAT?

In 2 months, I went from decent winner at 25NL 6max to crushing the 50NL Full ring games on stars, and now onto 100NL, where I have only been for about 13k hands total.

With Doug, one of my biggest leaks was plugged. I could show you how bad my NON-SD winnings graphs were before. In fact, lets look:

http://s354.photobucket.com/albums/r430/Epicbubbles/?action=view&current=50kGraph.jpg

this is just a small example of my 50NL grind, and how imagine, even as a 6bb/100 winner, if my non-sd winnings were positive, as they should, I would have been crushing for a higher winrate.

Doug fixed my problem:

http://s354.photobucket.com/albums/r430/Epicbubbles/?action=view&current=Joogarph-1.jpg

granted it's only small sample and an excellent case of cooler-city/run bad, but still I am so proud of that red line. It's my baby. SOmething I have struggled for so long for to achieve supremity at and gain control over I finally now have. I hope it continues through the 100k, 200k, and 300k hand marks. And by then, I will be in the 5 figure estimates.

With 2009 approaching what are my goals?

1. Go to school every day (I fixed my schedule so its best for grinding, school on tues/thurs from 9-2 ship it)
2. Work out everyday/lose weight.
3. Maintain a +non-SD winnings number.
4. Make Supernova on Stars by April/May.
5. Get a new complete computer setup for the 100NL/200NL grind.
6. Make 10k from stake, then have a 4k online roll and a 3k live roll.
7. Be at 5/10 by December 31st, 2009
8. 100k hands minimum a month
9. Upto 500,000vpps for the year, milestones imo
10. Win a huge donkament (just once CMON)

As the new year approaches and with the help of WCG, I hope to make 2009 a year full of friendships, discussion of strat and theory, sick upswongs and minimal downswongs, and a year that I finally say to myself this is what I am going to be doing for a few years to come.

As sick as it seems, I want to be the best at this. I want to learn, I want to win, and I want to prove to myself and the poker community that if you try hard enough, you will succeed.

One final note, I am actively staking/coaching an IRL friend, Andrew Obolsky. He's crushing the 10NL games on Stars, look him up: ashkenozzy.

-Joo