Casino Barcelona - De Poker Community van Nederland

Seeing as the NY underground poker posts have been so popular, I figure I can give a bit of a different perspective on the underground scene of the mid 2000s. The Boston scene wasn't nearly as big as the NY scene, but there were still some big games and wild characters involved. I started off in small college games, so if you're only interested in the big mob associated games and stuff like that, this first part will probably bore you. I'm not going to bother changing names in the story. If you knew me from that time, it'll be obvious pretty early on who I am.
Back in 2005 I headed out from California to Boston for college. I'm still not sure why I was so set on going to school in Boston over the beautiful California schools that I had been accepted to, but there I was. Facebook was a really new thing at the time, and you needed a college email address to sign up. As soon as I got my college email in about April, I signed up for Facebook and added every cute girl who was living in the same dorm as me. I also signed up for a bunch of Facebook groups, several about poker games around the campus.
The Moneymaker effect was in full swing at this point, and I had an edge. My best friend at the time's dad had taught us poker when we were 14 or so. We got started playing mixed games, I loved 7 stud variants, but over time we transitioned to NLH. When I left for college I had been a regular in a $0.50/1 NLH game at a house in a rich area that played pretty big, and I had been winning regularly. Between that game and playing online, I had turned $200 I had made from my after school job into a $1500 bankroll.
So I arrive in Boston in August and start going to various games. One was in a nook in the school library, a weekly $50 tournament with no rake, unlimited rebuys and insane players. One was in a frat house with a bunch of drunk bros. Then I found Stevo's game. I think Stevo was a senior at that point, he lived in off campus housing, and he had a professional quality poker table in a side room of his apartment. Besides the nice table and personalized "Stevo's Card Room" chips, what set the game apart for me was that it was the first private game I had played in with a dealer, Erik.
I introduced myself to the other players by my real name, but as became my trademark, people knew me better by my card protector. Bubbles She came from a cake my friends had gotten me for my 17th birthday as a joke, and since her base was perfect for sitting on cards, she became my card protector. I knew some of the guys in the Boston scene for 3 years, and many never knew my real name, they simply knew me as Bubbles.
Stevo's was $1/2 NLH with 75% stack match if I remember correctly. So if the big stack on the table had $1600, you could buy in $1200. The game played pretty deep, and with the same players most nights. Many of them had been playing together for a couple of years, so they knew each other well. The first night I went, me and this other guy Chris were the only freshmen there. It turned out we lived 1 floor apart in our dorm, and we became fast friends.
I bought in for the $300 I had brought with me (lolbankroll) and played my normal, pretty tight style. There were a few crazy bluffers on the table, but one guy Phil really stood out for how often he'd try to steal pots. I played some small pots and was up to around $400 when I looked down at AA. Phil raised $8 from EP, I 3b from late position up to $25 and Phil called. The flop came unsuited low cards and Phil bet $30, I raised to $90 and Phil called. The turn came an 8s which brought a flush draw and Phil checked, I shoved and Phil went into the tank. He flipped up KJss and said he thought I had TT or 99 and so he had lots of outs with his 2 overs and flush draw. He asked me if I wanted him to call and I said absolutely. He eventually called and nailed his flush on the river. I headed to the nearest ATM and bought back into the game. I eventually left with about $500 for a $100 loss on the night, but I was hooked. The action was crazy, I had gotten it in great for an $800 pot and lost, and still only lost $100? I was going to make so much money!
The game ran twice a week, and I was always there. I still played in some random other games, but Stevo's was my main hangout. I became pretty good friends with some of the guys, including Stevo and Chris. Chris and I would regularly skip classes to play on Full Tilt all day. Often on Sundays about 5 of us would go to Stevo's place and grind Party Poker, especially when they had their monthly Party Millions tournament. One Sunday I was playing in a huge $50 online tourney on Party, and ended up going all the way and winning it for $22k. Suddenly I had a great big bankroll! I was consistently winning at Stevo's game, and I had picked up a crazy tell on Phil, the big bluffer. When I left Boston for good 3 years later, I'd finally explain to Phil how I had made so much money off of him, picking off so many of his bluffs he'd made against me. Whenever Phil would make a big bluff with nothing, he'd ask his bet as a question. "300?" He'd say, as if asking "is 300 enough to buy this pot?". I made thousands off of this tell.
As time went on, I wanted more than just 2 nights a week of poker at Stevo's and the crappy other games around campus. Phil had mentioned that they would sometimes go to a game in Chinatown, so one day I asked if he'd take me along.
The Chinatown game ran in an apartment unit above, what else, a Chinese restaurant. It was run by a guy named Jay, who seemed pretty nice, but had a temper at times, and people said was connected to the Triad. Apparently Jay knew the game would eventually get broken up by the cops, but he figured he'd get a few years in prison, but the $500k he planned on making from the game before then would be worth it.
The Chinatown game had 5 tables if I remember correctly. They'd have a tournament at 6pm on most nights, and then a cash game would start around 7 from the people busting the tourney as well as others who came just for cash. At first you could just walk in as long as someone went and introduced you to Jay and vouched for you. They had big screen TVs all over the walls, constantly playing High Stakes Poker, they had food delivered in for the players, fridges full of beer and soft drinks, it was great. Eventually the game would get robbed (although some claimed they thought it was a setup by Jay), and a steel door with an electronic bolt and a security camera would be added.
The game itself was a $1/3nl game with $500 max buyin. It played extremely loose, and I started coming by nearly every night. The players were a mix from all walks of life. Since it was an underground room, there was no age restriction, so some rich high school kids were even in the games. There were tons of college students of course. The Harvard kids always thought they were hot shit, but they always seemed to want to be the table bullies, and I'd pick off their bluffs. The MIT kids were another story, they were nothing short of geniuses, and I tried to stay out of their way usually.
I got a reputation for hitting and running the game, because my goal was to make $1000 and then quit for the night. Often when I'd quit early, me, Jay and some of the others guys would play board games for cash or weird random poker variants. I was making a killing in this game. I went out and bought myself a BMW, I was taking girls from the dorms out to $100 a plate dinners, I thought I was the man. It was 2nd semester, early 2006, and I was also failing out of school. I managed to scrape by first semester with a 2.5, already putting me on probation for my academic scholarship, but I didn't care. I called my mom and told her I was going to make more money than her in 2006.
2nd semester, Chris and I had signed up for many of the same classes with the idea that we'd force each other to go, but instead we enabled each other to skip. One Wednesday morning we were supposed to be going to class, and I don't remember who suggested it, but we ended up instead driving up to Montreal for a 5 day weekend. I got a speeding ticket going 95 MPH through Vermont on the way there, Chris got a ticket driving back through Vermont on the way home, but overall it was a great trip. We played some poker at the casino up there, and I made a few hundred bucks which we blew at the bars and clubs.
A few months after the robbery, the Chinatown game got raided by Boston Vice Squad. Apparently having regular cops there didn't help us out any, they had their money taken along with anyone else there. Jay was arrested, but all of the dealers and players were let go after a bit of harassment. Luckily for me, despite being there about 6 nights a week, I wasn't there for the robbery or the bust. However, unluckily my favorite game and my cash cow was gone.
Now I was back to just 2 days a week at Stevo's. I had met a guy named Rich through the Chinatown game, he was often a dealer there but would also play sometimes. Rich hit me up one day and asked if I was looking for another regular game. I told him I was, and got an invite to a game called The Loft. The Loft was a game outside of Boston in Chelsea. It was in an upscale loft and run by a guy named Moon. Moon was a total character. He was probably around 30, had been an engineer for GE, but quit because he rejected the idea of paying taxes. Moon was a conspiracy nut, and as we became friends he'd tell me all kinds of crazy theories, often involving Jews. As a Jew myself, I told him I was sure upset that all of these fun Jewish conspiracies were happening without me!
The Loft was a good game, but not as juicy as the Chinatown game. There were 2 tables, but usually just 1 ran, and it was often the same people every day. Many of them sucked at poker, so I was still making a bunch of money, but some of the shine had worn off. I completely stopped going to classes around this time, but was still living in the dorms and joined a fraternity. This frat was famous for crazy parties, and we'd sell cups for $5 at the door as admission. Eventually a party got busted up by the cops, and the frat president and a few other guys got arrested for selling alcohol to minors. The mayor of Boston went on TV and made an example out of us, calling us the negative Animal House version of a fraternity and calling for harsher regulations for serving alcohol to minors. The national fraternity revoked our charter, and that was the end of that.
The school year was coming to a close, and I was supposed to go home for the summer. I was done at the university, and didn't really know what I was going to do the next year. I drove the BMW all the way home to California and then went with a bunch of friends to Europe for the World Cup. We spent 5 weeks there, went to the 3 US games, and had a great time. I played some PLO in Barcelona despite not really knowing how to play (that was the only game they had there at the time), and I won $1200 by playing no hands for hours until I hit a full house, then getting paid off by the maniac players. When we stopped in Paris I played at the Aviation Club, the swanky poker club a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysees. They told me I couldn't come in wearing tennis shoes, so I went across the street and bought $200 loafers at Lacoste, then proceeded to win $5000 over the course of a crazy 24 hour session. My total expenses for the trip were $5500, and I had made $6200 in poker during the trip, life was amazing!
I ended up deciding to sign up for a program where you spend a year in Israel, get some college credits and volunteer. I ended up doing more drinking and partying than volunteering and studying, and got kicked out of the program halfway through.
I came back to California and went to community college for the semester, before deciding I missed the grind and that I was going to move back to Boston for the 2007-2008 school year and go to community college there (yeah right) but mostly get back to the underground poker grind. I had just turned 20, had about $80k and the BMW, and I was ready to jump back in. I talked to Rich, the guy who had gotten me into the Loft game, and he was still dealing poker around town and was looking for a roommate. I told him I was driving out to Boston the next week from California, and that he should find a 2 bedroom for us near campus. Little did I know, Rich was not to be trusted, and I was in for a shitshow of a year...
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/pokecomments/bfvdp3/inside_boston_underground_poker_part_2/?