The DoJ Made Me Do It

Well, the time has finally come. It’s been 3 weeks since I’ve been able to get a real session of poker in. I’ve had a lot of time to think about my career, what I can do to put myself in the best possible situations to succeed, what to do about the blog now that I really can’t play cards during the week. With these and several dozen more thoughts swimming through my head I’ve come to a few conclusions. I don’t claim that this is the best way to handle the limitations we all now face, but the ideas I’ve got now are the best for my situation and what I need to do. The DoJ has told us all, “If you want to become a pro, you have to do it the old fashioned way, at 30 hands per hour.” Fine, if that’s what I have to do then I’ll do it balls to the wall like I’ve always done.
As I’ve said in blogs before, I’m lucky to live about an hour drive from 3 perfectly legitimate card rooms. One such room hosts several big events year round, the biggest of which being the WPT World Poker Finals. I am of course talking about Foxwoods resort and casino. With Mohegan Sun about 10 minutes from Foxwoods I’ve decided that my best option to get myself rebuilt in the poker world is to spend my weekends in the great state of Connecticut. I have planned out camping trip like excursions to the two casinos every weekend for the foreseeable future. The plan is to get here on Friday nights, stay and play until Saturday morning, find a nice shady spot to catch some sleep during the day Saturday, and start the process again before returning home by late Sunday afternoon. I’ve packed everything with me from toiletries to fruit, my computer to jugs of water to use for bathing purposes. I’m going to effectively “camp out” at the casinos. Play cards in the soft games by night, and sleep during the days.
The caveat here is I now have a job. My rent has been taken care of for at minimum the summer, and hopefully beyond that. All of the money I win playing 1/2NL can stay in my BR and be allowed a real chance to grow. My hope was to start making trips like this by late June. Thanks to a speedy cash out from Poker Stars and some extra money from work I’ve been able to scrape together enough money to take some shots. Now let me be clear here, I don’t really have a bankroll. A bankroll to me means I have 15-20 buy ins to play a particular game. As of this moment, I have just over 5.5 buy ins that I can contribute to poker. With rent paid though that money is solely for poker use, and I will be able to add probably a buy in per month from extra money from work. My hope is to by summer’s end have a real bankroll to be playing 1/2NL (using $200 buy in as my model) with maybe enough to start taking some shots at 2/5.
It’s Friday night now and as I type this I am sitting just outside the Hard Rock at Foxwoods getting ready for the days ahead. As far as the blog goes, I am going to change my model a little bit. I will be blogging during these camping trips, talking about hands, funny stories, all the same good shit with the grammar errors and spelling mistakes you’ve come to expect from me. I’ll also be trying to use twitter a lot more while I’m here to recap things in closer to real time and get some pics up. Before anyone goes nuts, I get it I’m grinding 1/2NL not playing baller stakes so most people aren’t going to give a shit. That’s perfectly fine, you don’t have to pay attention to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing what I do. I believe in this, I believe in my soul this is what I want to do with my life. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I need to build myself back up. I’m not embarrassed that a $300 winning session for a weekend would be a solid result. No one is going to flame me into thinking I should just shut up. The DoJ flipped us all the bird here in the US and told us to fuck off. What we do isn’t considered legitimate enough to be allowed the right to do it in our own homes. So if you want to complain about me doing what I do, I suggest you write to your representative in congress and explain to them that they need to get moving and pass some legislation to bring online poker back because you’re sick of this DTools22 moron who keeps flooding P5s, Cardplayer, and twitter with his micro stakes grinding.

In case you haven’t noticed by reading this, I’m pretty pumped up. It’s time to get myself situated and start grinding my life away. My twitter handle is DTools22, feel free to @reply me either your flaming or your good wishes. I’d rather be polarizing and be remembered than universally liked but forgotten after I’m gone.