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Message: [QUOTE="FkJJ, post: 2982707, member: 184779"] I'm new here to a CC so ill introduce myself, my name is Nate, I'm 27 years old & from Northeast Indiana. I have two children, both boys ages 3 months & 3 years; which adds a lot of uncertainty into my thought process when deciding what my next step will be as a poker player. Poker is a huge part of my life, but i also work full time, on top of being a father. I want to go full time at some point in my life. I currently play occasional live MTT, semi regular at 600nl through 1000nl 6max cash on Bovada. And occasional live cash of various stakes when I have time. This might be long winded so bear with me, it gets interesting. I feel like writing all of this out will help me get some things off my chest and give me some perspective on my own experience with poker. Feel free to provide insight, suggestions, share similar experiences etc. THE BEGINNING I started playing poker about 9 years ago. I learned the basics during local home games with my stepdad and his friends where I would win occasionally, not really knowing any strategy or much about poker in general. We always played 10$ buyin NHLE 6-8 handed. 10k stacks, 15m levels starting @ 50-100. It was a lot of fun, especially when I would place in the money. The best memory of this time in my life was that: When I lost, I didn't bat an eye & it didn't hurt. I just patently waited for the next game (if we played another afterwards) or the next weekend. Berore I knew anything about odds & outs, ranges, betting patterns, pot control, value betting, it was just a fun game. I didn't realize there was strategy behind winning. POKER AFTER DARK Fast forward two years. I'm 20 years old. At this point in my life, I was still playing occasionally on the weekends with my stepdad but somewhere along the line, my life fell apart. I was miserable. My days consisted of waking up, snorting a line off of my weed residue and leftover Vicodin covered coffee table, dragging myself off of my couch & spending my evening working a dead end manufacturing job, coming home and smoking myself stupid while piling more substances up my nose. I was broke, depressed & lacking any and all direction in my life. One night after work I was flipping through channels and came across NBCs' Poker After Dark. I was hooked. I was blown away that these guys were playing pots worth 6 months of my salary. They were reraising pre-flop and winning pots with trash hands. Having never been exposed to that kind of play, I quickly realized that there was more to poker than limping and getting a lucky flop. I watched it every night. I started YouTubing poker videos, Googling strategy articles. I was craving anything and everything poker related. The poker nights at my stepdads went from everybody limping and folding unless they had a big draw or a pair to now consisting of me raising pots, c-betting, check-raising and ultimately taking down our sit-n-go style tournaments on a regular basis. I had learned to play aggressively; but my newfound confidence would be my downfall. THE PRELIM While I was regularly winning 40$ in our home games, in the back of my mind I knew that I had the potential to make more. I soon found myself 3 hours away from home at the Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg, IN. My first casino experience as well as my first MTT. It was a $360 rebuy & I'll never forget how ecstatic I was when the tournament director announced that the winner would take home more than $100,000. I instantly pictured myself telling my boss back home that I quit & that i would continue traveling and crushing tournaments. I imagined myself appearing on episodes of Poker After Dark, taking down enormous pots and sucking out on Helmuth. In my mind, I was going to have it made. I FLOPPED A SET! I'll never forget getting dealt QQ on the first hand of the second level. I made a standard 3BB raise, it folds around to the button who calls. Both blinds fold. The flop comes Q7K. I Cbet 3/4 pot and he calls, I fire another 3/4 pot bet, he calls, I shove the river & he insta-calls and quickly flips up a flopped set of kings. BOOM. I was felted. What happend???? I never put him on KK!!! He should have 3bet me pre and raised my Cbet!!!! With hindsight being 20/20, I now realize that that guy was using my blind aggression to his advantage. And it worked. I was devastated. My deluded sense of skill that had developed while running over the competition in my friendly home games was quickly shattered by a cold deck & a good player. I drove almost 4 hours to get there so I'm not giving up yet. I needed that money back. I would have re-entered, but I only had $180 to my name. So I figured I would sit down at a cash table, make a couple hundred and buy back in before the re-entry period ended. I popped an adderall & half of a Xanax and sat down at a 1/2 NL table. At this point I was scared of another bad beat. I was sheepishly folding to most 3bets. Just calling raises, checking, folding. When I flopped a monster I would check-call it down. 6 hours later, well after the re-buy period had ended, I managed to have $600 in front of me. I stood up and proudly drove home with my winnings. I was conflicted. I had witnessed pros on TV playing ultra aggressively and taking in thousands, but here I am, driving home with winnings after an ultra-nit session. Although my first cash session was a winning session, I probably folded a bunch of winning hands out of fear. My game still needed work. And so did my life. CLEANING UP MY ACT ****** I'm going to stop writing for the night, ill continue tomorrow for those of you (if any) made it this far. The next few chapters dive into my ups & downs and transition from being a home-game crusher to taking on tough regs online and at local card rooms/casinos. As well as my transition from a depressed, teenage drug addict to a squeaky clean father of two with a $100,000/yr day job. Thanks for reading!! [/QUOTE]

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