The Luckiest Man in the World?

You may have noticed my conspicuous absence on the forums, if you have been a member here long enough to know that I used to regularly post on the forums!  It's not because of anything you did, so please, don't take it personally

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be lucky, recently.  On a whim, I masochistically checked poker table ratings last night to see if my profile was still there. Yup, the final black eye on my poker career is still there for everyone to see.  I had a chuckle, thinking about how it makes me look like the David Stern of poker - someone who had a long and successful career but who ultimately stuck around too long.  As always, I did a sanity check and returned to my old hold 'em manager databases...being off by over $100,000 in all-in EV over the course of a year (much of that at 5/10 and 10/20) has both kept me up at nights and helped me sleep. On one hand, it makes me feel like maybe I didn't just start to suck at poker. It helps me reconcile the (appropriate) comments on my PTR - "This guy is a coach!??! What a [bleeping] joke!" On the other hand, it makes me look at the rest of my finances, and think, "You know, it'd be nice to have that money in my bank account instead of in Sklansky bux on my HEM database."

I remember having the conversation with all my poker friends. "Dude," they'd say, "this has to be one of the unluckiest stretches ever."  I'd agree, and go off feeling like I had patched together some of my pride among those whose opinions mattered to me.  But today I really thought about the history of my luck, and it really helped me put things in perspective.

For public record, my biggest bouts with luck:

Fall, 2003.  My poker account is at $275 (my net worth as well).  Working as the beverages stocker in my college cafeteria, I win a tournament on Party Poker for $3,000 after hitting several %5-%30 shots.  

2003-2004: Party Poker offers the softest LHE games in history, and I make 6 figures, which felt like monopoly money as I graduated college.  My winrate is almost undoubtedly a product of excellent luck as well, but at the very least, I did not have bad luck.  My poker career has begun as I decide not to go into teaching or camping because the money is so hard to pass up.

2005-2008: I never have a downswing more than 300 bbs in limit hold em. I run the hottest of anyone when Party rolls out it's $10/$20 NLHE game and make 80 buyins in the 2nd month it's offered.   I do quite well at $25/$50 and $50/$100 NLHE, and get my brains pounded at $300/600 lmit and $100/$200 NLHE.  I'll never know if it was my skill or luck that was the cause of this, but I know at the very least I ran awfully in some of the softest limit games ever on UB and Interpoker.

2009-2011: My luck really goes into the tank as games get harder, and my mental game goes to hell in the process.  By the end of 2010 my confidence is truly shaken in spite of constantly checking graphs against my luck, and I decide I might do something else for a living.

Investment luck:
I bought 2 properties at the height of the real estate bubble. One I've already sold for a six figure loss, and the other is on the market and looking like a mid-five figure loss (if it sells).  I have been able to navigate choppy waters in the stock market and turn a small profit since 2003, but am mid-six figures down from my peak in 2008.

Life luck:  Had a healthy son in 2010, married someone awesome in 2008.  Perhaps in the biggest bout of luck I've ever had, I landed an absolutely incredible job in early 2011, which is what has taken me away from you all. I got a job as the Director of a camp called The Vanderkamp Center, which is a Christian Summer Camp and retreat center in central New York. I write a blog there about child development theory that you may fancy, if that's you're thing. Even though my relevant camping experience was nearly 5 years behind me, they took a chance on me to help turn around this business. The job has been absolutely amazing, and the only time I don't want to go to work is when I am having a particularly good time with my family.  Most of my life expenses are taken care of, and while I make less than many of the pots I've played in my life, I have something absolutely invaluable:
Peace of Mind

I still have a good amount of money saved up from my poker days, and what's great is: poker is fun again. I still play regularly (and mostly anonymously, which is very nice), and it's actually fun to keep my game sharp. I am winning again, which is nice as well   Between work, family, and poker, I find almost no time for anything else on the internet, which is why you don't see me active in the forums. I do apologize for that. I mean to be keeping up and contributing more to this community (and plan to do so in the future), but for right now - life calls.  I'll keep making videos, and will promise that if I ever feel like I've lost a step in poker, I will resign from making vids.

So to sum up all my luck, what can I possibly say? I have made more than most playing poker, but definitely not as much as some. I have a rather unceremonious ending to being a professional poker player.   My poker career did not shake out ideally in the end..but I managed to keep a semblance of a resume together to land my dream job, have a wonderful family, and wonderful prospects for the future.  I'll never get the money back from those all-in EV spots, and I'll never recoup the losses from selling our old house.  Even still - if I would have hit bad streaks at the beginning of my poker career, I'd never have made a dime in this silly game.

I also know that the sum of my life experiences has led me to this exact point at this exact moment in time, and for that, I will throw my name into consideration for the Luckiest Man in the World.