A Dollar And A Dream

Got a live backing deal from Galen Hall, and off we go! I'm a live pro starting now. I'll keep the blog updated with new developments.

Live Pro?

I'm seeking live backing. I already have a flight booked to FL for two weeks, and am considering moving there and taking some college courses. I'd move close to Ft. Lauderdale which has the best cash game action in the US. I'm mostly looking to play 2-5, 5-10 and some 10-25. I'm very experienced in live and have played an absurd amount of live cash. I feel extremely comfortable in the live setting. Here's the thread I put up:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/135/staking/seeking-live-backer-1048606/

I guess it's the life of a legal age degenerate now...

I'm going to start updating this blog again. I started it when I was 16 years old and only had 10 or so followers that I trusted. I mostly used it as a journal or something to vent and tell my story, as I really could not publicly without ramifications. I love having some kind of outlet to get my thoughts out, and I've never been the personal type. I also don't mind the attention, even though I don't deserve as much as I get. I'm far from a celebrity, but sometimes it feels like I am. A lot of my friends think I'm some rich superhero when really I'm far from it. People come up to me at poker games and say are you CompleteDonk, or a random friend's parent will find my screen name out and see my PokerDB and think I'm crazy rich, as it just shows cashes and not profit. I'm actually down according to real stat sites online, lol. In reality I'm up only around 100, maybe 150k.

Everything in my life is pretty good right now. I'm far from my peak in terms of wealth, but I'm happier than ever. I've been working on fixing everything I screwed up when I randomly decided to leave my high school for online and barely told anybody. I've built back all of my old really good friends, and have met some new awesome ones as well. It feels nostalgic almost. I feel like I'm being able to experience everything I missed socially by making the move I did. I had a girlfriend for a few weeks and decided to break up with her. It was probably pretty cold by me, but she was really in love with me and I'm not looking for anything long term. I'm way too young and teenage girls are much too hot, heh. I've been working out a bit and playing a ton of basketball/running. I'm way too skinny and out of shape and I'm quickly fixing that as well.

I'm pretty much convinced I'll be going to college by the latest next fall. I will graduate from high school in a couple weeks and finally will have that ever so elusive diploma, lol. I cannot go this fall as I'm graduating a bit late due to laziness, apathy, and some depression mixed in. I've gotten out of that funk I was in. I think Black Friday was actually an extremely good thing for my life longterm. I feel healthier, happier, and even though I'm poorer, I've realized money isn't everything!

Hopefully this post doesn't come off too braggadocios. Most of my posts (especially previous posts in this blog) are more dark. I'm just telling the truth about what's going on in my life, and hope it's interesting enough for at least a few people to read and enjoy.

Until next time..

Makeup

Makeup is one of my least favorite things in the world. This opinion is held by most staked poker players, especially backed MTT poker players. The day I got out of makeup was absolutely amazing. I never thought the day would come, being stuck 6 figures and nothing going well, but last week that's exactly what happened. I won the $11+R on Stars for ~$15K to cap off my amazing heater and finally get out of makeup. The funny thing is, it didn't come all at once or with a big score like I thought it would. I grinded harder than I ever have before, and only played very good value tournaments. I no longer feel the need to play tournaments I don't have a significant edge in. This means no more $1K's, no more tough $100r's/$200r's etc. I realized how large of a mistake it was trying to make a living playing MTTs staked and playing tournaments like those. Makeup builds fast and it's pretty hard to get out of a large hole. I never want to be in such a hole again which is why I'm taking the correct steps to prevent this.

A couple months ago Ricky came down to MI to hang out for a few days. He basically flew in to play the $50R homegame that was being ran, and to chill with yours truly. I doubt it was anything like he expected, as he ended up getting wasted off of various alcohol/drugs the second night he was there with a kid he didn't know at all before the trip. Nothing too noteworthy happened beside that. Ricky, Lance (LMONKEYH) and I did a ton of gambling on ridiculous stuff. I think I was stuck over 5K at one point to Ricky playing a combination of blackjack, throwing a ball in to a garbage can, and ping pong. Pretty standard I'd say. I think I only ended up losing a couple thousand but it didn't go too well for me.

I'm still staked by Jake 'psutennis11' Toole and things are going quite well. I've made him a significant amount of money in a short period of time and he couldn't be happier. He's a great backer and I've never had a problem with him at all. He's also a very good MTT player and is always willing to discuss strategy which helps my game substantially to say the least. I went out to State College, PA for the weekend to hang out with him, theczar19, Avril Sharapova, and a bunch of others. It was pretty fun beside the fact that I didn't bring my 30" monitor, and had to grind in a small space as there were so many people playing there. We didn't get out much as the weather wasn't too great and I only came in for a couple days in order to play FTOPS.

I booked my flight to CT for Friday morning. It's currently Wednesday night and I decided it'd be a great idea to not tell anyone beside for my brother that I'm going on a trip out of state for a couple weeks. The plan is to fly to CT Friday, and drive to Hilton Head, SC on Tuesday morning. I'm going to drive with Ricky down to SC where we'll be staying for a week or so. Geoff 'Geoffras22' Rasmussen has a house to himself down there so it should be a lot of fun. The weather is beautiful down there compared to MI so I'm definitely looking forward to it. Hopefully we'll actually leave the house and do some sight seeing or other fun activities instead of sitting around all day. Ricky is usually up for whatever though, so that will encourage Geoff (I hope!) to tag along with us.

Pretty exciting last month or two in my life. I no longer attend Annapolis High School, and am taking online classes to finish up my diploma. The diploma is no different and it's not a GED or anything like that. I had to pay tuition out of pocket for the classes but I'd say it's been 100% worth it so far. I really despised waking up every morning to go school 5 days a week when it's unlikely I'll go to college. This decision has drastically improved my life and I don't regret it in the least bit. I get more sleep, eat better, feel better, and can travel whenever I want. I see my friends less, but that's probably the only negative so far. I've had a ton of fun and don't plan on going back to the way I was living. I got off of a plane yesterday and am getting on another Friday just because I felt like it. Pretty exciting life for a 16 year old if you ask me.

I turn 17 in a month, and it's only a month and a year until I can start playing live poker! I really can't wait and have looked forward to being able to play live tournaments/cash for years. I really love playing live poker in my limited experience, and think it fits my style of play quite well. Deeper stacks are a huge benefit against tournament players who often are not very strong postflop players. The first EPT I'll play will most likely be EPT San Remo 2011 in early April. It's venue is very attractive (Italy) and the main event is quite large and draws a lot of terrible players and a huge prize pool. Hopefully I can bink the first EPT I play!

-Brandon

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