Hi there. My name is Andrew. And I am a full time, low/mid stakes NL grinder living in Las Vegas.
8 years ago, if you had told me I was going to be a professional poker player on this date, my reaction would have been pretty simple: \”Um, what?\” Born and raised in Grosse Pointe Woods, MI, I completed my degree in Telecommunications from Michigan State University in 2003. From there I went into the music industry, starting with an internship in London, UK. After the internship was over, the company hired me for a full time position. I absolutely loved my job, the people I was working with, and the city of London. It wouldn\’t last though, as I was unable to secure a renewal for my working visa. I had to make a decision between Los Angeles and NYC as those were the two hubs for the music industry in the US (along with Nashville, but country music just isn\’t my thing). Since my older brother was living in LA and was able to put me in touch with one or two people who were working in the industry, I was off to the west coast.
I moved between a few different jobs in the music industry between 2005 and 2008: promotion company, talent agency, marketing and advertising agency. As much as I wanted to make it in the music business, the low pay (and the fact that I was spoiled at my first job in London) made it difficult. Especially living in a city like LA where the amount of money you make can drastically change your quality of life. You can probably guess where this story goes from here.
Throughout all these positions, I was casually playing online poker in some of my spare time. Poker had already taken off, and from Celebrity Poker Showdown to the WSOP, I dug watching whatever show happened to be on television. I can fully say that I am a product of the Moneymaker boom. The first site I ever played on was PokerRoom.com. I started off playing sit n\’ go\’s, because tournament poker is what they always showed on TV. I pretty much broke even most of the time. A friend of mine told me I should get into cash games, which I was completely ignoring at the time. He said the cash games are more about making money, as opposed to the glorified thrill of tourneys. I followed his lead and jumped in the cash games. Unfortunately he told me nothing about bankroll management. I ran a few hundred up to a couple thousand, and took very little time running that straight into the ground.
I was devastated thinking about what I could\’ve used that money for, instead of giving it away to random screen names. But I was also hooked and wanted redemption. I bought Doyle\’s SuperSystem and read the NL section. I did a ton of lurking on fullcontactpoker.com (2+2 was too intimidating). I checked out the poker rooms around Los Angeles, mainly the Hustler Casino. And I redeposited, this time on Full Tilt. I wasn\’t going full-bore with poker because at the time, around 2007, I hadn\’t given up trying to advance in the music industry. Poker was more like a hobby that I was delving further into. And I still wasn\’t having much success, mainly because I wasn\’t giving it my full attention.
When I took a job offer at a small marketing and advertising agency, the base pay was tiny. Like, $18k a year or something. I was ok with it because there were some projects we were planning on doing that offered the chance of bonuses, plus additional opportunities, etc. Around the same time (I have no idea how) I discovered a poker site called Bugsy\’s Club. I made a deposit of $400 one night just to mess around with. I still remember that night, not because it was significant from a win/loss standpoint (I think I won about $120 playing $1/$2NL) but because it would turn out to be the start of my taking poker to the next step.
Some projects and campaigns at the marketing agency that we had planned on doing ended up falling through. The company would be completely fine, but my workload was on the light side. This was a very small company, and my boss decided that we didn\’t even need a physical office anymore. I could work from home. Well, \”working from home\” with a very light workload pretty much meant one thing in my mind: online poker, every day. I read up on proper bankroll management, and actually started to follow it. I took my $520 to the $.02/$.05NL tables on Bugsy\’s Club, and even though I was over-rolled for those stakes, I promised myself I wouldn\’t move up until I won 20 buyins. After I completed my task I moved up to $.05/$.10, and promised myself the same thing. I ran through the micro stakes really quickly. Onto $.10/$.25, where it was starting to get serious. I used the 20 buy-in rule, where I needed a bankroll of 100 big blinds x 20 before I would play that particular stake level. I beat the $25 games and moved onto $.25/$.50. I remember I actually struggled at that level a bit. It took me longer to get through, but I was getting help at Bugsy\’s Club through their version of rakeback. They rewarded the players who put in the highest volume of hands per week with bonuses based on what stakes you were playing. I was putting in a lot of hands every day, and was getting decent bonuses. I was also able to avoid cashing out ever, because I was still doing some work for the marketing agency and earning a paycheck.
Eventually I cracked through to $.5/$1 with my $2000, had very little trouble beating that level, moved to $1/$2, and again had very little trouble beating that level. I say \”beating that level\” but what I most likely should be saying is \”running like god\” throughout all of these levels. I had to have been getting into very good situations time and time again, because I\’m an ok player now, but back then, I was terrible. One thing that I did do well was adjust to how players on that site and at those stakes played. They were even worse than me. And so on I went to $2/$4, with an $8000 bankroll.
I think it was around this time that it became apparent to my boss that he didn\’t really have much need for me with his company at the moment. I pretty much agreed with him, and we amicably parted ways. I was a little worried because a) this meant that all I had was poker, and I\’d have to take money out of my bankroll to pay the bills, and b) the $400NL games were finally giving me the first real trouble I had encountered at any stakes along the way. I had some savings as backup that would hold me over if need be, and I dedicated myself to reading the strategy sections of fullcontactpoker.com, as well as other material.
In a poker player\’s career there are certain hands that clearly stand out as crucial among the millions of hands he or she plays. One night, probably out of frustration, I sat in a $5/$10NL game where two players were battling at a 9 handed table. I jumped in because I knew the players from playing $2/$4 with them, and they weren\’t anything special. There were a few small swings with nothing major to report in the game for a while. Then a hand came up where I made the nut flush on the river of a paired board with AcKc vs a player who sometimes got too emotional during sessions. I overbet all-in for $1500 on the river and got snap called. My first instinct when I saw the snap call was \”oh shit\”, which didn\’t last long as the pot got pushed my way. I still remember him typing \”unreal\” in the chat box and insta-leaving the table.
Somehow that moment got me over the hump I had at $2/$4, and I went on to find success at that level, as well as the $5/$10NL level when it would run. Which wasn\’t really that often, as Bugsy\’s Club was a far smaller site than say Full Tilt. But I dominated the $2/$4 games and eventually built a bankroll to around $35k.
The most amazing thing about this run, is that this all happened in less than a year.
My mind was officially warped, and I was destined from then on to chase success in poker. Living in Los Angeles provided plenty of opportunities to slip away to Las Vegas, and I had a great time every visit. I\’m a night owl, and one of my biggest pet peeves about LA, a city of entertainment, is the 1:30am last call. Vegas\’ 24 hour accessibility, the lack of traffic (comparatively…), the cost of living, and the sheer number of cardrooms all added up to a move to the desert for me. When I got here in 2009, the reality of my semi-epic run on Bugsy\’s Club caught up to me. I thought I would find the same success in the brick and mortar casinos, but I was more than a little naive. Like I said, I really wasn\’t that special of a poker player. The games were just that incredibly soft and anybody who put in the amount of work that I had would\’ve been able to replicate my success.
I had extremely long periods of breakeven or worse. Downswings are twice as painful in live poker compared to online swings. Your hands per hour are far, far less live, causing downswing periods to drag on. And (for me) losing physical dollar bills somehow feels worse than digits on the monitor. It was brutal. I was never going to give up though, and I took out the savings I had to help pay the bills and pad the bankroll. I grinded $1/$2NL at Mandalay Bay and $1/$3NL at Caesars Palace and the Palms, and eventually got into a rhythm. I took notes on my winning sessions and realized that I won when I was patient, made hands and punished tourists who didn\’t come to Vegas to fold. I took shots at $2/$5NL when things were going well. Eventually I made friends in the poker world which I never really had before, and having them is probably what helped develop my game the most.
And so here we are. 2.5 years into my Las Vegas residency, I\’m grinding these games and trying to make it as a poker player. I\’m not an internet poker genius or a 21 year old wunderkind. I am far from the best poker playing blogger on the internet, and if you\’re looking for strategy help, I will tell you right now you should probably look elsewhere. I suggest cardrunners.com and leggopoker.com, and keep your eyes on stackemcoaching.com for its launch. When I post hand histories in this blog, it\’s usually not because I\’m telling you how you should play poker. I sometimes have trouble dissecting hands from a strategy standpoint because like I said, I wasn\’t one of those internet poker kids who did nothing but dissect poker hands with their poker friends when they weren\’t playing poker. I wish I had taken a more proactive role in strategy discussions coming up. I am more than happy to hear your comments, criticisms and advice should you have any.
What I can promise you is a glimpse into the life of someone trying to make it in this industry. If you want to follow along in my journey, hear true life tales from the Vegas pavement, and read an honest depiction of what life is like as a poker grinder, stick around. Let\’s see where this ride takes us.