Since last we spoke Pt. 10 2019: Poker and pre WSOP goings-ons 1 of 3
By June of 2019 my head was a vice. I redeposited my 2018 WSOP earnings back into crypto, which swiftly got cut into a third. It didn't help that once again I hadn't learned my lesson from previous years, and fiddled around with my positions, which resulted in that thing where it seems like the market is out to punish just you and nobody else. I would say my personal bankroll went from something like 900k around the end of 2017 to 150K mid 2019. Maybe low five figures plus or minus in poker, but complete and utter "investment" devastation.
I was so stuck financially, not to mention unrecognizable in so many ways personally ( out of shape, not studying, not creating, and overall feeling identity-less ), it felt pointless to make a real effort playing poker, and seemed like spending my day just not being stressed out about one thing or another was the best use of my time. A crypto rebound waiting game, that I'm sure a lot of people can relate to right about now, was going to decide the greater financial picture for better or for worse.
I did grind a little, and came up with some very flawed theories about a few games that I have worked hard on correcting. Some of the other variants are carnival games I'm probably still awful at, but don't anticipate playing much of if at all. PLO on Pokermania was good, but extremely temporary. I got stiffed by 2 agents, and afterwards was asked to deposit personally to eliminate the third party factor altogether, only to watch the site shut down, taking my online roll with them. This deposit would later be returned to me thankfully, but it didn't help matters at the moment.
I took my business to PokerBoom shortly after, just in time for a run in with an account named KalKelvin that literally nobody I know could beat, and I've never felt more sure I was being cheated (online) someway or another. That experience lasted a week or so, and I got out of Dodge pretty quickly. I started playing in a few of the Vegas live games with mixed results. Objectively I was not good at many of the games in the 80/160, and maybe that's still the case. TBD.
The bigger private games were better mixes for me, and while there were some games I was consistently leaking in, it was my rust playing live, and being too many steps behind an awkward situation or a soft skill, that really caught up with me. This coupled with some personal stressors made having me in a game range from "not easy but very good action," to a pure spot on any given day. The next post I make will elaborate on this and my last experience of 2019 playing in a big game. I think it would be very fair to say 2015-2019 was a period of atrophy in many ways, and I'm upset at myself for dropping the ball, knowing I've dropped the ball, and trying to pacify the problem instead of being aggressively proactive.
The overall picture was that I had exactly enough ( mostly in swinging crypto ) to pay the year's expenses, cover my WSOP piece, and pay for a wedding that was definitely over budget. If I bomb The Series, or crypto tanks more, I'd have to face a reality that I never thought I would come close to experiencing again. Busto?
<3 Brandon
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