The story of "The Home Game" - TL;DR

Chapter 1 - The Inception

I created this account so that I could remain anonymous. If I had posted this on my other account, others on 2p2 may know it is me, and I would rather keep their anonymity, and I would like to keep mine.

This is a true story of the evolution of a home game plus extracurricular activities. In it there will be degeneracy, poker, life stories, all of this hopefully for your entertainment. These events took place between the winter of 2014 and the summer of 2016. I no longer have any action in these games, as I now have moved and gone back to grinding my own game.

A little background about me. I was in college when Moneymaker spun the poker world into a worldwide passion. I left college to grind out a living both online and live at places like Foxwoods and MS. After a year or two, I moved to Florida, and kept to mostly online, as the poker rooms were not as developed back then and had capped buy ins at $100. Tampa Hard Rock had a small poker room where the Asian gambling area is IIRC, and I found it lacking action. Although I initially played Holdem, I transitioned to PLO around 2005, and was ahead of the curve for a long time. From then until Black Friday, I played online, and occasionally played NLHE live when the cap was raised in 2010 in FL. I turned back to a live PLO/NL grinder in 2011 when casinos were first really spreading the game regularly. I remember even asking the dealer what to do if I wanted to bet the pot. I realized this might be a +EV play as I was considered a new player, but I just had inexperience with live PLO. Even though I played 30 hours a week, I did have a small business I managed and make sure to keep it a priority.

Fast forward to the Winter of 2014. In South Florida, winter means season time in the poker world. Plenty of well off snowbirds flock to the area and the games become juicy. I had been playing on the West Coast, and had one close friend from up North I met in 2011. He had started dealing charity games, but was also a solid player and a certified hustler. we can call him Tim. You would never know meeting him, but he had been an opiate addict for 15 years. He was about 6 foot 2, 375 pounds, and did not move much. Once a millionaire, he was stuck with living with family and getting a dealing job. After doing fairly well both dealing and playing, he decided in February of 2014 that he wanted a piece of the action from the local poker rooms. We had been playing there for 2.5 years, and gotten to know a lot of the people. The idea of a home game was originally his - I was content to play in it and get some of the action on the side keeping book and offering security. We got our first tables running by playing at local charity tournaments and getting a player list going. Once we had 30 people, we started running our own game on Mondays and Wednesdays. It was mostly retired people from around town, a few 18 year old kids we picked up from cheap Moose Lodge tournaments that claimed they played cash, and a few friends. I honestly didn't know what I was getting myself into. I was not in the best of places at this time. I had just broken up with a girl to ran back to Michigan to be with her abusive ex, I broke my lease on my apartment because my roommate was a savage female drunk who needed help, and I was sleeping at my mom's house on her couch. I wasn't broke by any means, I just didn't feel like I had much else going on besides poker and finishing up school.

Tim started off dealing his own game the first night. These games started off as 1/2 with a 5 dollar straddle. People were buying in for 200, and soon every other pot was all-in. The game was juicy as hell. The thing is, Tim hated dealing and really wanted to play. He was content with his $5 cap rake and providing food - usually Subway, KFC, or something else of almost zero nutritional value. I didn't mind eating the ****ty food because I was depressed and it tasted good. Tim was looking for another dealer, and what better place than at the local casino to find a professional who wanted to deal for cash at the end of the night and then dump it back into the game?

This is where the story of Donnie begins......