The beauty is in the struggle

There was a time in my life that I can now look back and safely say that I started to figure it out. It was a series of lightbulb moments over a course of a year or two.

I was one if not the last person to play on full tilt poker. I had 28k in my account and was sitting at 2 2/4 horse and 1 3/6 LHE tables. That was all that was left of a site that I spent years in my office with Smooched asleep on the futon snoring away when at 1 am it logged me out and never opened again.

I would sit on 2p2 forum and looking for any hope to what would come next, when would my money arrive. I had around 7k to my name with nothing to do. I was unaware like the rest of the poker community of when my money (life roll) would arrive.

I would travel around playing any game that I could and find a little gig here and there mostly out of panic of when would I have enough money to pay off my credit cards and what, find a job?

I would fly out to commerce, hustler and Vegas before online poker went away and take unsuccessful shots at huge games I was completely unrolled and mentally unprepared for.

About a month of clueless to what I was going to do with my life. At age 30 I felt I didn't want to stop playing cards and gambling but I also knew internally I wasn't skilled as the high stakes players that I had played with in live games and my tilt game was too strong to be long for that life even if my bankroll came in the mail any minute.

I would play in a lot of mid small stakes games that first year and was grinding out a small living. Taking a backing deal for wsop cash games was a gut punch especially after I won.

I would fly out to California to see my father in Orange County once a year and would always end up playing at commerce for a day or two, normally going home with a lot less money than I came to California with.

This year would be no different, except it was. I had never entered Commerce with anything other than a goal of playing in the highest stakes I would feel comfortable with. Notice how winning wasn't a priority?

I now needed to win. I was (am) a Omaha 8 specialist. The games in the small limit area I had never paid attention to prior to this trip.

As I sat down in a 6/12 limit game with a $300 buy in mid afternoon I was the only person really capable of playing the game. There was no one really folding hands pre flop. I had played well over 500k hands of Omaha in my life and I had never seen a game, players play without folding a hand for hours.

I didn't know how to react. I was frozen. A year prior I would have laughed, left and told people about this bingo game they have at commerce... I needed to win. I won very little the first night as I watched various $400-600 pots as Asian men and women yelled at each other capping and bloating every street of every hand.

I drove home that night with this game in my head. I knew I had found something but I feared the variance and wasn't even sure if I had the bankroll to play in this game as people rebought so often that many seemed to lose 1k or more. 12 bucks at a time!

I showed up the next evening and it was completely dead. I brought 2k with me (probably 25% of my bankroll) and as I sat down all the Asian men and women who were throwing chips around the night prior were replaced by older white men who were very exploitable and just there waiting for the traffic to clear before they headed home from work.

I know that I won a couple hundred and preferred the game this way but craved the action I saw the night before. Was it a one time thing?

I'd show up every night for a few days and would play with the old cranky men and win or lose a little and eat free food. I'd walk around the high stakes room and talk to all the men and women I knew and try to act like I belonged despite having no bankroll or way to play in the games they were in at that moment.

Two days before I was supposed to leave I show up and all the Asian men and women were back at it! They were screaming at each other and throwing chips around before they even got their hands.

Why today? Its a Thursday thing? Wait the list is 24 people deep? Where are the old regulars that were here yesterday?

Then I heard it. The announcement of seat open or EW your seat is ready was replaced by, "jackpot 2780" then a hour later "jackpot 3950" Then it clicked!

Once the jackpot reached 2k of more everyone would go to that casino and play small stakes trying to hit the bad beat jackpot. They played Omaha because it had 4 cards instead of 2 and as long as 4 queens lost you would win the jackpot that was announced every hour. No one folds because that would mean surrendering the jackpot potentially!

I crushed. I played 20% of hands, knew that there was no bluffing and watched people regularly lose 2k chasing a 2k jackpot at 6 casinos. This isnt a commerce thing. This is a LA cardroom thing. I'd be at commerce Tuesday, Hollywood Park Wednesday, Hustler Thursday, etc etc. I extended my trip by 2 weeks.

I come home and kept thinking about Los Angeles poker and how can I afford to live in LA on a 3 big bet hourly and how miserable I would be living in LA... Impossible but I'll visit Dad more and walk beaches which isn't the worst life.

One day I'm talking with a friend and he plays tournaments and is telling me about how Blackhawk has a daily tournament daily that is juicy and begrudgingly I go with him for the horrific drive of 45 minutes up the windy, treacherous hill.

We are sitting there waiting for this tournament when I see a 30/60 limit hold em game with a bunch of familiar faces. It is a literal hall of fame of fame degenerate gamblers of Denver convention sitting at one table.

Two guys owe me money from when I ran games and I go listen to their excuses for fun but then I hear it... Bad beat Jackpot is 137,000! They played limit because it was so much faster and it was just high stakes bingo them, there was less skill needed than playing even 2-5-100.

I would spend the next 3 years at those 6 tables. I never did go back to that 6/12 game at commerce.

I would regularly leave a rack of purple chips in my trunk or my car to skip buying in. I would keep track of the bad beat jackpot and if it hit, I would take time off knowing it would take awhile to build back up to get the truly bad players back to being interested in playing.

Let's not get it twisted, I still had to win. The competition was bad but they could still get lucky. I had overcome crazy variance and learn to not be so results oriented in a different way. I took the DRIVE (home after losing at a casino) over 200 times I'd imagine in just 3 years.

That game was there all along it turned out but I only knew of good poker players who were never going to tell me of a soft game like that one, back then. Sounds like sports betting nowadays eh?

I did return to Commerce high stakes room and it turned out once you are properly rolled and used to live variance it was not exactly the hardest spot to earn.

I was looking at a legal sports book today and something become very clear to me. They are so focused on the Same Game Parlay Formula which is a jackpot system that they are willing to be completely open and vulnerable on so much because they know who they want sitting in the betting queue.

Find your game, study your opposition, plan accordingly and acknowledge there will be struggles along the way to where you are heading. Don't wait for a friend to call to tell you where you should have been years ago.

Unfortunately sportsbooks limit and ban winning players and poker rooms find ways to kill themselves with rake, bad management and private games. There's a window of opportunity in every endeavor. Don't miss your window.

I hope you're incredibly well. Thank you for the space as always, Eddie