How I Became a Poker Player

by Andrew Brokos
There’s a tradition on the 2+2 forums that when a poster reaches a certain milestone in his post count, he recounts some tale of how he got to where he is now. This was my ‘Carpal Tunnel’ post on 2+2.

The Early Years
Learning the rules of poker is actually one of my clearest early memories, and I have no idea why, because I don’t think I was especially interested at the time, and I know I promptly forgot them. But I distinctly recall sitting on the hardwood floor of a Baltimore row house as my aunt showed me how to play seven card stud, explained what hand beats what, etc. I was about six years old at the time.

A few years later, I started playing penny ante games with my grandparents. Gambling has always been popular in my father’s family. His uncle, a 450-pound cross-dressing homosexual stand-up comedian, was a real character, one who deserves his own story really, but among other things he loved gambling. He took me to the dog track when I was five years old and placed my bets for me. Uncle Tubby had a heart as big as his stomach and was always extraordinarily generous with his winnings, sending my grandparents on vacation or buying me gifts whenever he won big at the track, but he would argue like hell if he thought he was getting cheated at penny ante poker.

Dad was the big winner in those days, but my grandmother saw to it that I always came out ahead at the end of the night. Hell of a lesson to teach a kid about gambling, if you think about it. According to my father, he grew up too poor to get any kind of allowance, but his mother gave him a quarter every week to pay his tuition at St. Joseph’s High School, which he used to win spending money at lunchtime poker games. Then again, next to the fish pond, the poker table is probably the place where a father’s exploits grow largest when recounted to his first-born son, so take that with a grain of salt.

In high school, some friends and I started a regular poker night, and that was the first time I really began to think about the game. It was dealer’s choice with a nickel ante (occasionally bumped to a dime if the dealer was stuck), and every game was played no limit. It didn’t much matter how you did in the game, because most sessions ended with a round of suicide sevens that was guaranteed to reverse everyone’s fortunes. But I played for pride and wanted to win, so I bought Ken Warren’s “Winner’s Guide to Texas Hold ‘Em.” I probably learned something from that book, though I don’t really remember what.

The Big Game
Browsing the stacks of a used bookstore one day, I found a 1970’s era “Hoyle’s Guide to Poker”, in which the author declares that seven card poker (a game played to make seven-card hands, such as quad eights over trip Kings) was getting to be all the rage and would soon supplant the popular five card versions of Stud. It was my first introduction to the concept of odds, and armed with this, I decided to sit in on my grandfather’s game the next time I visited him in Florida.

This was .25/.50 dealer’s choice, where the dealer was expected to choose some variation of Stud or Omaha and only the wives were allowed to declare wild cards, over the groans of their husbands. The first time I check-raised, my grandfather’s best friend, a former teamster and WWII Marine, stared daggers at me and declared, “I’ve seen men shot for less.” Although Grandma covered my $40 in losses, I felt like shit the next morning.

The Bigger Game
In college I became best friends with Logan, a guy from Brooklyn who also enjoyed poker, and we were roommates sophomore through senior year. We’d occasionally host or attend a poker night somewhere, generally playing for nickels and dimes but having a good time.

Freshman year I blew through all the cash I had saved up from working at 7-11 the previous summer (unfortunately I did not blow it on poker), and tuition gobbled up the next summer’s earnings, so sophomore year I was dead broke. My limited meal plan didn’t enable me to average two hots per day in the dining hall, so I would scour the campus for any student organization giving away pizza or other free food at an event that evening.

So when Spring Break rolled around, the only way I was going to see a beach was if I visited my grandmother in Florida. My grandfather had died the previous summer, but I knew I’d still be welcome at his card game. My grandmother doesn’t do the interweb, so I told my aunt that my dorm would be kicking me out on Saturday and so that’s when I needed a flight. She bought the tickets, I printed out the e-mail confirmation, packed my things, left my dorm (which would be closed for the next week) and spent two hours on buses and trains to get from the south side of Chicago to O’Hare Airport on a Saturday morning, only to have the check-in agent tell me my flight didn’t leave until tomorrow. I could only stare at him in disbelief, with two suitcases in hand, $25 in my pocket, an empty checking account, no credit card, and nowhere to sleep.

I ended up going back to the train station and giving a panhandler a $5 bill in exchange for $2 in quarters. Not knowing anyone’s phone number, I was forced to call information, then cold call the few people I knew in Chicago who did not live in college dormitories. Finally, I reached Craig, my debate coach, who let me crash on his couch.

As luck would have it, a few of his public policy grad student friends were coming over for poker that night. The game was .25 ante with a $3 maximum bet on any street, no matter which game the dealer chose. I really wanted to play and had nothing better to do, so although the stakes were beyond intimidating to me, I borrowed $50 from Craig to supplement the $25 I had on me and bought in.

Interestingly, the super-high stakes forced me to play pretty well. Not surprisingly, the game was extremely loose and bad, and I was playing like a giant nit. I still remember taking $75 off of Craig’s friend Fati in a single hand of Shipwreck Kings, when I had five Aces to his five Kings and 12 bets went in on seventh street before he finally just called.

Unfortunately, he was playing on credit (none of these guys had a lot of money, and they gambled all the time on cards, Golden Tee, etc., so they generally passed debt back and forth between themselves), and to this day, Fati owes me $97. Despite getting stiffed, however, I pocketed better than $150 after paying Craig back at the end of the night.

After that, the Florida game was small time to me, but I’m still very glad I played. I had been close to my grandfather since the day I was born, and the year I spent in Chicago was the longest I had ever gone without seeing him. He died very suddenly from a brain tumor that no one knew he had, and it was quite jarring to me to learn one evening that I would never see him again. No sooner had I walked into the rec room where the game was held than the man who expressed his dissatisfaction with my sandbagging last year rose from his seat to shake my hand somberly. “Your grandfather was my best friend,” he told me. “We were closer to each other than we were to our wives, and not a day goes by that I don’t curse him for leaving me all alone down here.”

I spent most of the session up a little over $10, but got greedy on one of the last hands of the night, when I declared I was going both ways on a Stud/8 showdown and lost the pot to a rivered 6-low. Tilt ensued, and I finished the night stuck $3, which my grandmother reimbursed.

Tournament Poker
It was fall of 2003, the beginning of my third year of college. Chris Moneymaker had not yet won the WSOP, but the first rumblings of the poker boom were already underway. Logan, now my roommate, heard about a $10 no limit hold ‘em tournament held in the lounge of a neighboring dorm on Tuesday nights and Sunday afternoons. Intrigued, we stopped by and were hooked instantly.

The Tuesday night game drew 40-50 players, mostly fish, but in retrospect, there were a few regulars who really knew what they were doing. Making the final table was a rare but unrivaled thrill for us: the first memorable bad beat of my life put me out of one of the smaller Sunday tournaments in 3rd place. A pretty bad player who had luckboxed his way into a monster stack and thought he was hot shit raised my big blind from the button and I flat called with AA. I check-raised an 853 flop and he shoved instantly with 87s, only to turn a 7. I was floored, particularly by the fact that that nasty turn (I had no idea what the odds were of him catching up, I just knew I had motherfucking Aces!!!) had cost me about $50.

Super/System
For Christmas that year, my father’s new wife (his third) gave him a copy of Doyle Brunson’s Super/System. He lent it to me for the weekend before I returned to Chicago, and I devoured it. Everything that Doyle said about No Limit Hold ‘Em made so much sense to me. I remembered clichés about aggression from Warren’s book, but Doyle gave them content and put them in the context of a coherent strategy.

Needless to say, I returned to the Chicago tournaments with an irrational and expensive addiction to suited connectors. I distinctly recall being berated by one of the better players there when, early at a final table, I raised 65s UTG, there was a re-raise all in, the good player called on the button, and I shoved over the top of both of them. He thought forever, folded AK, and flipped the hell out when the all in’s pocket 9’s, which would have lost to his flopped A, held up.

Hoop Dreams
That spring, Logan took second place in a Sunday tournament, topping both my highest finish (third in a Sunday tournament) and my biggest cash (fourth in a Tuesday tournament). It was a record he would hold for more than a year as we both worked actively to improve our games and finally take down one of these bitches.

It occurred to us that the most money would be won or lost during the heads up portion of the tournament, and neither of us had any idea what we were doing, so we ought to start practicing. From that point on, we probably averaged an hour a day playing heads up $1 freezeout tournaments, sometimes starting with evenly matched stacks but often taking turns starting with a 2:1, 3:1, or 4:1 chiplead to simulate tournament conditions more accurately. As may be obvious, our goal at the time was not to make money, it was to win the damn tournament.

Our dreams were put on hold early in our senior year, however, when one of our regulars who also an editor for the school newspaper ran a front page story about the game and openly questioned its legality. Sure enough, the school shut us down the next week, and Logan and I were both pissed and confused about why this winning player would draw attention to the illegality of the game. It became clear, however, when a friend of ours who was dating one of the Alpha Delts passed along a rumor that the newspaper editor, who was also the president of Alpha Delt, wanted to start hosting the tournament at his frat and selling alcohol.

Fuck that. Logan and I boycotted the tournament and encouraged a few of our friends to do the same. The game never really took off, and it looked like that would be the end of the poker tournaments at the University of Chicago.
Online Poker

We were hooked now, though, and decided to explore this “online poker” thing we had heard so much about. Too paranoid to play with real money, we opened play money accounts on Pacific Poker and had some fun, though it quickly grew boring. Imagine our excitement when Pacific one day dropped $25 into our accounts for no reason! We couldn’t cash it out, of course, but why would we want to?

I sat down immediately at the .01/.02 table, moved up to .10/.20, and cashed out $25 twice before going on a sick run to get my account up to $125 (over the course of a few weeks). I decided to cash out $50 and take a run at $1/$2, because $75 is more than enough to start playing $1/$2, right? BUSTO. I was disappointed, but didn’t really care, because it hadn’t cost me anything to play and I’d already cashed out $100.

The only thing that bummed me out was that I was out of action. Once you’ve played for real, there’s no going back to play money. Logan and I still played our heads up games and hosted the occasional poker night, but he graduated early, and it looked like I was going to spend spring semester pokerless.

Then I heard about freerolls.

Pacific wasn’t offering freerolls at the time, but a site called Poker Room had them twice daily, with thousands of fish battling it out for $500 in prizes. Registration opened an hour and a half before the tournament and filled up within minutes. I used to set my alarm or run home from class in order to make it in under the wire, and if I was too late, I’d sometimes spend half an hour clicking the “register” button in the hopes that someone would unregister and forfeit his seat (this was generally successful if you were patient).

Eventually I cashed for $10 in one of these puppies, dropped $5.50 into a 10-man sit and go, won that, and then blew it all at $.25/.50 while waiting for the afternoon freeroll to start. Bummer. Eventually I got fed up with the Poker Room freerolls and decided to see if Pacific had started offering them. They had, and it wasn’t long before I won one for $75. I wasn’t going to repeat my mistakes, so I started grinding it out at the $5 sit and goes, which had a very favorable structure and were preposterously soft. I of course knew very little about sit and go strategy, but I knew that as long as I could get 7 of these clowns to bust out before I did, which was rarely difficult, then I couldn’t lose!

It was a great, low variance way to build a roll (not that I knew those terms at the time, but intuitively, I got the concept), but believe it or not, one tabling $5 sit and goes gets kind of boring. I craved the excitement of the big tournaments, but I was scared to drop a precious $5 or $10 into anything with several hundred players, where in all likelihood I would win nothing. I took the occasional shot, and sometimes I was able to stall into the money, but my short stack play was preposterously weak tight (I’m pretty sure I was raise/folding AQ with like 15 BB’s left in a $5 tournament because you’re not supposed to call a reraise with it.)

One day, though, I realized that only the No Limit tournaments got so huge. The morning $2.75 fixed limit game rarely got more than 100 runners, and I won it on one of my first shots, cashing for $87. As usual, I was playing weak tight, but Pacific sucks at balancing tables and adjusting the button when players bust out, so at the last few tables I think I dodged the big blind like 5 orbits straight, eventually tripled up with AA, and the rest was history.
One Last Shot

Three weeks before graduation, I ran into an old friend from the dorm tournament who told me that starting next week, a new dorm would be hosting. To say I was eager would be an understatement. This time I approached my old adversaries with a new confidence born of hundreds of hours of experience online. Best of all, the Alpha Delt president had the nerve to show up, and Doyle Brunson helped me to bust him:

Alpha Delt raises in middle position, I reraise 7:spade: 8:spade:, he calls. Flop 5:spade: 8:club: A:spade:. Alpha Delt leads out, I shove on him, he calls with AK, I river the 8 to KO him. He’s pissed, and though I’m now chipleader, I’m really just happy to have busted this d-bag.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I went on to win one of the largest tournaments this game had ever seen, cashing for $200 even. Though this probably wasn’t even enough to make me unstuck in the long run in this tournament, I was walking on air. Liquor stores were closed, but I called up a friend who lived nearby. She had a bottle of wine that we drank to celebrate, and I ended up walking home half drunk through the south side of Chicago at 4 AM with $200 tucked in my sock.

Going Pro
I never explicitly decided to become a professional poker player, and truthfully I still don’t really consider myself to be one. I’m just a guy who graduated from college with a philosophy degree and no job prospects (is that redundant?). Actually, that’s not quite true. All through college, I had worked for the Chicago Public Schools teaching, judging, coaching, and eventually running their debate league. I had also been in a long-distance relationship for three years with a friend from high school who went to Boston University.

When I graduated, I was offered a full time job with good benefits in Chicago working with the debate league, which I absolutely loved doing. But I also had the opportunity to move to Boston and live with my girlfriend, which is what I opted to do. While applying for jobs, I grinded it out at $5 and eventually $10 sit and goes on Pacific Poker.

But no jobs were panning out, and as anyone who’s lived in Boston knows, you can’t really make rent (even half of rent on a one bedroom apartment) one-tabling sit and goes. I still did some contract work for the Chicago Debate League, maintaining their website among other things, but it wasn’t enough to make ends meet, and I was damn near out of options. Then I got an IM:

Logan: Hey, play the 10K Guarantee [a $15 daily tournament on Pacific] with me.

Foucault: I dunno.

Logan: C’mon.

Foucault. Alright.

We both built up nice stacks early on, and at some point agreed that if either of us took first, he’d give the other $500 (first prize was over $2500). Logan busted and left to go to the library, joking that he expected me to make him $500. A few hours later I left a message on his voicemail: “Where the fuck are you? I need you to tell me whether you want your $500 cash or a check.”

Ten minutes later he called me back. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Swear to God.”

Ultimately, Logan wouldn’t accept the $500, saying it was too frivolous of a deal, but I insisted on giving him $100. Having bought myself a little financial breathing room and a lot of confidence, I purchased a few poker books, noticed an advertisement for this www.twoplustwo.com website, and the rest is history.

Parting Advice
Once it became clear to me that I really could support myself playing poker, I decided to start a debate league in Boston’s public schools like that one that I missed from Chicago. In the last two and a half years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours and dollars on this project, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Even my biggest cashes these days don’t give me the thrill that I got from winning that first poker tournament for $87, but I do get that feeling every time I see my students competing at one of their debate tournaments.

I don’t recall who it was, but someone on 2+2 once posted in one of those Should I Go Pro threads something to the effect of “Each person is dealt two cards, and there is a round of betting. Then three community cards are turned face up in the center of the table, and there is another round of betting. Finally, the turn and river cards are dealt once at a time, with a round of betting after each, and the best five card hand wins the pot. This is what you want to dedicate your life to?”

Poker gives me the financial freedom to do what I want, but what I want to do is not play poker. I can afford to work for an organization I love at wages that I couldn’t live on, and I can afford to volunteer my time and money for a cause that’s very important to me. I’m my own boss and I set my own hours. I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life, but I don’t know what I do want to do, and when I figure it out, I intend to have enough money saved up that I won’t have to let that be a factor in my decision.

If poker is your job, do something else with your life. Find something that you enjoy doing and that you consider to be of real value to the world. You’ll derive a lot of personal satisfaction from it and it can help you explore career paths, build experience, and make contacts who will be useful to you if/when you decide to get a real job.