Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Let me introduce myself

Hey...thanks for stopping by. I created this blog for theraputic reasons. As a professional poker player, it is important to let out anger in a non-violent way, and I figured a starting a blog is a pretty good way. I've never had a blog before so I have no clue what I should be writing about. I think this blog will be interesting to young people who also aspire to become professional poker players. I'm just going to be blabbing about things that I feel like, sharing bad beats, sharing my ups and downs in this crazy game called NL Hold'em. Basically, this is a place for me to reflect, it'd kind of like a diary in a sense. So here is a little background on me. I promise that after this post it's going to be more 'poker' related. I just figure if someone is going to be reading about my life as a professional poker player, it might be interesting to know who I am first.

I was born in Russia on July 5, 1988. I don't remember anything about Russia because I moved to Israel when I was about 2 years old. That's where I spent my childhood. I hope some day, I'll move back to Israel and support the country I'm from. My parents moved me from Israel to Canada when I was 9. And I've lived in London, Ontario ever since. I went to a private Jewish School until I got to high-school. My best years in high school, unlike most people, were the first 2 and a half years. I knew no one. I made friends quickly though. My one friend introduced me to a bunch of people and then my social life coasted for the next two and a half years. I kind of stopped hanging out with my original friend and became best friends with this girl who everyone called Dee. At first I wasn't very attracted to her (this does relate to poker...just wait), but then as we hung out all the time, I started having feelings for her. She felt the same for me, I could tell by the way she looked at me. Anyway, we hung out every single day for the first two and half years in high school. We were popular and everything was great. The only thing was we became so close, it was hard to mention anything about becoming more than friends. Although, I'm sure we both wanted to. It was just ackward to bring up. So I thought (stupidly) that if I go out with another girl, she'd get jealous and we could talk about us going to the next level. Didn't work quite as I expected. She was definetly jealous. But she was very mad at me as well. So I broke up with this other girl, and then it took a month to get everything back to normal. Semi-formal was coming up and I was going to ask her to go. But..I go to school the day when I was going to ask her to go with me. "Guess what Gabs....me and Stephen are going to semi together". ARGGH! At this point I actually think I was falling for her. I thought, ok. I'll ask her out after semi. The day after semi we go to the mall, we sit down at the food court. "Guess what Gabs?"..."What Dee?"..."Stephen asked me out..and I said yes.." I was depressed for a month straight because I actually think I loved her. So in like 3 days I told her how I felt and she didn't break up with him up until like one year ago, by which time I got over her and wasn't about to be her rebound guy...It's just simply too late now. So everytime we hung out it hurt because Stephen would be there and they'd be holding hands etc. So that's when I started playing poker. I needed to get my mind off of her and so I started playing poker at lunch at school...that was the middle of grade 11. I had like 5 bucks from vacumming my house (didn't have a job before). I never went broke....I don't know if I would have ever started playing poker if me and Dee went out.

Here is my poker career and how I started it. We played $1 buy ins with like 5 ppl on average. I kept winning and winning and winning. Some kids stopped playing and when people would ask why, they say "cuz Gabbi is going to win anyways, what's the point?" I really did win most of the time. It was funny because we weren't allowed to play poker at lunch for real money, and there was a strict lookout for it. We found a cool teacher who let us use his office to play in. But we were forced to stop because another teacher walked in and saw us playing. So we kept sneaking in into the audotorium and playing behind the curtains (I don't know what they're called, but like on the stage, the things that seperate when there is a show). We got caught a few times. Eventually I built my bankroll to $120 CAD. I deposited half of it (around 50 US) online and lost it like most people do with the first money they deposit. I played bad. My first account was GABMAD, if you go to www.sharkscope.com and check that account, you'll see that I wasn't good. The only reason I believe I won at school is because I was just better than everyone else (I still tried my hardest, I always do when I play, it's just I didn't have experience). If I played in the games I play in today, I would have gotten schooled. So it took like 3 or 4 $50 deposits for me to win some money. As soon as I did I cashed out! LOL. I was afraid to lose it. At that point I had no intention of going pro. BTW...all this was through my brother's visa as I was only 16-17 at the time. I won some real money when I played the sunday million and placed 47/5506. That's when I got a bankroll to work with. Then, I kept playing, reading poker books, and discussing strategy with my brother (who's also going pro...he's 22), and getting better and better. I think I learnt the most from playing him and our friend Ariel back in the days when we started. We'd all try really hard, esecially me (well I just know I tried extremely hard to win), and the games were good for our skill level. Right now if I reviewed the hand histories, I'd probably be laughing. But I was just learning and at the time they seemed really good. I'm pretty sure I won more than I lost playing them and I was proud at the time because they're in 3rd year of university and I was just a high-school kid. Anyways, around the time where I placed 47th in that tournament, I started another account on stars (don't worry, it's all taken care off, I closed the ones I don't use). That one is 'poopsik1962'. If you www.sharkscope.com you'll see that I was improving. I stopped using that account and started using my new one after going on a rough poker streak that ruined my sharkscope (or so I thought at the time). That was approximately in July/August in 2006. Me and my brother and Ariel went to the Dominican for 2 weeks. I used my poker winnings to pay for it and that's where I decided I wanted to go pro. I came back and since then, GabeTheKid is my new account. This one has the best sharkscope in my opinion. And most of my poker winnings are after I came back from the Dominican. Since than I've won approximately...4k in tournies (profit), 19,430 in sit and gos, about 4k in FPP tournies, 3k in cash games...which sums up to just under 35k CAD. That sums up to most of my poker winnings. In my entire poker career, I've won about 50k CAD. This shows that a poker player's income is exponential in a sense. Man...I've been sitting here typing this for like an hour now...LOL...I'm kind of tired and so I'm just going to stop.

Hopefully, now I presented a clear picture of who I am, and now you know if you want to keep reading my blog. If I had spelling mistakes or gramatical mistakes, too bad! I'm not proof reading this right now..LOL..

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