INTRODUCTION, By Dusty Schmidt
This book contains some of the most important poker strategy in print.
A lot of people are going to hate it.
They’ll hate it not for the 15 strategy tips you’ll find in Section II, but for the 41 chapters that precede them in Section I — the one titled “Treat Your Poker Like A Business.” The information in this chapter is distinctly uncool. It is totally without tips on aggressive play, how to put your opponent on tilt, or how to make great calls on big pots. You’ll not find a single bit of trash talk or chest beating.
Instead, these chapters are tied together by a simple theme: We are here to make money. This is a business. Check your ego at the door.
In the simplest terms possible, this book tells you how to play better poker, and turn that improvement into money in your pocket. Some view business concepts as being peripheral to long-term poker success. I see them as essential.
There’s a knowledge gap in the poker world that I’m hoping to fill with this book. To me, running your poker like a business and playing successful poker go hand in hand. Yet most people play poker much better than they run a business. They have ability, but no clear way to monetize it.
The modern poker player is like professional athletes were before agents came along. They played in stadiums packed to the gills; meanwhile, they made $10,000 a year. Today’s player knows he’s the attraction. Many ballplayers make more than owners do. That’s because they learned how to monetize their abilities. Because online poker is still very much in its infancy, the player who can turn his talents into money by running his poker operation efficiently can be a veritable tycoon. The fact is that some of the most important factors to your overall win rate have nothing to do with actually playing the game of poker, but rather how well you run your poker business.
I am a huge believer in poker training websites. In fact, I’m proud to be a lead instructor at DragTheBar.com. There is no doubt that Drag The Bar and similar sites have revolutionized the game.
This book simply picks up where those sites end. They’ve made their members’ poker games better, but they haven’t necessarily taught them how to make money. Most people are unaware as to how they can take that second leap into monetizing their newfound abilities.
Some of you are familiar with the raw facts about my career. I’ve been called the “ultimate grinder,” which is how I got my screen name, “Leatherass.” It’s taken from the line in the poker movie “Rounders” that goes, “You don’t think that’s work, what he does? Grinding it out on his leather ass? No thank you.”
In the span of a five-year career, I’ve played nearly 7 million hands online over more than 10,000 hours. I’ve won over $3 million during that period, and I’ve never had a losing month. In 2007, I made SuperNova Elite status in just eight months while playing high-stakes cash games exclusively. In fact, in a four-month period between Nov. 2007 and Feb. 2008, I made more than $600,000 in high-stakes cash games.
What you might not know is that five years ago, I didn’t know how to play poker. I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean it literally. I didn’t know how to play — at all. (I still don’t have a deck of cards in my house.)
But I did understand business. Some have presumed that I have a Rain Man-esque agility with numbers, or that I have a propriety supercomputer that runs algorithms at mind-bending speed. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, I actually consider myself to be poor at math relative to other pros, and marginal with technology.
In the beginning, the only thing I had going for me as a poker pro was my ability as a businessman.
I’d spent a lifetime around my family’s business, which had been passed down from my grandfather to my father and mother. The business distributes non-food items to grocery and liquor stores around Southern California. I joined the company on a full-time basis soon after graduating from high school, and stayed on for four years. Our sales quadrupled during my time there, and I helped oversee the company’s expansion from servicing small corner stores to larger grocery-store operations. I also learned a great deal about cash flow, watching your margins, maintaining inventory and smart growth.
There was only one problem: I hated it. Truly hated it. My relationship with my family was not good, the working conditions were abysmal, most of my customers were in dangerous neighborhoods, and my work day began at 4 a.m. and often ended well after dark. But more importantly, I had my eye on a larger goal: making the PGA Tour.
As a kid, I was one of the top junior golfers in the country, and I broke two of Tiger Woods’ records. I was the No. 1-ranked freshman golfer in the country in 1995 — in fact, one newspaper article referred to me as being Southern California’s “next Tiger Woods.” I was the SoCal high school golf champion as a senior, but my college scholarship fell through, which ultimately sent me into the family business.
By 2004, though, I’d recommitted myself to playing golf full time. I’d won five times on the mini-tours, and by May I was the top dog on the Golden State Tour. My dream of getting my PGA Tour card was well within reach. But then fate tossed me into the discard pile.
I’d been working part-time for my parents, and was servicing a grocery store when I felt an incredible pain in my chest. At the age of 23, I was inexplicably having a heart attack. Suddenly, I was in the hospital and the doctors were telling me I’d need at least a year in rehab. I could not do so much as one push-up.
My family refused to pay me during my convalescence. I limped back to work, but my savings were dwindling and my medical bills piled high. I was down to my last $1,000.
I was alone at my tiny Newport Beach apartment on Christmas when my good friend Matt Amen showed up at my door carrying an expensive golf shirt. “I’ll give you this shirt if you’ll give me $50,” he said. I knew I could return it to Nordstrom’s the next day for twice that amount. He took my credit card, logged on to an online poker site, and put my $50 into his account. This was to be my introduction to online poker.
What I found blew my mind. There were tens of thousands of games spread across a variety of limits. We pulled up some of the higher stakes games and I couldn’t believe my eyes. One of the first pots I watched was an all-in worth over $2,000. Here I was, sitting in my bedroom watching two people play a pot worth nearly as much as my take-home pay for the month.
One of the players got lucky on the river and caught his flush card to win the pot. He then typed in the chat box, “Sorry,” to his opponent. The opponent typed back, “ No problem, dude. It happens.”
It happens? Two thousand dollars seemed like all the money in the world to me. I also noticed the poker sites offered $500 bonuses if you played enough hands. I was in desperate need of cash. The next night, I put $100 into my account and began to play on my desktop computer. Meanwhile, the screen on my laptop displayed the rules of poker. I was just trying to break even and hang in there long enough to make the bonuses. I soon left my job, put my last $1,000 online, and began putting in 400-hour months playing for bonuses.
My early goals were to sustain my life and keep food on the table. There were times when I honestly didn’t eat because literally all of my money was online. Even in the best of times, I skipped meals because I had to make $30 last a week. I was taking change to the bank and cashing it in, and eating off the McDonald’s Dollar Menu.
My first milestone moment was when I realized I was on pace to make $40,000, which was equivalent to the salary I’d been making with my family. I’d achieved financial independence, which released me in more ways than you could possibly imagine.
I moved to Oregon, where Matt was going to college. I rented a room from Casey Martin, the famous golfer who was nearing the end of his pro career. I barely left his house. Casey would come home in the afternoon and hear thud, thud, thud, which was the sound of me grinding away at small stakes. I was getting frustrated, but getting better. All the while, I was conscious of staying along a conservative path and within my business plan of smart growth. I was keeping a significant bankroll, playing few (if any) tournaments, cautiously adding tables, and staying conscious of the metrics that would tell me if my game was going north or south.
The sacrifice was worth it. Today I make about a dollar a hand, playing between 12-20 hands at a time on two monitors. I rack up about 1,200 high-stakes hands per hour and 7,000-plus hands in a given day. If I play 200 days a year, that’s 1.4 million hands per year. My ability to play at this level is not just a function of my poker skill, but my ability to scale my business in a smart and profitable manner. The two are intertwined.
My decision to enter poker was not based on any sort of natural ability, but rather my simply seeing its potential as a business. It was as arbitrary as deciding to direct the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra despite not knowing how to read music. If there was a $2,000 pot at the end and I could earn $500 bonuses along the way, I was in. The field didn’t matter — the business model did.
The freedom poker has brought to my life cannot be quantified. I set my own hours, work from home, and I’m my own boss. It holds the same potential for you. But to truly realize all of poker’s possibilities, you must learn to control margins, inventory and expansion. Your eye has to be on profitability, not Internet credibility. You are no different than any CEO.
I feel this book looks at poker in a way that no other has before. I absolutely feel my strategy advice will improve your game immediately. But my greater wish is that two or three years from now, you’ll reflect on this book and say it gave you the tools to ultimately improve your life.
