"The Long and Winding Road" - The Beatles

Wanted to continue my history of poker so I can keep up to date on all new happenings.

I started online poker on a whim when I saw an advertisement for Party Poker. I played online on the weekends or mostly any other time I couldn't make it to the casino. About a month or 2 after I started on Party, Moneymakerism of Poker began. All of a sudden Party was swamped with all sorts of donks and fish looking to make a quick buck. A highlight in my PP career was when they ran a contest to see who could play the most hands between 12am and 8am. I was up all night playing 3 tables 6 handed. I ended up placing 3rd and got $50 bucks.

A certain hand that I will never forget (and ultimely led to me leaving PP all together). Playing a 1/2 limit game I get A-Ko UTG. I raise. Cocky SOB on the button calls. Flop is Q-J-10 rainbow. I bet, cocky SOB says in chat "I have nothing but I'm going to call you anyway because I'm going to win. Turn: 7. Bet and call. River: 10. Bet, raise from cocky, and call from me. He flips over 10-7 for the full house. The rest of the night this guy was just being an arse and took me for a good portion of my buy-in. After that night I decided to look elsewhere for games.

I found a startup site called The Gaming Club Poker Room and they were offering a free $15 for anyone who signed up (no deposit required) and after losing 3 bucks I turned that around to $35. Another neat thing this website had was if you met a certain rake amount you could participate in the 1am freeroll. The prize pool increased for every person entered. One night before a change was made to the payout I took the freeroll down for a prize of $660 for first. Eventually I went on to cashing $1400 out of this site without ever putting a cent in.

Beginning in 2004 I grew dienchanted with poker in general. So many people were crowding the 2/4 tables at the casino that had no clue what they were doing it was almost virtually impossible to turn a profit anymore, even if you played only the best starting hands.

After a whirlwind 2 years, I gave up on poker. My gf and I bought a condo. I got the big screen HD TV i always wanted as a poor kid, bought a new car. Life was good. I got addicted to a MMORPG called FFXI where I met some awesome friends that I still communicate with to this day.

More recently I broke my ankle on 02/17/2007. Really bad accident, broke all 3 bones in the ankle and ended up in emergency surgery with 1 plate and 9 screws to hold me together. 5 grueling weeks I spent literally on my back, on the couch in my living room. Bored out of my mind I played video games until I feel asleep (only way I could fall asleep as the pain was too intense to fall asleep normally).

So I got back to work and had to go through some pretty intense rehab (more mental then physical) and my PT and I got to talking about poker again. All of a sudden, poker was a fore-front image in my mind again. My buddy Unimpressed (Joe) and I hit the casino and after striking out at 2/4 decided to do a 120 SnG at Foxwoods. After being barely alive most of the tourney pcoket 8s gave me the chips I had been lacking. Combine that with about 5 A-Ks in a row and I ended up winning the whole darn thing. $500! I had a fever again, and the only prescription was more poker!

More recent events: 06/30/2007: Won another $1080 pot at 1/2 NL. This time I felt a lot better when I won versus sucking out the first time.

Seat 9 (calling station for the most part) raises to $30. Very interesting because he had not raised in the 3 hours I had been sitting at this table. I put him on A-A or K-K. Seat 2 (maniac drunk guy who I had doubled up for 200-400 in the last 5 hands) goes all-in for $26. He could have anything. Seat 5 (new guy to the table) calls $30. I look down at my hand to see 6-6. I figure seat 1 on big pair so I want to see if I can out flop him. I call, everyone else folds.

Flop: 6-3-3

Bingo! I hit the second best flop for me (6-6-3 being the best). Seat 1 leads out again with a $30 bet. Seat 5 calls. I raise to $130. (pot at this time is around $180). Seat 9 calls, Seat 5 folds.

Turn: 2

Seat 6 checks. I am now certain this dude has A-A. I figure this dude will call whatever I bet (which he had called in hands before and got lucky) so I push all-in. He calls of course and flips over A-A. Cool thing is the River was dealt right after he said call and flipped his cards and the river was a....

River: 9

I let out a medium sized yes! And rake the pot in.

Then this past monday with $31 left in my full-tilt account I decided to play this MATH tourney for a bunch of bloggers Joe got my acquainted to, and I ended up coming in first for a prize of $364.80.

Im done for today! Ill keep updating my poker ventures, tonight is the Mookie (another blogger tourney) and I'll try to follow-up my MATH win with a Mookie Win.