Post #10: The Importance of Mentorship

I write about the mentors in life who've helped me escalate to the point I'm at now in my career, and address the importance of having someone you can look to for guidance.

If I know you well enough, and you know the names of the people who prefer to remain anonymous, please don’t expose or try to expose them.

A mere sixteen months ago, I was broke, in debt, and eating vending machine snacks for dinner at FSU, while I was still there for college. I didn’t have a path, and used sports betting and live poker with some college friends to try to make some money. It’s hard enough to win at one of these two things by themselves, let alone both! While I would win some money at poker, it would go straight to the sports-book the same day. On my worst days, I’d gorge on Sour Patch Kids and sodas (which I didn’t even drink back then, and still don’t) just to try to avoid my problems. I remember a specific game when I bet on Arizona State to beat Michigan State, and basically put my entire “bankroll” on it. They were behind the entire game, and I felt that despair wash over me, like it was all going to be over, and I’d have no idea what to do when they lost. I immediately went to the vending machine and bought like $10 worth of snacks and drinks, which is a feast of gluttony, and decided to eat my problems away.

Somehow, by some stretch of my imagination, they actually ended up pulling it out with a game winning FG, and I was running and jumping around my dorm at the ungodly hour of 3am, due to the game being in Arizona, a PAC-12 (West coast) game, therefore the EST. time zone is 3 hours ahead. You might be asking where I’m going with this, but while I was in college and effectively broke, I reached out to someone who I knew played poker successfully at a high level. He was a HSNL crusher in the US, playing 10/20, the highest stakes online sites had to offer. I sent a pretty simple DM on twitter to the extent of, “Hey I think I want to play poker professionally, are you willing to help me out in any way through looking at hands, and concepts, etc.etc.” I didn’t think I’d get a response, and if I did, I assumed it was going to be along the lines of, “I’d love to help out, but I’m very busy myself right now, maybe when you have more money we can do coaching.”

To my utmost surprise, I got back a response of, “Sure, just don’t go too crazy, and try to limit it to hands you really don’t understand.” Shocked, of course, I was definitely too adamant and eager to learn I would DM him about 10 hands a day, and always have questions and something poker related on my mind. It got to a point when I was doing a “bankroll challenge” or getting from 4nl to 20nl, and the reason it was a challenge was because it sounded better than it actually being my “life-roll” at the time. Writing this brings back memories of 6 tabling 4nl, just thinking about the days I’d get to high stakes and make “real money.” Remembering this to where I am now, I’m getting chills, and a bit emotional. I thought I’d be successful, but with the amount of help I’ve gotten from so many people in poker, I’d never have reached this level of success this fast. After a month or so from learning from him, I was his “student,” and he staked me for 20nl.

Okay, great, now I’m from 4nl to 20nl, only a bit away from 50, and a step from 100, and a jump away from 200, and once I get to 200, I can make some of that “real money.” Over the past 8 months of being on stake with him from September 2018-April 2019, I matured as a poker player and as a new adult. I left college that Spring Semester to go broke for poker. I was able to play 20nl still, with a win-rate of roughly 4bb/100 over 300k hands in this time, as well as be able to play live 1/2 at my casino on stake. I remember the first day I won $1000+ in a session, and I felt like it wasn’t real. Even now, being off stake with him, he’s still one of my best friends to this date, and I can only attribute my success at this level, to this point, thanks to him.

A bit later than this, I started getting into watching poker content more. We all know Joey Ingram and his Poker Life Podcast. I remember 6 tabling 4nl thinking to myself, “I’ll be on there, one day, for sure.” There were so many podcasts where I learned the idea of work ethic. One of my favorite ones at the time was one of the many Joey did with Jason Koon, about how he just put his head down and worked at poker to become successful. That’s when I learned that all it took to succeed was everything I had to give. After a few podcasts and interacting with Joey on Twitter, I sent him a DM about how much I loved his podcast, how much it had helped me, and how I promised to get to HSNL and get on the podcast one day. I didn’t expect a response but the next day I woke up to a DM from him saying (and I still bring this up to him every couple months), “You have the GTO fire.”

Since then I’ve been doing time-stamp work for his podcast, and somehow became lucky enough to have him be another one of the multiple mentors and friends I’ll have in my poker journey. I remember when I told him how upset I was after losing 10 buyins at 200nl, roughly $2k, and I tell him I’m on a “downswing.” He just says back, “What’s the downswing? Grow up, you’re going to lose a lot in this game. Get used to it, kid.” Looking back, I can’t even believe I got so rattled by a 10 buy-in downer, but that’s growth. Just from being able to talk to him about anything I had going on in my life, he was and is still always there with a constructive answer. I look forward to my promised podcast of when I reach 2knl, which will happen sooner than we both think.

In August, I joined a coaching stable, ran by a different HSNL crusher online, who was friends with my first mentor. Through my sheer work ethic and love for the game, I was pretty quickly given a spot to learn from him, one of the best in the game up to this point. I joined stake at 50nl, and moved up to 100nl in two weeks. After another two weeks, I shot up to 200. I had no idea what was going on because I rapidly “sun-ran” through these stakes, but I had my post-flop fundamentals from my first coach, as well as getting some of the best pre-flop ranges there are in the game today. Through that combo, and the softness of lower stakes, I effectively grinded my way up to 200nl in October, 2019. I made it to that point where I could make “real money.” While being on stake, my new coach at this time continually pushed me to improve (and study with solvers, but I was very adamant with what we called my “brain-solver” where I’d intuitively play way too aggressively because I wanted to win all the pots). After a couple months at 200nl, and moving up to 2/5 in the live arena, I made it to 500nl online. I was only playing full-ring at the start, but it was the start of getting one step away to high stakes. He always reinforced how because I had the ability to “sit in the seat” and grind, I would inevitably become successful. I still talk to both of my mentors every day, and run stuff by them whenever I have something on my mind. They’ve been paramount to my success up to this point.

In February of this year, I had a consult with Nick Howard, about career consulting for poker. The premise of the conversation was about what I was thinking about in the sense of my future career in poker after getting to the point I was at. Poker was my life for the past 14 months, and I put everything I had into it. After our consult, we decided the best path for my work ethic was to work smarter, rather than harder, and was offered the ability to join their CFP. Having the back-end clairvoyance on the player pools, I was able to calibrate my aggressive tendencies into a functional strategy, without expending wasted mental energy beating myself up about making a mistake, or bluff-catching and having the losing hand. I then went on a retreat trip to Atlanta in March, where I met up with Nick, his brother Patrick, Brad Wilson (host of EnhanceYourEdge), Andrew Graham (OhHeyCindy), and some other unknown, new friends at the time from the CFP.

I was a full 6 years younger than the next youngest person, so I felt a bit nervous to start, being so young and with everyone else on the trip being in poker for long periods of time, when I was just starting out. I wasn’t sure how to introduce myself, and am self-admittedly not the best at social interactions and making new friends. However, when we got into talking about poker, that’s when I felt at home. A moment I remember very well was when I was talking to a friend in Detox when I was excited about getting 4bet when I had AA at 100nl. He could see my excitement and love for the game, and even now, playing roughly 150k hands in the past 2 months using Detox’s strategy.

One of the biggest takeaways I received from that trip was that there’s more to life than poker. While I grinded so hard to get to where I was then, I’m not just a poker player; I’m a human first. I thought to myself that I wasn’t worth talking to or nothing else in life was worth my time if it didn’t revolve around poker. At dinner one day, Nick asked me a pretty simple question, “Would I rather be a “hero” and save the day in a particular spot, or be the World’s Best Poker Player?” To the surprise of mostly everyone at the table, I snap responded with the second choice, because that’s what I wanted the most. To be respected, and to be good enough. After that trip, I realized that I was good enough as it was, and I didn’t need to push so hard for the respect, admiration, and validation I was looking for.

While I can only write so much in this post, I’ve been more than blessed with the people I’ve met from poker, and have grown so much as a person as a result. The mentors I’ve had and will continue to be a clear by-product to my recent and future success. I have the work ethic, but they give me the direction, so rather than slowly improving in stakes, I’ve been able to just reach milestones quicker than I ever thought was going to be possible. I look forward to my continued success, to which I have to attribute a large portion of it to them just being in my corner the entire way. I hope I’ll be able to pay them back in some way in the future, because it’s been invaluable to my success. I can’t thank them enough for the time and energy they’ve put in to make sure that I’m on the straight and narrow. I love you guys.

Onward and Upwards.