Two Lives

In this post I talk about my initial sun-run in home games and the struggles that poker players face.

There I was, sitting across Olivier Busquet, a veteran and legend in the poker world. Olivier broke poker records, being the first player to win $2 million dollars in sit and go games before any other player had even earned $1 million. We had met through Twitter, as Olivier was looking for potential hitting partners. After a friendly match of tennis, he invited me back to his home, where we conversed about our experiences in poker. Sitting at his office desk, he recalls to me the time when he first worked on Wall Street, working for a large hedge fund company. In an attempt to move from the back office to the front, he gave poker a shot to prove his skills as a trader. However, poker quickly became an obsession.  Instead of working his desk job, Olivier would play poker until the late evening, after everyone had gone home. He soon got fired from the hedge fund company due to playing poker during work hours, but then went on to break records in the poker world. Despite his success in the game, he cautioned me against viewing poker as a sustainable long-term career path, emphasizing the compound effect. Life is not linear. Every action you take in the next hour, day, week, or month will be compounded over time, for good or for bad.

I never felt like I belonged in Michigan. Quite frankly, Michigan seemed remote, unsophisticated, and dull. In the back of my mind, I had always wanted to leave, I just didn’t know how.

After sun running and building a 6-figure roll, not only did I have a reason for wanting to leave, but now I had a way. 

My parents didn’t know that I was occupying the past year of my life playing poker, and I was scared to tell them.

My dad grew up in rural poverty in northern China. Through hard work and tenacity, he was able to achieve a high score on the national college entrance examination, and went on to attend Tsinghua, the number one ranked university in China.

Higher education is what my dad attributed to his success and he instilled the importance of it to me at a young age.

“Your mind is your greatest asset”, he would often repeat to me.

My parents were shocked when I told them I wanted to take a leave from school. They had spent the past two decades nurturing me in hopes that one day I would get an admirable job. Instead, I told them I wanted to play poker for a living.

After many hours and nights of explaining, they decided to let me go. At that point, my mind was made up, and convincing me otherwise was futile. They did however, warn me that if things went sour, to come back home immediately.

Looking back, they were right to react how they did. I was obstinate and rash, not considering the million ways my decision to go to New York could go awry.

But I did it anyway. During the winter break of 2021, I made the move out to New York.

It comes as no surprise that New York is one of the least popular destinations to make it as a poker pro. New York is considered to have the highest cost of living in America, and the second highest in the world. The more expenses you take on as a poker pro, the higher the percent chance your risk of ruin becomes.

But I was determined. I was going to play both a mixture of home games and online poker. My delusional self wanted to make another 6-figures during the next few months. 

Those first few months living in New York, all I could think about was making money and I was determined to do anything to get my hands on it.

I remember the first week after moving to New York I had my first high stakes downswing online, losing $30k in one week, running 25 buy-ins below expected value and wiping out most of my profits at 1k NL. It was the perfect excuse for me to take a break online, and focus my attention on high-stakes home games. 

And I ran hot. 

The first month of playing home games I couldn’t lose. I would play the home game most nights and stay until the early morning. 

During my second visit to the home game, I bought in for $5k. I had won a few thousand and had been playing tight the whole night when I picked up Q♦Q♣. The blinds were $5/$10/$25 and there was an early position raise to a $100 by a Jewish man wearing a kippah. A fun player, who also worked as a dealer, called the $100 in the cutoff and the action was on me in the small blind. I squeezed to $800. The original raiser smooth called and the dealer thought about it for a while and back-raised all-in, easily covering me. I tanked for a long time, thinking that he could easily have aces or kings here. After some painful deliberation, I decided that I shouldn’t risk my whole stack in this spot, and folded. The Jewish man decided to call it off for his $3k stack, and the board came out:

K♥J♦J♣5♥5♣

The dealer showed 4♠2♠ and the Jewish man showed 3♣3♦, both playing the board to chop the pot. I’ll never forget that hand because not only did I kick myself for making the wrong fold and missing out on an almost $20k pot that would’ve been shipped my way, but I realized that those two players did not think about poker the way I thought about poker - there was no strategy, they were in the game purely for the gamble. 

Coming from an online background, I didn’t consider that live poker was a game of people. Each bet a player makes has an intention behind it. It later surfaced that the Jewish guy was broke and ran away from his debts, and the dealer was purposefully put in the game by the host to attract more players to her game. He played on credit and was forced to deal to pay off his debts at the game. 

That first month playing home games was a bliss. The action was beyond insane and I had no care in the world for anything else besides playing poker. I would rotate between eating omakase sushi or perfect medium-rare filet mignon each night. Each time I was up a good amount in a session, I would also ask for an oil massage by one of the girls working that night.

I was eating like a king, making money and getting massages while doing so. What more could I want in life?

It was the second week after moving to New York when I had my biggest win to date. I was sitting on about a $15k stack when the action folded to an aggressive asian man, covering me. He had an extremely high VPIP, playing over 90% of hands. So when he raised to $100 in middle position and I looked down at A♣K♥, I had a mandatory re-raise, bumping up the price of poker to $500. The action folded back to him and he thought for some time before 4-betting me to $2k. 

With this strong of a hand, I now had a few options, I could either call, re-raise, or shove all-in, folding was out of the question. Knowing his aggressive tendencies and feeling somewhat invincible since I was on a heater, I decided to shove all-in. The asian man debated for a long time as my shove was quite large, another $13k more for him to call. After a long tank, he made the call.

We both turned our hands over and he showed queens, a classic flip. It was déjà vu, running ace king into queens again for a massive pot. For some reason, I knew I was going to win the flip, it’s that feeling you get as a poker player. We had agreed to run it twice, and a king came out on both flops. After winning that pot and having some other significant pots go my way, I cashed out $40k, the largest I’ve ever cashed out. 

Home game chip porn

I bring this hand up not to showcase my poker skills. I wasn’t doing anything special, I ran hot when it mattered and won two flips to win the biggest pots I’ve ever played. But that’s the beauty of poker, anyone can win. Sometimes, all you need is luck on your side. 

That first month after moving to New York, everything seemed to be easy. I don’t exactly remember how much I made, because there was nothing professional in the way I approached poker. I didn’t keep track of all my sessions, didn’t consider that in the long-run, almost no one but the host wins at such a high-rake home game. I also had totally shifted my sleep schedule to the degen hours, often leaving the home game as late as 4 or 5 in the morning and waking up well past noon.

The days following those big wins, I would often spend comatose in bed, with little motivation to do anything. 

Why did I have to do anything? I had just won 5-figures the day prior playing poker, what else was there for me to do?

I would do everything that a reckless 21-year old would do. On weekend nights, I would go out to the club with friends and get wasted. Once the night came to a close and everyone headed home, I would head straight to the home game, playing sessions into the morning. I had no control over myself, drawn to the home game each night like how a moth is entranced by bright lights. Poker was my escape. 

Jason Zweig describes the effect that money has on the brain in his book, Your Money and Your Brain. The brain activity of people who expect to make a profitable financial gamble and the brain of cocaine addicts trying to get a fix are virtually the same. This is why humans get over greedy with investments and why I kept going to the home game each night, because I wanted more and more of the rush.

It was stuck in a limbo, thinking that I had accomplished everything I’d wanted to accomplish. I was playing high-stakes at a young age, had a healthy 6-figure roll, and didn’t have any real obligations. 

Once I felt like I had reached financial freedom, I started going on dates. What else was a single guy to do with money?

I would blow through money like crazy. The cost of taking a girl out to an 8-course meal or Michelin star restaurant was the same price as a 3-bet at the home game. I didn’t really think much of it. 

During one date, a girl asked me about my future plans. I arbitrarily told her I wanted to make a million dollars. Truth be told, I hadn’t even thought that far. There was no plan, no end goal. 

Oftentimes, I questioned what I was doing. The poker lifestyle can in many ways be quite solitary. I felt like I was going through many of these experiences alone, and didn’t know anyone that I could relate to.

The mornings when I headed back home after a marathon poker session, I would see floods of everyday people heading to work. Most of the kids my age were soon to be graduated from school and would go on to get well-respected corporate jobs. 

In the next few months after my move to New York, I spiraled deep into questioning about who I was as a man. It was almost as if I had two lives. Despite thinking I would be happy achieving materialistic goals, I felt completely empty and unfulfilled. I was desperate to grow, but had no direction. I was willing to risk everything for answers. 

Why am I here and what is my purpose?