A Poker History of the VeganDemon [Part 3]

 

Welcome back to the 3^rd and final chapter in the poker history of the VeganDemon.  Last time we left off with me having moved in with some poker players and all of us discovering a website where we could play poker for BTC.  I had also recently started to take some rare, sober moments to study some videos on how to play heads-up poker.  I had been playing for a long time, but I had never really developed a strategy.  I had always just claimed to be a winner and assumed it was true.

When I watched one video by Brian Hastings, I was sure that I had it all figured out.  Looking back, it reminds me of my father with a new issue of golf digest.  He was always sure he had “found the secret” in each new issue only to show up to the course and come home disappointed.  I bought my first BTC and headed out to the online streets to battle it up in the heads-up games. 

I got so lucky at the beginning it is crazy to even think about it.  I had basically no strategy, just aggression, and call downs.  I would have been destroyed by the big dogs on Stars or any of the main sites, but I wasn’t playing there.  I was playing against bitcoin miners who wanted to have some fun and gamble their newly discovered fortunes (bitcoin was about $100 each back then.)  I won a few BTC inside a week, sitting in my living room with a bottle of whiskey in my hand. 

I managed to build a decent roll and then I started taking on the players who sat alone on heads-up tables all day.  This did not go well for me.  There were some serious crushers like GoGatorsGo and Nice2cU sitting there all day waiting to take all my profits from the lower tables.  I was always sure I was getting unlucky, but it never ended.  I never beat those players in the long run.  We were playing games where the BB was 0.2 BTC.  Again, back then it was a $10/$20 game, not the $6k/$12k game it would be now. 

I decided I was going to watch their tables all day and see how they played against other opponents.  I never got a tell on them, but I did find a player that started playing against all of them and losing even more than I had been.  I, very rudely, hit this new player up in the chat of their matches to challenge them to play me instead.  Eventually, I had my new fish on the hook and the crushers were left to sit alone again.

We sat down at a table playing 0.1BTC/0.2BTC and I called down a huge bluff by my new fish and I actually won.  The other players had learned to just be patient and value me down because I was such a station, but not this new guy.  He lost a stack and instantly refilled his chips and played me again…. Same exact results.  He made a huge bluff, I called and I stacked him.  I went in the chat and said “Good try, I really almost folded! You are tough!!!” and that is when I got a message that changed my life on the spot.  Three little words and a piece of punctuation that massively impacted every decision I would make for years to come, “Twice as much?”

That was it, “Twice as much?” I said yes and waited for him to open a new table.  I decided to pour myself a fresh tumbler of whiskey while I waited.  At least part of my mind didn’t think he would ever actually sit, but I was wrong… very wrong.  He was convinced that we would eventually hit the stakes where his bluffs would work.  We did not.  Every time I won a stack by calling down or shoving on a bluff and getting lucky I would see it again…  “Twice as much?”  I never said no.

We wound up having a 3-day match and by the end of it we were playing 2 tables of 1BTC/2BTC heads-up.  I had to take 2 days off work, but then I ran out of sick days and I had to go to work and play on my phone behind my desk.  I was not going to lose the greatest fish I had ever found by walking away.  In the end, I wound up making about $100, 000 over the course of 70+ hours of playing.  I will never forget what it felt like when he stopped and reloaded his account and stacked off about 20 times in an hour and finally, he just left.  I was sitting in my classroom and I felt like I was going to explode.  I couldn’t even tell anyone what had happened because I obviously was not supposed to be gaming or gambling at work.

I felt like I was vibrating on the inside and only some of that was from the withdrawal from the 2-day bender I had gone on while playing this epic match.  I decided I was going to start the paperwork to take the next year off work.  I had to sign up for some classes to make sure it counted as a sabbatical, but really I was planning on starting my poker career and never having to come back.  Now I finally had “proof I was good.”  I’m sure you can guess how well this plan worked out for me, but let’s go through it anyway.

First things first, I had to cash out all those bitcoins right away so I could go to the casino and start my career.  I didn’t leave a single one behind.  I turned each one of them into a hundred-dollar bill and moved on with my life.  Of course, sometimes I have dark moments where I think about the millions of dollars I could have if I didn’t cash them out, but in reality, that was never going to be the way it went.  I had no other money, and I needed that $100,000 as bad as I’ve ever needed anything.  Bills were overdue, credit cards were maxed out, rent was due, etc.  I paid all that stuff off, ignored my student loans, and used the rest to have a nice poker bankroll for my year off.

I thought I had it all figured out.  I had proven I was a crusher.  I had proven I could drink as much as I wanted and not have any problems in my life.  And, for me, I was rich.  I paid for my friends everywhere we went, ran up huge tabs at bars and liquor stores, etc.  Then I started playing poker at our local casino.  Why would I stay on a website that had paid me so well when I could go to the casino and play big games and lose?  That is exactly what I did.  I went every day, drank, lost, blamed luck, and repeated it.

Before I knew it, I had blown through most of the bankroll by playing poorly, not studying, and loving to get wasted while playing.  I would get blacked out at home and call an Uber to take me to the casino.  Then I would wake up the next day and not know how I lost all the money in my pocket, and I wouldn’t remember cash advancing another 3 buy-ins on my credit card.  In short, I was spiraling out of control and there was no end in sight.

I should also mention that taking a year off work caused me to become a 24-7 drunk.  I thought I was going to be able to control myself, but looking back I have no idea why I would have thought that.  I had never controlled myself before.  The only thing that had ever made me slow down was having to go to work, and I had removed that safety net from my life.  It didn’t take long before I had scared away all my friends with my behavior and falling into a depression because of losing all the money while I watched BTC soar. 

I was sure that the story of my life as a loser had been written.  I didn’t think I could do anything to stop the downward spiral.  Every morning I had the shakes and I had to drink.  I decided I needed to sober up because my year off was coming to an end, but I couldn’t.  I was too sick without a drink to rise to the challenge.  It wound up with me sitting on the floor next to my bed with a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 and a jar of sleeping pills.  I was strongly considering ending my miserable existence, but for some strange reason I remembered something Oprah Winfrey had said, “if you have an actual plan for suicide, call someone right away.”  I decided to call friends for help rather than going through with the suicide.  They gave me a couch to dry out on and enough beers to sip so that I didn’t die from WDs. (I do not suggest this method, I could have died.  You should go to a medical detox if you are in a situation like the one I was in.) I made it through with their help.

I didn’t lose my job, I finished my master's degree, and I started rebuilding a normal life.  After getting a few months sober I decided to go to the doctor’s office to see how much damage I had done to myself during my multi-year bender.  They said I was 425 lbs and lucky to not have damaged my liver permanently, but they also felt a lump in my throat.  It was cancer and I wound up having to go through treatment for that.  I survived and it really turned my life around.  Something about having something outside my control almost kill me made me realize how stupid all my self-destruction had been.  Life will get me eventually; I don’t need to help it out in the process.

Since then, I spent the past few years reading over 300 books, losing over 200 pounds, being sober, meditating, being vegan, and doing yoga.  My life is much better thanks to all the hard work I did building a life I want to live.  I have stopped hating myself and sabotaging my own existence.  Instead, I have built the life I think I deserve.  I feel better every day and I love life.  I am always looking for a new challenge and that is why I have decided to return to poker.

This time around I am going to use bankroll management, a study group, and my newly discovered discipline and self-control to see if I can really succeed.  That is what this poker blog is going to be about.  Everything I do right and wrong along the way and updates on my success or failure.  I hope this has given you something to relate to or gawk at enough to make you want to subscribe and keep up with all my upcoming posts.  Thanks for reading and have a great poker life!

If you missed part one or part two click on them and find out where this journey started.