As an avid online poker player, especially with Sit&Gos tournament play, and multi-table tournaments such as guaranteed tournaments, I think you’re about to discover secrets I never knew existed! Let me begin by saying that I came across a young man, young by my standards since I’m over 60, and he’s just barely 25.
First let me tell you a bit about his life: It is somewhat inspiring since he’s just a regular guy just like everyone else. He just works really hard at everything he puts his mind to. Ironically, by telling his story, he hopes to inspire other people to set BIG goals and have the discipline and willingness to do whatever it takes… because the only failure in life is giving up.
So here’s this young guy who at a very young age learns to play chess with his dad. Eventually, he gets so good at it that he beats his dad most of the time. He continues playing chess all through middle school and high school.
While in high school (between 9th and 10th grade), he takes up playing trumpet and forms a band. At one point, he suddenly takes trumpet playing very seriously and finds himself playing 6 hours a day. He eventually becomes the best trumpet player in his county and plays at different events between the 11th and 12th grade. This is when he learned a lot about pressure, which was later beneficial to him in poker. Because, when playing in front of crowds you are under enormous pressure, and you need to learn how to fail eloquently.
As he puts it, “most online players have never really accomplished much in their lives, and when start getting good at poker, they don’t know how to control their ego. You need to learn to keep your ego in check. Nobody is that good”.
As a teenager (16 to 17), he had different jobs such as McDonald’s, but eventually landed a job at an airport fueling airplanes. The job came with a lot of downtime which allowed him to study a lot about poker, especially hold’em.
At about 19 years old, he deposited $50 online on a particular site to play poker. He played 25 – 50 limits and grinded it up to about $5000 in bankroll. He then switched to a well known gambling site, 4-tabling 15 – 30 limit tables, and moved up to 30 – 60 limit tables, which at the time were the highest limit tables you could have online. The problem was… he just couldn’t beat them and got very frustrated and depressed about it.
Then one day, he decided he would switch to SitNGos, and although he didn’t know much about it, he ended up winning $10,000 in about a month. Still at the age of 19, he decided to quit his job at the airport because it didn’t make much sense to him to keep working when he was sitting on a bankroll of $15000 playing poker online.
He had also been going to college at the time studying engineering, and found it too hard when all he was doing is spending his free time playing poker. And anyways, it became clear to him that he could never make that kind of money initially as an engineer. Although he admits that everyone should have a back up plan (a college degree), he eventually quit college.
After quitting college, a certain site started making higher and higher limits on SitNGos, all the way up to $2000 SitNGos, which he played quite often. They also had a STEP SitNGo for a cruise to the Mediterranean which he won. By the time he had won this tournament, he was sitting on a bankroll of about $80000.
I think you get the idea… but this story ends that by the time this young man turned 21, he earned over $500,000 playing online poker in multi-table No Limit Hold Em, and at 21 played his first major tournament on the WPT and won. He’s won over $4,000,000. in tournament play by the time he turned 23.
He continues his living in BIG BUY IN tournaments on tour.
The moral here is: Set BIG goals and have the willingness and discipline to learn, and to do WHATEVER it takes… because SUCCESS is never giving up! I’ll add to this at the ripe old age of 62, “that YOUR FEAR OF LOSING is your worse enemy”.
Comments are closed.