Hi.

Torontonian kid grows up in lower-middle class family and quickly realizes how much he hates being poor. After going through high school and receiving sub-optimal marks after being too bored with school and it's depressing concept of preparing one for more schooling and ultimately an even more depressing career, kid works for a couple years doing grunt work for old ladies and pricks, and, as expected, isn't happy.

Kid realizes that the poker he played when he should have been in class is very profitable, and sees potential. Kid plays online, kid wins money and builds comfortable bankroll after a couple failed attempts. Kid wins money. Kid wins more money. Kid gets cocky, moves up to stakes his bankroll can't handle, kid loses most of money. Kid smartens up and has been playing solid ever since.

Hi. I'm the kid. My name's Taylor Lackie and I've decided to write this blog because I plan on either making a solid second income to supplement whatever work I'll be doing in the future, or make a career out of poker, and I thought I'd drag you along for the ride.

I used to write, and still do occasionally, on cardschat.com's poker blog alongside the very knowledgeable, very guru-ish and very Swedish Fredrik Paulsson. I've decided to switch to writing in my own blog here because I've found that there's a lot of added pressure having to represent an up and coming site like cardschat. Nick, the site's owner, is very lenient and doesn't expect much out of me, but I really don't like it when I don't write an entry for a month and blow it off like it was nothing.

I'll be trying to update this blog at least weekly. I'll be writing posts to document my more interesting days, but I'll also be posting some strategic posts. I've been fairly busy lately and might not be able to update the blog as often as I'd like. I'm in the process of finishing the second of two electrical courses to further my career as an electrician (yawn), will hopefully be moving sometime this winter and of course need a job to do so, so you can imagine I'll be quite busy in the coming months too.

Anyways, on to the good stuff: the poker.

My poker 'career' with an $11 freeroll cash. I had cashed many times before, but every time I tried to build on it, it would either just vanish or I would build it up to about $200, and then it would vanish. For whatever reason, the $11 cash managed to grow and grow, and I've been playing with it ever since.

I mainly hovered around $200 or $300 for the most part, and finally hit a few big cashes to bring my bankroll up to about $700. I mainly played STTs and a few MTTs, doing fairly well in both. I brought my bankroll up to about $1500 when I got the gambler's crave to move up and really start ballooning my bankroll. I moved to cash games and started playing way out of my bankroll limits at $1/2 and $2/4, and actually did quite well. I slowly built my roll up at 200nl, but stacked a few times at 400nl with some solid hands and brought my bankroll up to about $2800, the highest it had ever been.

Variance, poor play and the resulting tilt hit me very hard. I had a few days where I lost hundreds, and I decided it had to stop. I took a step back, realized just how bad it was for me to be playing those limits, and made some changes. I withdrew some money because at the time I was in need, dropped down in stakes and stopped playing ring games as frequently. I bought and read several books including Super System 2, the incredible Harrington on Holdem series, Zen and the Art of Poker, and about a dozen others. They all helped my game tremendously, and I still reread them every so often.

My whole ordeal up until I started to rebuild my bankroll was documented in this thread on cardschat. I've changed much since then.

I've since been playing lots of STTs, specifically the $16 turbos on PokerStars, as well as the occasional MTT and cash game session. I was playing so many STTs for such a long period of time that I pretty much got sick of them. I still play them occasionally, but the very preflop-oriented play that comes with turbos and tournaments in general lead me to try something new.

Limit holdem was something that I never found much interest in, but decided I should try out since it deals with tons and tons of postflop play, promotes lots of discipline and it was a nice change of pace for me. I only started playing FLHE seriously about a week or two ago, running through 3000 hands so far while two-tabling at about 5BB/100hands at .5/1. I think I can squeek out a slightly better winrate than that in the long-run, but we'll just have to see.

I plan on playing about 10,000 hands before I move up to 1/2 (if my bankroll and winrate allows it), and will probably play about 5,000 more hands at 1/2 before I get sick of FLHE and decide to go back to tournaments.

Anyways, I'm rambling (something you should get used to if you plan on reading this blog), and I'll leave you on that note.