Stephen Groom Taking a shot at becoming a Poker Pro

Could I succeed as a professional Poker player?

A friend of mine asked me the other day "Why don't you update your blog any more? I used to enjoy reading it.".  My response was somewhat dismissive:  "I don't have anything to blog about".  This was around a week ago and since then I have realised that alot of stuff has happened in my life in the last three months which would have been great content for this blog had I been motivated enough to create it.

In the last ten weeks I have had a great time and done a massive amount of cool and fun stuff which I can't remember in enough detail to blog about.  The two most memorable events that occured during this period was Graduation and my trip to Gibraltar.

Graduation was an extremely uneventful day in it'sself.  The thing that makes it so special is that I am the first person to my knowledge on the paternal side of my family to have ever achieved a degree.  This is a feat that I am extremely proud of and I imagine gave my parents and one remaining grandparent great pride.  So much so that the difficult history between my mother and her ex-mother-in-law was put aside and we all shared a celebratory meal and drink together afterwards.  This meal may seem insignificant to most but it was pretty major for me.

After this was the trip to Gibraltar.  This was pretty incredible thanks in part to the two people who I flew over with.  My friend Scotty Hocking and his travel-buddy Jennifer Waugh.  We had a really amazing time and despite going over there to meet up with Marc Mulhern, we didn't spend much time with him at all.  The highlight of the trip to gibraltar was when Scotty, Jenny and I befriended a local man Damian Holmes who worked for the gibraltarian's answer to the wildlife trust (basically he fed monkeys and drove around in a pick-up cleaning monkey poo) and spent the day with him adventuring up and down the rock and we had some pretty amazing experiences thanks to him.

My trip to Gibraltar has led me to the conclusion that I definately need to travel more.  I was always envious of Scotty (and Jenny too after getting to know her) about the amount of travelling they did and this has proven to be justified by the amazing experience that I had getting out to Europe to see some new stuff and meet new people.  The fact is that you don't even need to spend that much money or go a million miles away to have a great time travelling.  You just need to do it!

Over the next few years I will definately make it an aim to travel more and I have plans to have atleast one more trip back to Gibraltar or Spain before the year is out.  I will also be sure to get around the UK alot more for some road-trips or semi-spontanious trips to different cities or areas of the country with friends.  On that note:  If anyone is interested in going somewhere any time (I'll specify why it can be any-time later) in the near future let me know.  I'm almost definitely in!

Aside from all of the fun cool stuff which I have enjoyed recently, the only thing which now is consistently dissapointing or below my expectation is my working life.  Since Gibraltar I have been working 40 hour weeks in the same old poker dealer's job at Aspers in Newcastle.  After only a few weeks of full time work I have decided that I have no intention of staying here.  I had already decided over a year ago that it was a stop-gap job but the realisation that I have been here for around twenty months leads me to believe that I am becoming trapped here.

The only thing which stopped me from upping and leaving 6 weeks ago or so was the dismissal of my immediate boss, the resignation of my close friend but superior James and the overall lack of staff.  This led me to believe that there would be a more senior position to be come available in the near future but this seems to be taking longer than I had hoped and I am merely staying here hoping that it does with no proof or promises of such a promotion.  For a number of different reasons I have came to the conclusion that even if such a position existed, and I was considered for the role that I would not take the job.  The casino industry is not one in which I would like to work any longer for a few key reasons.  The first and most important being the salary, and lack of prospects or higher-roles to aim for.  The other less important but still vital ones are the unsociable hours, being immersed in unpleasent negative-edge gambling the taboo of casino gambling and the scores of unpleasant characters who frequent the place.

With the above in mind, I've finally decided to put into action what I promised myself as early as January into action: Quit my job after graduating my degree.  So here it is... Some cobbled together plan about how I'm actually going to escape the unrewarding grind that is my job.  Over the past two months I have briefly searched for jobs, amended my CV and applied for a few different vancies with little or no success.  I have a telephone interview on Monday for a bank-teller job which I've applied for on the basis of it being daytime-hours, more professional more reliable and higher paying.  The issue with this job is that I'm not 100% confident that I will stick it out.  Like, atleast I actually enjoy the work I do at aspers.  Yeah I hate the place, the customers, the management and 95% of things about the job but I enjoy the work.  I think my resentment of this role is more due to the repetition and lack of any sort of challenge or purpose which results from doing the same thing for twenty months.  In a bank I don't know if I'd like the work I was doing, or envisage myself doing it when weighed up against my only other alternative:

Going Pro

I haven't mentioned Poker in this blog so far and that is completely intentional.  I haven't been accurately tracking my results or devising pretty brag-posts as I was in the past few months as it really isn't important.  The people who I expect to read this blog really don't need to know how much I'm winning or losing in any particular month (a rediculously small sample any way)  nor should they get to know.  The most important thing is that I am aware of how much money I am making, that I am making the correct choices and that I am doing as well as I could be.  My new-year's resolution of having an overall profitable 2011 across all forms of poker is going to be difficult not to achieve as I am playing so much better than I ever have.  So much so  that it is embarrasing and a little scary when I think about how bad I was playing in the past.

Since the beginning of June I have been playing 6max cash on Sky Poker.  I was talked into this by my friends Ben Dixon and James Howard who play in the same games at the 100nl level.  The month started with me playing 20nl on sky and I very quickly (within about 2 weeks) had a 4 figure account balance and enough money to be playing 50nl.  I found the move up to 50nl very tough and stupidly refused to drop down as my account balance dwindled and risk of ruin increased.  The month of June ended with me being about breakeven in total but I had created and developed a pretty-solid ABC TAG 6max game that was definately beating 50nl.  July came and I played a lot less poker.  I was working more and more hours, playing live more and didn't find the time or motivation to play on sky.  This changed when I jokingly mentioned to Ben (who has a few horses playing for him) that he should back me to play.
"I've been thinking about this for a little while" he replied to my suprise and  a staking deal starting at 50nl on Sky was discussed.

I am going to withold the details of the staking deal and the exact amounts of money won but so far it is going pretty good.  I am winning since that day at a rate that I am more than satisfied with and am confident that it is sustainable.  The stake also affords me the opportunity to play in live cash games far higher than I have ever been rolled to play in "if the games are good".   Sure enough I've played as high as 500nl live and for once live cash game poker seems a venture worth the time rather than a less-than-minimum wage passtime.

Over the last 3 months then I have played a huge amount of cash game poker and while that in it's self is a good thing, the work that is going into my game over that time period has meant that I am better than I have ever been.  I am more aware now than I have ever been about what I am doing on a table, why I am doing it, the objectives and pitfalls of lines and actions I am taking and general poker theory.  This is something which you never consider as a bad player, but even a simple thing such as a fundamental question "why am I betting here?" will improve a person's poker game and betting strategy to no end.  I am still very low down on the Texas Hold'em learning curve but higher than I have ever been.  And at least now I am on a path where I am getting better with each day.  I am pretty confident that I am beating 50nl at a winrate enough to make a living from.  I do not have a sample size to prove or disprove this however so this leads me on to my plan.....

Quitting Work

I have already speculated that I have the ability to make "enough money to make a living"  by playing poker professionally.  Unfortunately however I don't have the evidence to back this up.  For this reason I intend to spend 1 full month playing poker full-time (at least 120 hours of table time) to see if it is a viable medium-term plan.  With this in mind I have taken 27 days off of work starting on the 22nd of August during which time I will be playing as if I was a professional.  This has come after a long time of saying that I would try it and the realisation that this is the best and probably only point in my life when I am offered the opportunity to do so.

The reasons:

• Money:  Currently I work a close to minimum wage job in which I am earning ~£6.50/hr.  I believe that I can make more than this grinding cash games
• Commuting:  Despite the fact that I earn £6.50/hr  I can take into account the £5 per day for fuel, £5 per day parking and £5 per day food so in reality my wages are £300 than the figure on my wage slips
• My Circumstances: I am single, live on my own and  have a very good personal situation with my own flat and very few outgoings
• Commitments: I have no commitments and no ties besides work.  This means that if it doesn't work out that I just need to go and find some other low-paying job and I will be back in the very same situation.  Nothing gained and nothing lost.
• Lifestyle: I belive (and this is the only point which I am definately unsure of) that my lifestyle will be better and more sociable if I am working for myself grinding than it is currently working for my current company achieving nothing and doing the same tasks day in and day out without reward.  There will be no greater good if I am playing poker but it is a similar repetitive task done with no reason other than to make money.  Why not do it on my own terms in my own choice of surroundings?
• Freedom: This is something that is not to be overestimated as I will still be required to play for atleast 30 hours per week and do training for between 5 and 10 hours in order to be full-time.  I will however have alot more choice of when I actually work and how long the sessions are within reason.  I will obviously have times when I must play because the quality of the games is so good but I also have the choice of which 2 days off per week I take and I can make plans to do things or go places with little or no notice required.

So I have outlined my plans for my month away from work and if it succeeds, I will hand in my notice and continue grinding indefinately.  If it does not work out the first month then I simply go back to work at Aspers and consider doing soemthing different in the future.  If it takes longer until I realise that it isn't working out then I will re-evaluate my options but I have already come to the realisation that work won't be too hard to find.  I am not even sure myself why I am in the same job that I have been in for the last twenty months.

This blog over the next month or so will be updated with my experiences and feelings as I get further into my routine as  a professional poker player.  Hopefully it will allow myself to reflect in a very honest way and seek the opinions of others or encourage others to attempt the same feat.  I will try my best to update the blog atleast weekly throughout the next 6 months as it would be very dishonest of me to chose to no longer update the blog or be open and honest if things aren't going well.   I want to be able to read these blogs and reflect in the future to come to a conclusion as to whether or not this was the correct choice.

My adventure starts on the 22nd of this month and I will probably post another blog entry before then with my thoughts and a more detailed plan for how I will go about this grind.

Thanks for reading
Stephen Groom

16 years as a student. Thank god that’s over….

In the past few weeks I've been busier than I can ever remember.  I managed to put myself into a number of different situations and cause myself a lot of work and extra stress but I have put most of my deadlines, responsibilities and problems behind me now.  It is time to move forward towards the next big journey in my life.  Adulthood.

It turns out that this blog is pretty big TL;DR so I will give you guys a quick contents list if you want to scroll down and miss sections:

• College
• North East Poker
• Nottingham
• 21st Birthday
• Poker
• Poker Results

College

All of my deadlines for my BA Music Enterprise degree are behind me now and as a result I have a lot of mixed feelings.  There is the relief that I got all of my work handed in on time.  This is followed by a sense of anxiety:  What if the work which was submitted isn't enough;  What if I haven't achieved what I had hoped to;  What if I have forgotten something, made a glaring error somewhere which will cost me my education.  There is the excitement of graduating and telling my prospective employers or colleagues that I have degree-level education.  The pride that my family will feel when they recieve photos of me with my cloak and hat from the graduation ceremony.  The pride that I feel myself for having achieved something which many won't.  And the thankfullness that I am in a situation where I had the option to study and was comfortable financially and otherwise throughout.

It is still rather upsetting however that when I discuss my education and history that my achievements are overshadowed by the errors in the choices that I had made in my childhood.  There is also the underlying thought of "what could have been".  Throughout school I was a very disruptive child and this was reflected by my achievement levels.  I left school with average GCSEs, no A-levels and I was not welcome back to the school beyond the age of 16.  Basically as soon as they had the option to refuse to teach me.

This led to me having to take a very big u-turn from my parents' expectation of me doing an academic degree and landing into a job somewhere around about now, and I'm not sure they will ever forgive me for not "achieving my full potential".  I chose to do a vocational BTEC qualification in music production as I was always a very keen music fan and I was awestruck that this guy (my guitar teacher Ally Lee) was making his living doing something which he loved, and at around the age of sixteen, I aspired to be him.

This passion for music production led to me achieving a triple-Distinction mark at BTEC Music Production and I now had some pretty certificates which I could be proud of.  It is at this point that I believe I was misled by Newcastle College.  After many different options were discussed with course leaders, family, my girlfriend and lecturers at the college it was decided that I would study FdA Music Production.

This part of my life was just a comedy of errors really.  From the outset it became clear that this qualification was a mistake. However having recieved student finance, moving in with my then girlfriend, discussing the 5 year plan and recieving the backing of my parents I deemed that I had no choice but to continue.  I felt that if I had chosen this career, come this far and dropped out that I would have let everybody down.  I also didn't want to be that guy that gets to 30 and wonders "what if...".

Two years passed and I achieved a rather useless Pass grade at FdA Music Production.  This isn't the grade that I wanted but this is what I have.  This is due to me finding myself in a sad, motivationless pit of laziness towards the end of the course and I will admit that I did the absolute minimum and didn't put in the work which I should have.  There are lots of external factors which I have discussed with family and friends as to why this was but in the end it was nobodys fault other than my own.

After a summer of relaxing, I went back to Newcastle College to study for the Ba Music Enterprise qualification.  I arrived at college in September 2010 full of ambition repeatedly telling myself and my family that "this time it will be different".  I actually thought in my own mind that after the last two years had failed so badly that I would turn it around and "achieve my potential" for the first time since my BTEC.

Despite a number of personal problems throught this period (breaking up with my girlfriend and losing 3 grandparents within a few months) I remained quite level-headed and I was safe in my own admission that this will be the last chance.  I often spoke to friends, family or thought to myself "This is the last chance I get to make my career.  If I fuck up this time I'll be flipping burgers for the next fourty years".  This spurred me on through all of the tough times.  This was compounded by the desire to make my family proud.  The thought of my late nan asking me "How is your music going" or "are you sticking in at school yet" drove me to achieve despite anything that was going on around me.

It was all going well until around 2 months ago the course-leader returned after being on the sick since the course began and everything changed.  Basically, we had spent months doing work that was either incorrect, or we didn't need to be doing.  This meant that in the past two months over 50% of the work which I had already done or submitted needed to be re-done, rewritten, resubmitted or doctored.  This problem absolutely killed my motivation.  I wasn't attending tutorials, I lost my passion, I decided that even if I did achieve my qualification that it was useless, I ignored letters and emails from the college.  A lot of the stuff in the list above is probably true but I handled the problem the exact wrong way.  Eventually, somehow I turned it all around and started attending tutorials again.  I discussed work with peers and spent some days in college with them rewriting work and comparing submissions.

All was going well and then again at the worst time imaginable, another lecturer quit.  Part of the degree was a 7,000 word research dissertation on my own chosen subject.  The essay was all planned with the aid of a lecturer and then she dissappeared.  She was on the sick.  It is too early for me to properly reflect on what has happened during this period but the cliffs are this:  I researched and wrote a seven thousand word research dissertation in 1 week;  The dissertation is easily the best piece of academic work that I have ever created;  I am proud of said dissertation;  I did not "achieve my potential"

Now all I have to do is wait.  I graduate in July so before then I expect a letter informing me of whether I am a Bachelor of Arts or just another college dropout.  In the mean time it is probably best to forget the difficult times which there may have been, remember the good stuff and enjoy the freedom which I now have.

North East Poker

My latest exploit is the North East Poker forum which I am very proud of.  I have already published a post on this blog at around the time of the forum's launch so I will keep this brief.  I created the forum as a partnership as I believe that such a business can not be ran succesfully by one overstressed individual in charge of everything.  I instantly thought to myself that Gareth Walker would be just the man for the job and so far he has only proven that thought to be correct.

Nottingham

For the second time, a group of my friends traveled down to Dusk Till Dawn, Nottingham to play the 3rd Grand Prix poker tournament.  This time it was €50+10 and had an €80,000 guaranteed prize pool.  I made a deep day 2 run along with Josh Kerslake but sadly this time none of us made it to the final day.

Over the course of our 5 day weekend, We visited Alton Towers, Dusk till Dawn poker club, some nightclubs in Nottingham (briefly), Circus Casino, hooters and lots of other restaurants.

I won't write a big trip report because there was far too much fun had to remember it all but I can say that the trip was the most fun I have had for a long time and I would like to thank everybody who I saw in nottingham for their help in making my 21st birthday one to remember.  I do regret that I didn't take any photos at any point but it was made clear very early in the trip that noone likes that tourist with the camera.

21st Birthday

I turned 21 on the 21st May and this was mostly the reason which we went to Nottingham.  I didn't do anything too special  on the 21st specifically (played day 2 of the grand prix, got drunk later) but overall my friends and family have made the days surrounding them very fun and this will be a period (rather than a specific day) which I will never forget.

I got some pretty incredible gifts too and I would like to thank everybody for being so generous.  It appreciate everything which is given to me regardless of cost and it means a lot that even at the age of 21, people are still so very generous.

Poker

I have played a lot of live poker over the last few days and it has refreshed my love for the game as win or loss I haven't had a session of poker that I can remember recently that I have not enjoyed.  This is mostly because most of the time I have been playing on tables which have atleast one good friend of mine playing also.  While I believe that it is never nice taking money from or losing money to friends, moving money around is part of the game which we must all learn to cope with and with the correct attitude it is not a problem.  Even if you hate it, the banter which I have enjoyed at tournament and cash tables this month is some of the best I've heard in my life.

I don't really want to publish any poker results this month as I've just had such a good time.  Every time I get to writing this part of the blog I have improved something so much that it makes the results feel irrelevant.  Last time it was my bankroll management and attitude towards the game and now this time I have improved my game also.  I have decided that when playing Poker it should be fun regardless of the financial outcome.  This is made alot easier by utilising the correct bankroll management and I have (mostly) been playing well within my means in the past month.  I have also decided to play cash games instead of MTTsngs on the internet because while making money is fun, so is thinking and improving your game.

I would like to thank my friends Ben Dixon and James Howard for showing me that the future of poker is cash-games but mostly for their support and generosity in helping somebody who is a far inferior player to improve his skills.  These people are true friends.

Results
01/05/2011 - 26/05/2011

Live

Total Won: £131.50
Game Count: 11

Cash Games

Total Won: £184.50
Time Played: 40 hours
Winrate: £4.61/hr

Tournaments

Total Won: £-53
Game Count: 1
ABI: £53
ITM: 0/1 (0%)

Online

Cash Games ($10nl)

Total Won: $4.62
Hands Played: 5007
Winrate: 0.92bb/100

Tournaments

Total Won: $0.73
Game Count: 300
ABI: $4.13
ITM: (14.7%)
ROI: 0.1%

I had intended to conclude this blog with a section reflecting on the last year and detailing the plans for my 22nd year but this blog is a major TL;DR already so I will save that for a future entry.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog, please leave a comment if you did

Thanks

Stephen

April 2011 – Things are coming together

It is vital for me to get this balance correct and as such, I will be taking a hiatus from playing any sort of volume this month, playing only a few selected local tournaments and maybe 1 or 2 sessions online with friends.

Ha!

April 2011 went completely different to how I had planned it.  I had a fun, productive month and was glad to be able to spend even just a few hours out in the sun in the hottest April in british history.

Poker

The intent for this month was to play one or two live tourneys, a few online sessions at my friend's houses and not much else.  It is pretty amazing that I missed both of those goals by about as far as I could have but I've had a good month financially as a result.

Live

Total Won: £219
Game Count: 13

Cash Games

Total Won: £9.25
Time Played: 31 hours 12 minutes
Winrate: £0.29/hr

Tournaments

Total Won: £192
Game Count: 2
ABI: £33
ITM: 1/2 (50%)
As I intended, I didn't waste alot of time this month playing low buy-in local MTTs.  The two games that I played were the NPF Birthday Game that I wrote about in the last two blogs, and the Circus £50 1st tuesday game.  I didn't have the cash available this month to play the circus £100 game but I don't regret missing it.

This month, I sat in two of the best live games I have ever sat in.  I remember one night playing with Ben 'bendystash' Dixon, Simon 'simmy3k' Cameron and James 'brickonriver' Howard at Circus Casino, Newcastle sitting in a £0.50/£1.00 game.  We played for around 8 hours, had a great time with some fantastic banter being thrown around the table and we all made some decent money also.  That session for me brought back the reason that I started playing and enjoying the game.  It is a very fun game with friends and I will be making a point to ensure that live sessions are all more like this and less of a grind.  Nobody enjoys sitting with 9 people they don't like trying to take their money and succeeding for probably £5-£10/hr.

Online

This is where I deviated for the plan.  For some reason, and I have no idea why, I set up a grinding station in my house by setting up my old desktop PC again, allowing me to play up to 30 tables comfortably.  This resulted in me playing over 1,000 games on Pokerstars, and netting me a pretty decent amount of $$$.  I'm pretty sure that everybody likes to look at pretty graphs so here are mine:

45 mans:

180 mans:

all games:

All of the results above are via 16-30 tabling $3.25 45mans and occasionally mixing in $2.20 180mans when there isn't enough traffic.  I had a rather fortunate incident where tableninja automatically registered me to a $3.30r 180man which I am underrolled to play and I finished second for $300 which helped boost my BR a little.

This month is the first month where I have made anything close to a wage by plaing online.  It has given me alot of realisations about the potential to make money playing SnGs and the correct approach to volume, brm and discipline.  I have been playing maybe 4 hours every 2 or 3 days and I have realised that if I put in a good amount of effort that I could make a significant monthly wage playing 45man SnGs

I have cashed the majority of my money out of stars, and my bankroll currently stands at just under$300.  I will be playing $3.25 games and mixing in $6.50s when I go over $300.  I will be dropping down to $3.25s very aggressively and moving up to solely $6.50s at around $500.   This should enable me to put in enough volume to see if I can beat the $6 level without risking going broke.  Volume is going to suffer this month however due to college commitments.

College

Between all of this poker playing, I have actaully found the time to do some studying.  I have done the majority of the work I have to do and am on target with getting everything done in time for my deadlines.  I am dissapointed however with what I ahve achieved and how late I am leaving it to finish everything off.  There are 1001 reasons why this is the case but it is my own responsibility to ensure that I achieve the best I can and I will be the one who suffers if I do not achieve my potential on my last shot at formal education.

Life

I turn 21 on May 21st and as such have planned to travel to DTD Nottingham to play the Grand Prix for the 2nd time.  This weekend is more about the social gathering for me and I will be travelling down with some good friends from the newcastle poker scene.  We are staying in Nottingham from Thursday 19th May until Sunday 22nd if anyone wants to meet us down there for a night out or something.

No doubht I will post on here towards the end of may detailing how much money we all lost, or about Ben Dixon winning the Grand Prix again so stay tuned.

Cheers