Ring Games Poker
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:34:43 +0000
Alright, so its finally over. 2009 is outta here. And despite having some really critical successes this year both personally & professionally, at the end of the decade I just gotta say I am looking forward to 2010 - and beyond - to only get bigger, badder & better yet! In many ways, I spent 2009 in a cocoon of sorts, healing and growing. Here’s a few of the highs and lows, and some hopes for the future:
Personally, 2009 is the year I put aside years of turbulent relationships to settle down a bit with a really cool girl. Which means splitting lots of time between her place in Vegas and my own Hollywood digs! We’ll see where the future leads but its def nice to be with someone who treats me so well & who I admire on so many levels in return. And not to mention hot hot hot! Love you, MB…
Call it getting older or whatever, but 2009 is also the year that I learned to appreciate my family on a whole new level. We’ve always had a good bond, but maybe being in Vegas so much has given me a bit of homesickness for those guys! I swear, when I haven’t seen them for a few weeks, I really miss them more than ever. After my mom passed away a few years ago, I’ve been much more protective of my dad and brothers. We’re all we’ve got left, in a sense, so any chance I have to spend with them is highly treasured.
I’ve also been fighting a bit of an identity crisis between who I am & people’s perceptions of me in the gambling world. For years I really enjoyed creating tons of memorable blackjack television, in which I crafted a truly smack-talking, “bad boy” persona. I’m certainly no saint & can rant and rave with the best of ‘em - but lets face it, watching blackjack on television is about as boring as watching paint dry! So I had my fair share of fun trying to liven up an otherwise boring medium, create some good TV conflict & drama, and make some good $$$ along the way. Mission accomplished. But now, years later, I’ve moved into poker almost completely, and find that as much as its nice to be recognized or remembered from those shows, its strange how everyone seems to think I’m like that in real life. And while my friends may say I’m edgier than most, I can only assure you I’m only half as much of a douchebag as the character I played on TV…
Speaking of poker, what a crazy ride 2009 has been. After my breakout year in 2007, where I cashed for about 250k & finally realized I didn’t need to rely on blackjack any longer to pay the bills (thank god too, I was running out of places that would still allow me to play!), I’ve spent the past several years trying to have that truly banner win or 2 to make my transition complete. But alas, I’m still waiting for it. I got close a few times - winning a WSOP Circuit ring this year along with a couple other deep cashes - but no bracelet or WPT final table was in the cards once again.
The sick thing is, I feel as if my poker game is the best it has EVER been right now - not only no limit holdem tournaments, but all of the individual HORSE mixed games as well. I’ll thank Annie Duke one more time for truly giving me the training of a lifetime, and after countless hours online & live the past few years playing as many tourneys & cash games as I could get my hands on, I’ve really come to eat, sleep, and breathe poker game theory on a whole new level. In fact, I came into 2009 thinking I had to do a little work on my mixed games, and ended up spending practically the entire year tearing apart every little thing I thought I knew about poker & retooling it from scratch. Like Tiger Woods going away and reinventing his swing, there has definitely been a readjustment period & the results have certainly reflected that.
For the first time in my life as a professional gambler - going back about 7-8 years now I guess - I did not show a profit in a calendar year. Sure, I was still ahead of the game when it comes to rakeback deals & the other opportunities I have in the gambling world, but just examining my hard wins/losses alone, I was negative. Looking back on it, I can see its almost entirely due to the retooling I did on my game for most of the year, but even still, the wins I’ve been experiencing again lately haven’t been enough to compensate. With the game I’m playing now, it shouldn’t be too much longer before I’ve won back the ‘09 losses, but what an incredibly stressful & confidence-shattering year this was at many points.
I’ve also been tracking specific kinds of results this year - breaking up wins & losses into categories like live tourneys, online cash games, etc etc - and what really amazed me was how consistent I have been in tournaments and live cash tables, and how dismal my results were specifically in online cash games. In fact, even though I’ve come to be a much better player now than I was a year ago - and I think, at this point, a profitable one in that arena - mastering online cash games has been the single most difficult aspect of becoming a professional poker player. There were so many times that I wanted to just quit, or to think everyone was just sucking out on me constantly, but after battling thru it all I’ve come out so much stronger than I could have ever been if it’d just been easy. God forbid!
On the acting front I also had one of the biggest successes of my career in 2009. I finally shot the pilot for the show I created, ‘Grifting,’ in which I travel the world taking on every game I can find. Every week, I track down a master of a new game, take the crash course & proceed to try and beat it. Street Chess in NYC… dominoes in the bayou… mahjongg in China… backgammon in Monaco… draughts in England… you name it. After mastering the worlds of blackjack & poker I pick up on game theory much faster than the average player & even though I won’t win every episode, I give it my best shot! And thank god I don’t actually have to beat the masters themselves - just learn from them & then take on the field. An amazing process hooking up with an awesome production company, and now we’re in the middle of taking network meetings trying to find a home for this bad boy. A lot of promising developments so far, and in the next couple weeks I hope to have a big announcement to make!
Working on the show kept me sane when the poker was at its most torturous… and reworking my poker game totally kept my mind off all the intangibles I couldn’t control about the Hollywood TV pitching machine. But at the end of the year, having that project so perfectly completed makes me think if I did nothing else in ‘09, that alone would have been worth it all!
I’m sure there are more highs and lows I could ramble on about for the year, but those are the major points. I love working with UB, not only on the great poker product, but also another project that came about in the past few months: working behind the scenes to relaunch their online blackjack tournament room - all i can say is, it is gonna be sweet! More announcements on that coming very early in 2010!
As for resolutions for 2010, well, here are a couple -
#1 is the simplest - to take care of myself! That means even though I already eat pretty healthy, I want to keep up the exercise, yoga, and daily scheduling of eating & sleeping that so quickly goes out the window for me. I really started to feel my body run down at points in 2009 and I wanna do everything in my power to keep myself energized, healthy, & refreshed in ‘10.
#2 will be the hardest - to keep the stress levels down & the confidence levels up in poker & in life in 2010. After the beating I took in ‘09, & the work I did making my game stronger than its ever been, I gotta get rid of those acquired demons that came along for the ride this past year & remember that its a new beginning & I am working at full capacity once again. Following my #1 resolution will def make the #2 one much easier!
#3 is gonna be the most fun - to re-engage with the world around me and take things a whole new level! I titled this blog ‘DOA - Death of Auto-Pilot’ (after the Jay-Z song ‘DOA - Death of Auto-Tune’) because in so many respects, I feel like I spent this entire year cocooned away, on auto-pilot, reinventing myself, my game, my tv show, etc - working behind the scenes to prepare everything in my personal & professional life for the avalanche of amazing activity & success that’s about to come my way. Sometimes in life we have to pull back & do the work under the surface before we can relaunch ourselves even farther than we’ve gone before. And I feel that if its one thing I’ve done with my 2009, its been to prepare for what I think will be one of the best years of my life so far.
Call it the Scorpio in me but when I do something, I don’t do it halfway… i am a tortured artist who will tear myself apart in order to grow to the next level of beauty & enlightenment. So thank you, 2009, for giving me the healing space to work behind the scenes & prepare for what’s to come next. Watch the fuck out, 2010 - I’m coming for ya!!
Let’s make it count, people.
-hd.
By MindGame in PokerNo Comments
and a Happy New Year first of all! Grace is already dilligenty writing here so I have no excuse to not get rollin’… I got to know poker in the middle of 2007 and started playing seriously in 2008. Right now I am grinding NL100 SH working my way towards NL200 SH. I have never played a single hand in full ring cashgames except in live poker tournaments. Right now I have half of my bankroll at PokerStars and the other half at Everest, but I also play occasionally on iPoker. I got back to Everest shortly before christmas because I wanted to try out the NL100 games there. The last two weeks have been really good for me…just a matter of time before variance strikes back .
So…for 2010 I have just one single goal: playing more volume. The reason that it took me nearly two years to get near NL200 is that I just dont play enough. This has to change this year. I am planning to play a lot more poker and hopefully get established on NL200 asap.
Ok thats all for now, I will try to update regularly in the future and hope you have fun following our “poker careers”… .
Cya MindGame
@Grace: Wish you all the best for your SNE run!