Discovering Online Poker

My Online Discovery
A short time after Gus made his first appearance, Frosty introduced to me the central idea behind this entire blog: small stakes online poker.

It was after another disappointing defeat at the home game late in the Fall semester of junior year. After Frosty was knocked out, he said something to me about how he made 30 bucks or something playing online poker. I was like, "Really? What site?"

Hell, only a few months earlier I had been calculating fake profits at a play money online table, so how could this be any different? And now that I knew a friend who had tried it successfully, I was excited.

"PokerStars," Frosty said.

We set up my account and I used my debit card to deposit $50 (the bare minimum at the time, and this would not be the last time Mr. Visa would be involved in my poker life). The first table I sat down at was definitely a cash game, and I'm pretty sure it was the lowest no-limit stakes possible: $.01/.02 6-player. I played for about an hour and remember actually having remarkable results considering the small-sized blinds. At quitting time, my account had been built up somewhere around $80. I was pumped. I just lost 5 bucks in a home game that took 2 hours of my life and here I was up to $36 profit at my first ever attempt. You see, small stakes online poker was perfect for me. Here were players that made Frosty, Lil Mac, Juddy, J and Gus look like Doyle, Phil, Daniel, Phil, and the real Gus. These people were calling stations. This fed perfectly into my weak, conservative style. I didn't need to worry about re-raises because no one knew when to make the plays. When I had the best hand, which was usual as I was conservative, I bet and they called. When I had the worst hand and they bet, I folded. Being weak was OK because people only bet when they hit and I only called when I hit. And as I only played good hands, I could typically out-kick or simply out-pair them on most hands where a big pot accumulated. It wasn't fun. I saw it as a cash cow.

Lil Mac's Online Discovery
I played online for about an hour a day, losing some and winning some, and had built my count above $100. I only played cash games. I had no clue what was going on. The cash games were the first thing I saw when I opened Poker Stars, so I played them. Anyway, about a week into my online discovery, Lil Mac knocked me out of a home game. As I graciously arose from my seat instead of making one of my usual comments, such as "terribly played" or "you called my preflop raise with 5-6 suited, typical", a couple of the guys took notice.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "I can make that 5 bucks back in 5 minutes online."

Lil Mac's ears perked. When his tournament finally ended, he meandered into my room to see what this was all about. He watched me play for a while.

After setting up his account, Lil Mac began playing online. We would call each other with results and by the middle of Christmas Break, a full-blown poker business had broken out.