how austin got started gambling

well, im sure most of you are wondering how i got started being such a gambler, now i will regale you with the story.


when i was 10-11 years old, i learned how to play a game all vietnamese people know how to play. this game is called "thirteen" or "tien len" for you viet folk, its pretty much poker with 13 cards, we would play for 50 cents a hand and somewhat, this eventually led to me buying a bunch of stuff that was cool at the time like gameboy games, pokemon cards and shit with the money i won.

moving onto high school, i was in marching band, because of this we went on trips all over the east coast. myrtle beach, tennessee and all over virginia. my good friends at that time and still are kind of were vernon, daniel (my current roommate), and mike troutman. mike troutman taught me how to play this card game called texas holdem. i immediately fell in love with it we started playing with skittles and acting like we were all rich and stuff haha it was fun shit.

fast forward to junior year, poker started booming, it was on tv, on the internet, it was everywhere! not to be lost in the mess, my friends and i started a little home game, .25/.50 at alex's house every friday after school, we would all bring $20-$30 and just play every week. this went on for 2-3 years after graduation and we gradually moved up in limits and cash played. we started out with money in play being $200-$300, when we moved up they were 1k-2k and now since we are playing $1/2 home games over 3k would be in play. it was insane, whoever won $50 back in the day were considered the big winner, nowadays $100 no one bats an eye. its sick how far we progressed. it was funny cause the big winner of each game would treat to mcdonalds or something, shiet we still do that now! haha

as soon as i got my associates from nova, i left for VCU to finish college up and this is where i got started with online poker. this is all alex's fault lol, this guy showed me full tilt and had me depositing $50 a time for about a year, we would just play sit and go's and some cash games, burning money, we never won. around this time i joined a site that i'll call OT and made some friends that played poker just like me, i'll call them OTPC. because of these guys i have evolved into somewhat of a poker player and not just an idiot :D. this is probably about the time eric ma got me started on betting football games, which made watching it alot more fun lol

so now back and forth, i made a couple hundred online, would withdraw, go nuts for a month and redeposit, i did this for about a year just making $4000 in just random cash games. as soon as i read about some friends of mine placing in tournaments i started to get into the MTT (Multi-Table Tournament) scene. i love it, i love playing tournaments, as soon as i get a steady bankroll going i hope to grind them. reading harrington on hold'em and various sites, i learned much more about poker and i still have yet to learn. this past summer, i made my two biggest cashes of $2000 and $1500, couple this with a few $1000-$2000 pots i won at omaha, it put me up at +8k for the summer heading into this past fall, my senior year.

i know it sounds like im up a nice chunk but i am not lol, my degen ways have put me into debt with some of my close friends, and i plan on paying them off very soon and probably trying to start a roll back up again. i love gambling, whether its poker, football or just random shit, i love gambling. i know it maybe an unhealthy habit, but im not ruining my life with it. im controlling it to an extent. people get their joys from bungee jumping, playing rugby, smoking weed, whatever. my joy comes from bluffing out 2 people in a huge pot, it comes from seeing "Congratulations! You won this tournament!" it comes from the sight of seeing a bunch of colored chips coming my way.

my goal for 2009 is to pay off all my debts and to make enough money to play at the world series of poker this summer. its pretty feasible i would think.

wish me luck!

till tomorrow, i will be starting a end of 2008 post and probably some other random shit. lol. merry christmas everyone!