Update

It's been a while since I've last updated my blog. No real reason, just have been lazy and forgetful. A lot of things have changed in my life since my last update. I'm actually on a flight back home right now. I was visiting my good friend Kazu (TakeItBack online) for about a week. I've known Kazu for at least three years, and he's definitely one of my better friends. I stayed with him, his sister and his mother in Temecula, CA. It was a much needed vacation as thins have been a bit stressful on the home front. My dad isn't doing too well, and that was starting to get to me so I really needed to get away.

California was a ton of fun and super relaxing. As expected we didn't do all that much sight seeing or anything, but that didn't ruin the trip at all. Kazu's mom Jean is probably the nicest person I've ever met. She also happens to be an amazing cook/baker, so having home cooked meals for once was nice as well. Ben Wu (tylor_dii online) came to visit for a couple days as well. He only lives about 1.5 hours away so it was pretty convenient. I'd only talked to Ben a few times before the trip, but he was really cool. He gave me action on pretty much any degen type bet I wanted as well. The second or third night I was there we went to a park about 15 minutes away from Kazu's house. Playing basketball probably wasn't a good idea as I was feeling pretty sick to my stomach, but I did it anyway. We played up to 11 the first game, 2-on-2. I threw up when it was 8-9, took a five minute break and ended up coming back and hitting the game winning three. That was pretty awesome. I really need to start getting back in to shape and playing more sports. Poker is probably the worst thing for your body as you're constantly sitting at your computer and not really exerting yourself physically as much as you want to. It leads to pretty unhealthy lifestyles and I have to admit that I fell in to that for a short period of time. I've been trying really hard to get out of it lately though and have been doing pretty well.

The last full day before I came home we went to Del Mar beach which was absolutely amazing. The weather was perfect. I hadn't seen the ocean since I was around 7 years old in Florida, so that was high up on my list of things to do in California when I arrived. It was worth the hour drive each way to get to the beach. It was absolutely beautiful. I can't even describe how the ocean looked with words. It was absolutely stunning and the beach was perfect. We played catch on the beach for about 30 minutes which was a lot of fun. Afterward we picked up pizza from a small pizza shop right by the beach. I wasn't expecting much, but it was easily the best pizza I've ever had. It seems like everything surrounding the beach is just so much better. Maybe my eyes fooled my taste buds but it was great either way.

Poker hasn't been too bad either in general. I've been studying the game more than I usually do, and reviewing hand histories etc. I'm really striving to become much better than I am currently. I realized that the way to improve wasn't just to wake up and grind MTTs all day. Reviewing HHs, talking to friends about them, and just thinking about the game in general has helped me so much. I was in sort of a funk and not improving at all before the light bulb went off in my head. I was starting to hate the game as well, which I feared because of how much I loved it for the last 3-4 years. Luckily I was given advice from very smart and successful players which helped me more than I can describe. Thanks to those who have helped me in the past, and recently.

I'm backed by my good friend Jake Toole now for MTTs. The mement_mori deal really could not have gone worse. I don't think I was playing particularly bad, but I surely wasn't improving during those months either, or at least it didn't seem like it. After a few months I was in ~$150K of makeup and getting out seemed hopeless. I then received a PM from mement saying to send all my money back in my accounts as he was going to try to sell my makeup. He wasn't doing too well financially, and the ~$100K he lost staking me didn't help at all. I don't really have anything against Mickey though, he really was a good backer and a nice guy during our interactions. Lately he hasn't been as friendly to me, but it's understandable. It went as badly as it could've for him, and what happened after wasn't too great either.

Not many people nowadays are in the market for buying makeup. It's a very costly proposition even though it's very +EV in some cases. You may have to invest $50K in a new horse before he ever plays a hand for you. Dipthrong and PokerJamers have a huge stable of horses, and Dip has done very well in the staking business. He contacted mement about buying my makeup for a small fraction of what it was at. Before our first conversation, I didn't really know Dip at all. His reputation wasn't the best, but I knew he was at least trustworthy and wouldn't do anything "scummy" during our staking arrangement if it went through. I went in to a chartroom to negotiate terms with Jamie and Mark (jamers/dip) and things really could not have gone worse. I was treated pretty terrible during negotiations for really no reason at all. Dip seems to have a superiority complex that he can't get over, and I was talked down to etc. When I'm entering an arrangement where there's so much money, time, and effort on the line, I definitely am not interested in dealing with someone like that. I basically told them that I'd never play a hand of poker for them in my life. This obviously upset Dip, and mement wasn't the happiest either because if the deal went through, he would've gained much needed capital.

I was trying to talk to everyone I knew to get the makeup sold. Unfortunately, I really couldn't get in contact with anyone who wanted to invest a very large sum of money. I eventually talked to my friend Jake Toole (psutennis) and we struck up a deal with mement. Jake paid $20K, I paid $10K out of pocket, and I would start with $40K in makeup for Jake. This deal was obviously massive for me and I was extremely fortunate that it went through. Our deal started around 1.5-2 months ago and it's been going pretty well. Jake is very reasonable and a good friend as well. All transactions seem to be going very smooth.

A couple days after Jake signed me, Dip decided to make a thread on PocketFives outing me as underage. He did this purely because he had a grudge against me for what happened. Threads started on multiple other forums as well, including 2+2 in MTTc. I expected to be under a lot of heat from the sites, but really nothing happened at all. I was never contacted by any poker site, seemingly because I already have IDs on file on every major site, and have had to respond to underage allegations before as well. All of that is in progress of blowing over, but I doubt anyone will completely forget about it.

Right now I'm still playing for Jake and plan to for the foreseeable future. I've pretty much broken even over the last two months, but I'm at a point now where I feel it's a matter of time before I'm out of makeup again. I got 3rd in the $109FO on Sunday for ~$18k, and had a few deep runs last night to no avail. If I win a few flips things are a lot different, but "that's poker" even though I hate that saying more than any I've heard. Hopefully I'll be extremely successful in the future, and my next blog post has a happier tone to it.

My good friend Ricky (RonaldKosh) is flying in from CT on the 26th for a few days which should be a lot of fun. There's a homegame tournament that day he's going to be playing with us. I'll hopefully remember to update after he leaves. Thanks for reading.

-Brandon

Mement Mori!!!!!!

Hey guys, again it's been a while since I've updated the blog. Nothing really too interesting has happened and it's just slipped my mind lately. I'm not doing too well poker wise since my last blog. I totally bricked FTOPS again which is fairly depressing. I'm also having a pretty terrible month all together in cash and MTTs. I'm not too worried though. I'm playing fairly well at least.

I've started to coach which is pretty cool. I'm a verified coach on 2+2 and have had a ton of interest for students. I've been really lazy about it but I've made a few videos for students and have done some group sweats which were pretty interesting. Coaching is going well for the most part. I received a PM from someone from a small training site. Hopefully I'll be making videos for them soon. It should be fun at the very least, and it'll be free advertising for my coaching business.

I was in Connecticut/New York for a couple weeks. It was pretty fun overall. I expected a little bit more but it was alright. It's nice to get away from home sometimes. I went to see a Yankees game while I was there which was spectacular. The new stadium is amazing and really well ran. The Yankees won in the bottom of the 12th or 13th with a walk-off double. It was a super exciting game and definitely the highlight of the trip.

On a lighter note, I've switched backers yet again. This one not for the same reasons as the last. Matt G was a pretty good backer overall, but I really didn't feel the friendly element with him as I did with other backers in the past. Also he was somewhat misinformed in some aspects of the tournament world. He thought some tournaments were tough when they clearly weren't etc. I received an offer from mement_mori (youcanhaveitall on 2+2) which was much better. I'd be playing pretty much every online tournament I could possibly imagine playing. This means I'd be playing the $2500 FTOPS, $5K WCOOP, weekly $1k's, $100r's, the works. He's also a really cool guy and we get along really well. I really think it's important to be friends with your backer at least in my opinion. It helps things operate more smoothly as a whole.

School is starting soon which I have mixed feelings about. Usually I'm pretty upset and want summer to last forever, but part of me wants to go back to school. I kind of want a regular thing again where I'm waking up in the morning. Seeing all my friends is fun, and some aspects of school are fairly fun as well. I have a feeling it's going to be a good year. Junior year FTW!

Thanks for reading,

-Brandon

Home Sweet Home

I haven't updated this blog in almost a month. I've been in Vegas for pretty much the whole month. I was there for about 3.5 weeks and it was tons of fun. I stayed with JP OSU, rsxpunk, Benza13, PageUpV,GeoffRas22 klink10k, tt_fold and Underoath57. It was really awesome. Flying by myself was a little different I suppose. Nothing too noteworthy happened on the trip. I'll talk about a few interesting things that happened.

One night Bond18 posted about a party he was having at his house. It was a BBQ pool side party type thing and there were a ridiculous amount of MTT players there. Bond seemed really chill and so did most everyone else. I got super fucked up to the point it was pretty tough to walk. At that point tt_fold decided to bet me at 5:1 on $100 that I couldn't do 3 Tequila shots in two minutes. I was quite hesitant at first but figured fuck it I'd try it. Obviously not a good idea. Tequila is probably the worst tasting thing ever.

Part of the bet was that I couldn't chase for like 30 minutes, and couldn't puke for an hour. Also there were no shot glasses which makes doing a shot way more difficult. I was also way too fucked up to properly do a shot. I pretty much just drank them and had a mouthful of Tequila. Imagine me with my cheeks puffed out filled with the nastiest shit ever created. So nasty. Somehow I managed to actually do the shots and hold them down. I seriously have no idea how. I still cringe when I hear the word Tequila. Ship the $500!

Vegas was super degen as expected. There was some form of gambling pretty much every single night. At one point I was stuck like $5K from mostly Acey Deucey (In-Between). I lost a massive Acey Deucey pot where I had K2 and potted it for $1800. Obviously I bink an A and gg $1800. I was stuck a fair bit in random other stuff as well. Luckily I luckboxed the homegames we had, and won a lot back flipping one of the last nights there. I think I ended up down like $1100 for the entire trip which is really trivial considering I was there for almost a month.

Other than that nothing too exciting happened. I got to meet some pretty cool people down there. Everyone in my house was pretty chill and I didn't have any problems with anybody. PageUp was a fairly big life-nit but that didn't really stop us from having a bunch of fun. I got to meet ActionJeff, JCarver, SuperflousMan, MattG, mlagoo, and a few others. Gobbo and I played a homegame over that house and it was pretty fun. I talked to JCarver a ton and he seemed ridiculously smart and cool. I played HU with him for a while and we talked for a couple hours. ActionJeff is a pretty weird dude by the way.

The rest of the trip is sort of a haze. I ate a lot of really good food and just chilled and played poker for the most part. Summer has been solid so far. Basically I've just been playing poker and hanging out. Nothing really productive as expected. Not looking forward to going back to school at all. At least there's a lot of Summer left.

Poker has been really so-so. I haven't won anything since the $150R and I'm back in decent makeup but it's not really a huge deal. I've been grinding really hard and playing better than I have in a while. I feel pretty good about the future. I've also started coaching which so far has been fun. I basically started coaching for a new challenge. I also believe it will help me improve as a poker player. Thinking about the game and having to rationalize every play I make definitely will help me get a lot better. I did a coaching session tonight and it went very well. Everyone that was involved seemed to love it and learn a lot. It went a lot better than expected actually. Hopefully I can have some good students for the future as a long term type thing. I eventually want to be able to back/coach people as a decent chunk of side income.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/101/coaching-advice/completedonk-offering-low-midstakes-mtt-coaching-528627/

Good night!

-Brandon

Loving Life

Finally a happy blog post. At 1:30AM on Sunday, June 7th, I was smiling uncontrollably. I finally did it. I broke my 6 month downswing, and finally won a big tournament. I won the $150R for a little over $61K, basically clearing my makeup for Matt. It felt absolutely amazing. I don't think I've even been happier in poker. The funny thing is, I didn't really profit off of it. It still felt really amazing and I'm much more upbeat now. I have a feeling the next couple months are going to be great.

I have a pretty booked schedule for the upcoming week. Somehow I managed to get 12 hours of community service from school for pulling a cell phone out of my pocket to check the time. It's my second offense of getting my phone taken away, so it's an automatic 3-day suspension. Since it's finals, they can't suspend me so I do community service instead. I'd honestly rather be suspended but whatever. Today I had finals from 8-11, then made up my Gym final that I missed, and did 1 hour of community service. I have to do 11 more hours, which means doing 4 tomorrow and 7 on Friday. Friday is going to suck, but at least it's the last time I have to set foot in that god awful school for another three months.

Back on the positive side of things, I'm leaving for Vegas on Monday. It should be amazingly fun and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm staying with my friend Wesley (w33ktight) and a few others in a beautiful house. I know tons of people that are going to be there, and I'm a sucker for a really good steak which happen to be abundant in Vegas. Getting away from the house/everyday stresses of life will be cool too. Should be really relaxing and fun.

Finals are coming to a close on Thursday as well. Everything seems to be coming together just in time for Summer which is the best time. The overall run good switch has been turned on and seems to be in full force. Everything just seems to be working out. I had two finals today, English and Biology. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing on Bio final, but managed to lucksack a 73% on it. Honestly I thought there was no way I was passing. I literally had no idea how to answer most of the questions but guessed my way to a C. Going to pull off a B in that class somehow overall. My English final was great as well. I wasn't at school for one of the stories that the Final asked about. There were 12 questions about that one story out of 100 questions. I managed to get an 86% on the final and should get an A in the class. Ship the run good!

Here's a screenshot of my win for good measure/brags:



Hopefully this keeps up and I continue to do well. I feel better than ever and I'm super motivated to make something happen this Summer. I also plan on having a ton of fun outside of poker. I definitely am going to be exercising much more, and starting to work out and play more basketball. I really love playing sports and haven't played that much since I started taking poker seriously. I definitely miss it a ton.

Thanks for reading!

-Brandon

Life Tilt (Rant Post)

I really don't know what to do. It seems like anything I do fails in poker. I don't really understand and it's starting to get to me. Today I played by far the best poker I have in a really long time. I played close to flawlessly and was/am very happy about how I played. I can't say I've ever played better over such a long period of time for a full session. I played from 12:45 until around 1:25AM, over 12 hours straight, and played absolutely amazing. 

I got really close to huge scores so many times today. I got ~150th in the Warmup, 69th in huge 100r, ~150th in FTOPS 6-Max, 32nd in 150R, and 16th in the $500/$500K. I was one-tabling the $500/$500K for multiple hours and played very well. I managed to run ridiculously bad and continuously recover. I had TT lose to 99 for a monster pot with 50 left, then KK lost to 66 for a chip lead pot with 18 left.

There's nothing else I can really do but to just keep grinding and hope I stop running like this. It's starting to get really gross but whatever. The best players are able to take these runs and get over them. It gives me a nice reality of how bad MTT variance really is. I see all of these players that just constantly run extremely well and win everything. Most are very cocky and don't understand the extent of the variance that one can suffer. It's alright though. I'm really young and have a lot of time left in my career to get over it. 

I never really cared about recognition and stuff before, but I'm starting to honestly get jealous of a lot of these players who have won a huge sums of money online. I've played with most if not all huge winning high stakes MTT regulars. I honestly feel like I'm on par with a lot of them and better than some. It's all good though. I hope I'm saving my run good for something really huge. I think I'm around $40K in makeup right now if not a bit less. Not a huge deal, but it just sucks because all of the MTTs I was deep in today had 1st prizes over $60K which would've cleared my makeup and still gave me a nice score for myself. Unlucky I guess. 

Sorry for the huge rant, I really just needed to vent and get a lot of stuff off my chest. I probably come off as ridiculously arrogant in this post, but it's not really so. I'm just super tilted! :)

-Brandon

Update

I haven't posted a blog in a while. No real reason, just haven't been thinking about it and have been quite busy lately. I'm still running ice cold in MTTs, but FTOPS is coming up in a couple days so hopefully I can turn that around with a couple scores and possibly a gold jersey. FTOPS has been heart break for me in the past though.

I've been playing a lot of cash lately, HUNL mostly. I'm now being coached/staked by Eskabor (EskaborReturns) for 400NL HU. It's a really well ran operation and I'm happy with it so far. I haven't been running very well and I'm only up $1800 after like 10k hands but I'm not too worried about it. I think I'm playing pretty well and learning a lot along the way. Eventually I have to go on a heater in some form of poker IMO.

School is out for summer soon, about another month left. That will be really awesome and I'm looking forward to it a lot. I think it'll be really interesting to see what happens after summer. I have a lot of plans, including playing a lot of poker and hanging out with friends a lot. I've also talked to a couple people about going to Hawaii for a week or two which would be absolutely sick. I've always wanted to go there. It's absolutely beautiful and would be awesome amounts of fun. Would also be a nice break from the boring daily stuff I do all the time. Hopefully that works out and I'm good money wise to blow a couple thousand there. Tickets are like $1K round trip so it'd be an expensive trip, but well worth it if I'm doing well by then. Looking at around July after WSOP since 2/3 of the other people will be going to WSOP and playing the Main. 

I forgot I never updated the essay thing from the last blog. Everything worked out find and I got like a 95% on the essay when it was all said and done which is pretty awesome. She totally forgot about out conversation and apologized for it. No hard feelings, but she did manage to stress the hell out of me for a day or so. 

I'll update again when anything interesting happens. Thanks for reading.

-Brandon

I am frustrated with you, Brandon!

Today was another pretty bad Sunday. I got 2nd in the $215 PLO on Saturday, and like 6th in a $30 2+1R+1A earlier in the week. Those are my first two final tables in a very long time, probably over a month. I still haven't won an MTT in a couple months which sucks a lot. Running horrible etc. I'm starting to lose the passion for MTTs, at least for putting in a large volume at them. I've been focusing a lot on cash lately, mostly Heads Up cash. Heads Up PLO is a great game and really fun. It's also extremely soft, and easier to get action at than NL Heads Up. I've been playing a mix of NLHE HU and PLO HU and have been doing quite well. Probably up around $7K in the last week or so. 

FTP has these HA tables, which are PLHE and PLO mixed HU. There are pretty much no regulars and I'm usually the only person there sitting at empty tables, so I get action a lot which is awesome. People usually suck at at least one of the games, and usually both. It's also a great change of pace to switch games every 10 hands and there's a lot of action. It also prevents me from auto-piloting and makes me play better. 

On a non-poker note, I'm going back to school tomorrow as Spring Break is over, which obviously sucks. I had to do a paper over Spring Break because I was gone from English class for around 7 days and missed a ton. The day I got back from missing a ton of school the paper was supposed to be due. I talked to her during class and we agreed that it'd be due the Monday after break, which would give me more than enough time. She told me to e-mail her any questions I had on Thursday or Friday as that's when she'd be getting back from Florida on vacation. 

So, I e-mail her on Friday night asking a simple question about the paper and the format of it. She sends back a reply that pissed me off a lot. She has a sort of a history of forgetting things. She's probably forgotten every one's name in the class at least five times. Anyway, here's the reply:

Brandon,

I don't mean to be rude, but I just flew back into Michigan from Florida.  The research paper was due on the 7th, but the deadline was extended twice until the 9th.  You type me this e - mail on the 17th in the evening asking about how to write the introduction/conclusion of a paper that was due over a week ago.  You had two examples:  One written by a past Annapolis sophomore and the other written by a publishing company.  I asked daily re. any questions after going through details over and over.  I am frustrated with you Brandon.

Tell you what Brandon:  If and only If you have turned in all past deadlines and you have gotten full credit on every single one, will I accept a final draft from you at the next A.R.O. held on the 25th.

Thank you for understanding my position,
Mrs. LeBeau

ARO is basically Saturday school, which sucks really bad and there's absolutely no way I'm going to it. I was super pissed after reading that. I ended up figuring out most of what I needed to know by myself anyway, but I'm still not sure about something unrelated to the paper directly. I've sent her 3 replies and she still hasn't sent me one back. Pretty ridiculous and really unprofessional in my opinion. Hopefully things work out tomorrow. Tomorrow could either be a really bad day or a really good day depending on how many things go right. 

Wish me luck,

Brandon

Sick Brag

Just learned today that I don't have mono. The blood work got back, pretty happy about that. I apparently just have a virus that should be gone soon'ish. 

Played a bunch of tournaments today and had so many deep runs but no big scores. Probably cashed like 7 tournaments with zero final tables which sucks. SCOOP is tomorrow, playing the 5R and 50R. The 5R should be insane, already like 16K people registered. Hopefully I can ship one, would make the rest of the series much better. GL me.

-Brandon

Life Swongs

I've been pretty sick lately. I've had a fever on and off as well as a soar throat/stuffed up nose for a few weeks. I again got really sick Sunday night with a fever etc. I went in to the doctor's on Monday. I was told that I most likely have Mono. I'll know for sure tomorrow after the blood work gets back. I really hope I don't have Mono. It's really bad. Basically you're tired constantly and never get good sleep. You're also really sick on and off, and it doesn't go away for up to a couple months. Really a terrible thing to have, and there's no treatment for it but getting a lot of rest and drinking a ton of fluids. 

Poker has been kind of bad still, had a terrible sunday with no cashes. I did resolve the backer situation though. I talked to Fees and basically told'm I didn't like what was going on at all. We decided that he'd be no longer backing me for MTTs, and that I'd be clearing the ~50K make-up I owe him in cash. Obviously it's going to take me a very long time to clear that, but I'm just happy to no longer have to deal with the MTT thing with him and Doug. 

So, I needed a backer, and fast. SCOOP is in a couple days and I certainly don't want to miss it. I talked to a bunch of people, and Gobbo said he'd ask around and try to help out. Luckily he's awesome and got me in contact with Carter "cking" King who just won the Million after winning the WCOOP Main Event not long ago. He has a backing team for High Stakes MTTs with mattg. I worked out a deal with cking which is pretty cool. I'm going to start off playing pretty much everything I want to. The only thing I cannot play is weekday 100R's, and the Friday $500 6-Max. No worries though, mattg said it's just a sort of a trial. When I start putting in volume for them and am up ~$5K, I can play those tournaments. Pretty much their whole stable plays them now, and all of them started off the same as I did.

Overall I'm really happy and optimistic about the new deal with Carter. It seems they run a really awesome operation. Carter and Matt seem like cool people as well, and hopefully I can learn some stuff about MTTs from them as I respect both of their games. Maybe Carter's money will run good as well and I can ship a couple of SCOOPs. 

Before I end the blog I definitely have to thank Gobbo for setting up this deal. Thanks Jimmy!

-Brandon

Finally A Decent Day

Today was a pretty good day. It started off pretty standard, I woke up on barely any sleep for school after staying up to beat Resident Evil 5 until about 2AM with my brother. That was cool and definently helped me get my mind off of poker. I needed to have one of those nights again where I just stay up all night messing around and playing video games, stuff I used to do before poker. 

When I got home, I had a conversation with Doug "WCGRider" which really was frustrating. He basically came off to me like he didn't think I was good at MTTs. He told me I should look in to coaching, which is really frustrating espescially after how much shit I've gotten from him and Ryan in the past couple weeks. I basically just blew it off after he listed off a couple names for coaching recommendations that I thought were pretty funny knowing they weren't great players.

That really got to me, and I was closer to quitting in make-up than ever before. Whether or not I did all depended on my conversation with Ryan. I got straight to the point and told him how I felt about everything, and what was going through my mind. He dealt with it awesome and I feel really great. We had a good 20 minute conversation about everything, and he managed to put me in a spot where I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around for them, to a point now where I feel like I'm just going to play on and see what happens. Definitely a huge weight lifted off my shoulders and I feel pretty good.

On a different note, I'm officially 16 years old! Yay! I'll be getting my license by the summer which will be pretty cool. Definitely a lot more freedom, and I'll be able to go up and hang out with Wes (w33ktight) and Craig (HU4ROLLZ) more often. I always have a fun time up there so that should be pretty cool. I have a lot of respect for both of their games and they play a lot different, so it's cool to learn from them as well. Craig's on a pretty big heater lately too so that's always fun. 

I'm also looking forward to SCOOP which is coming up in a couple weeks. Spring Break is soon as well which will be a huge relief. I can't wait to get some real sleep!

Here's to having an awesome year as a 16 year old.

-Brandon

Random Thoughts

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and not really about one particular thing. I’m just thinking. When I lay down to go to sleep, I often am up for at least an hour with thoughts racing through my head. I think about a lot of things. I’m not sure why. It may come with starting to get older and realize some of what’s going on in the world. I obviously am not even close to obtaining all of the knowledge I’d like to, and may never be. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I feel like people don’t think about the little things enough. I also believe that the small things add up and play a huge role in the big picture that is life. I’m probably just rambling, but that’s what’s going on in my life right now. Just thinking.

One particular thing I’ve been thinking about is becoming more active. I used to play pretty much every sport; basketball, golf, football, baseball, you name it I played it. I loved playing sports and I’m an extremely competitive person at heart. I guess that’s why I love poker so much, because it’s a very competitive game and I strive to become the best that I possibly can be. Anyway, I think I’m going to try and start getting in better physical shape. I believe it will help me deal with a lot of the stress in my life and help get my thoughts straight. It will also help me become more healthy and live a better life which would be great. I’ve just been sitting down pretty much for the last year or so of my life. 

My plan is to start to run a lot this summer, maybe average a mile a day to start and work my way up. I’d like to also improve at some sports and possibly take up golf again. I’ve probably played about 10 rounds of golf in my life and I enjoy it a lot, but I suck. I hate not being good at things, so hopefully I can quickly improve in that game. Another goal of mine is to possibly play basketball again for school, which is tons of fun, great exercise etc. There’s nothing really more physically taxing and rewarding than basketball in my opinion. The practices/conditioning are really intense, more so than any other sport I’ve been a part of that I actually enjoy. Football may be harder, but it’s not really my cup of tea. There’s really more thinking involved in basketball than in football from a player point of view. Many may argue with that but that’s how I feel. I’m also probably a bit too small for football, and am not very good at anything but Wide Receiver which I’d need to be taller to play.

Overall I guess I have a ton of goals I’d like to eventually meet. I’m a pretty big procrastinator about most things but I believe I can push myself to at least get in better shape.  I also need to do things outside of poker. I’m putting too much time in front of the computer as of late and I really think it’s bad for both my physical and mental health. I just need to be a kid for a little bit, even though I have a ton of responsibilities, I can find time to do so. I’ll close this entry on that note of optimism. Wish me luck on improving my life!

-Brandon

My Poker Story

I've decided to start a sort of personal blog. I plan on sharing it eventually but for now this seems like a good idea to record my thoughts and ideas, frustrations etc. I've thought about doing a blog for a long time, but decided against a public one for multiple reasons. The biggest reason being my age. I turn 16 in 5 days. I play pretty much the biggest stakes MTTs online and poker is a huge part of my life. Getting banned from the sites because of my age would be devastating so I think advertising my age on a blog would be a bad idea if it fell in to the wrong hands. I made the mistake of putting my age on 2+2 before and luckily nothing happened. I got the thread deleted and all is well.

I'll try to update this blog at least a couple times a week with new/interesting stuff, but it may be more like once a week. Right now happens to be one of the most frustrating times in my poker career. I'm currently on the biggest downswing of my life, sitting at about $30K in make-up. I think I've been playing quite well and have just ran in to the negative side of variance. Hopefully it gets better, as I think I continue to improve every day. 

The thing is, at such a young age, I don't have THAT much of a financial burden. I can basically play and not worry about going too deep in to makeup for the most part. I probably have a bigger burden than most do at my age, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I was broke for a month or two. My goal is to get as good as I possibly can, and the goal is to play professionally. I have a while before I turn 18 and am able to travel the live circuit and play online legally. 18 also marks when I should be making the decision to either go to college, or play professionally. I'm honestly not sure of what I'm going to be doing now, as I've been going back and forth. I really want to make it as a poker player. I truly enjoy the game, and think I'm good enough or will be to play full time. On the other hand, I've heard many people say college was the best time of their lives. Not only was it a great learning experience, but they also had a ridiculous amount of fun. The college environment is unlike most other places. It's truly a one of a kind experience or so I hear. 

I believe I'm extremely intelligent, but I'm not sure if college is for me. I've never been too fond of school. I've never had the motivation to do homework, to study, etc. I've always just gotten by on intelligence alone, which is not something that's too great of an idea in college. Anyway before I go on too much of a rant about college (booooring!) I'll give some background about me.

I started playing cards at a VERY young age. I first started playing random card games with my Grandma at probably around age 7 or 8. I used to love playing "21" (Black Jack), Old Maide, and other card games. I got in to poker probably around age 11. My friend showed me play money online on a really old site which I'm pretty sure is no longer available for US players. PokerRoom was the name, and I LOVED playing play chips. I played all the time and really loved the game. It was tons of fun. 

I began playing freerolls etc. at around age 12, and I started playing on multiple sites to play the best freerolls. I really wanted to play for real money. I actually met my first real poker friend begging for $5 at a final table. His name was EricT and it was a final table on FTP. We talked for a while and somehow I ended up speaking to him on AIM a ton. I learned a lot from him, and started off playing PokerStars micros when I offered to sell him SuperSystem 2 for $30 on Stars. I actually never did get around to sending him the book, and shortly busted the $30. I felt really bad about not sending the book, so eventually when I got a bankroll I sent the $30 back, and I began playing for real money only and no more freerolls. The only freerolls I played were private ones with decent first place prizes ($50 OMG!!!). 

How did I get my money you may ask? It's all kind of a haze, but I remember getting them mostly through random poker friends sending me $5, and private freerolls. I busted roll after roll. 

  In January of 2006 my mother passed away. I was really close to her and it hit me really hard. I began playing way more poker than ever to pass the time and take my mind off of what had happened. A few months later my Grandma also passed. She taught me cards and I was also quite close to her. Again a devastating loss, and again I upped the amount I played poker a lot. 

Since I have somewhat of a bad memory, we'll fast forward to the recent past. I continued to meet a lot of great poker players, which I think is absolutely key to becoming a great poker player. They've taught me so much from just chatting with them on AIM about hands, etc. I've gone through a few different private MTT backers, the most recent being Jimmy Fricke. He taught me a lot about the game, and I kind of regret breaking off the deal with him. He was not only a backer but a good friend and still is. I got offered a great MTT backing deal from Ryan "fees" Fee which was too good to pass up. That's where I'm at right now, playing MTTs and cash games for Ryan.

I'm kind of upset with how things are going overall with this deal. I'm playing the stakes I'd like to in MTTs and everything, but a lot has changed since he teamed up with Doug "WCGRider". I also have a feeling they actually don't think I'm all that good, but maybe it's just paranoia. Hopefully I can get out of the current rut I'm in and go back to crushing. I still love the game and hopefully will for many many years to come. 

This turned out to be a really long entry as I thought it would be. Hopefully that will get all of the background information out of the way. I guess this is sort of a way for me to vent, as well as write. I love to write and used to write stories frequently before I got in to poker. I'm very creative by nature, and sort of odd I guess. I think this is why I got in to poker, and don't really fit in to the normal 16 year old stereotype. I guess you could say I'm odd, or at least a bit unusual. I like it that way though, it at least makes life a lot more interesting.

-Brandon