The raw, unedited autobiography of s810car (LONG read)
I think its high time I make this thread, I've been here a couple of weeks and given the questions and suspicions in chat that has happened, I am going to give some insight into who I am, and how I know and act how I do.
My name is Will, I live in CA, USA. I have been playing online poker since 2003. Around 2006, I started looking into sites that would have bonuses or money offered in playing poker. I originally heard about staking from a irl friend that used ptp for a long time. i found this one site that I liked I lot better that dealt solely in staking, and was a social forum, much like ptp. I liked this MUCH smaller site (I was member #403 when I reg lol) for a few reasons: very close knit community, social chat where members supported and railed each others games, the occasional (monthly/bi-monthly) freeroll, and of course, staking. I got into it right off the bat, and as fast as I started getting stakes I was staking out as well. The staff on site took to me, and i enjoyed helping out members with issues, questions, etc. The first drama I got into on site was actually when the site owner modded me over a long time member, I even said I was willing to step aside, but the owner made his choice and stuck to it. a couple of months later (I believe June 06 + or - a month) The owner came to me and due to the technical help on site I gave him, asked if I along with another tech guy wanted to purchase the site. I was taken aback but he was saying he just couldnt put the time into it anymore and wanted to step away. I honestly didn't want to, but he was planning on shutting it down if I didn't. I loved the site so much that I decided to go thru with it.
Now this site (which I'm not stating the name due to one of the mods here informing me the name ironically matches an ex-member here, but anyone curious enough can find the info easily and to most people including staff, hit me up in chat and I'll disclose it, and can provide proof that I owned it easily) went thru a major shake up with staff confused and arguing about it. Unknowingly to me, the previous owner was approached by his closest admin who wanted to purchase the site but he refused. Now I only at first wanted to save the site from shutting down, so said basically pay what I paid for the site and I'd step out of owning it immediately. He couldn't afford it, but this started dialog to where I kept the entire staff retained on site. All was great and back to business.
Now anyone in chat knows I ocd major on programming, and this was no exception, in fact i think it started my obsession on it. I kept looking for the newest addon, the best way to optimize, customizing almost all aspects of site. I think in a sense this started to cause a little separation of what I loved about my site.
Now at this time I was making about 50k a year from my reg job, maybe 500 a month from playing poker + overrun from the staking and the 5% site cut on winning stakes, and the site aff and fees for the most part covered server costs and other bills (another issue was I never properly monetized the site, but that's another story). Take this fact and that my cost of living was around 500 a month which my wife's money covered, and I had a LOT of disposable income. Even though that was all awesome, I spent all my time on site or at work, and started having marital issues. this started a spiral down effect of depression, and the worst thing you can have when depressed is more money then you can spend easily. I started getting heavy into drugs and alcohol, and degen playing, busting roll constantly not caring since I can depo 2-3 times a night if I wanted.
Eventually me and my wife took a break, which break=I'm living in my car for 2 months. It took everything I had in me to get outta that funk without hurting myself, but I eventually turned my mental state around enough to get things patched up with my wife, however losing my great job in the process, along with a new car and some other things like my maxed out credit defaulting, etc. However, I had my wife, my health, and my site so I was happy again.
This changed something in me though, outside of my coding obsession, I couldn't bring myself to put as much effort into my site, as if I partially blamed it for my issues. My staff implored me to take better care of the site, but all I focused on was programming and left the site to the staff to manage members. I started dwindling away from it, and then the poker gods threw another curveball that was the nail in the coffin: Black Friday
I couldn't deal with it anymore at that point, I pretty much left the site to dwindle until the site registry was up, then let it go entirely. I am still ashamed to this day for abandoning the people I grew to love so much.
Flash forward to about a month ago, and I finally have the energy and enthusiasm to get back into online poker. Now of course the games changed, depos are damn hard so I stick to freerolls since I don't want to go down the staking path again (at least getting stakes, i may still stake out here at some point), going up and bust with little roll that I do have. Then on bcp I notice these on demand freerolls that i dont have to wait for, and next to it, several PO freerolls, so I decide to check out the site. Here I see a site much like mine in design, A LOT bigger (at the end I had about 5k members) and still social, with ingenious ways to get players involved and ways i wish i thought of monetizing my site. So I register and after 2 days of prowling to see how the site works, I jump full into convos and posting. I'm sure this startled a few regulars that this upstart newbie got into convos that hes been here for years, but thats just the way I am, was never anything shady or weird about it, well maybe weird but hey :)
To people in chat: i know I been a little overbearing the way i suggested diff things that are capable to implement program wise, honestly its force of habit coupled with code OCD lol. I'll make a promise now to kick back on it and focus on why I joined, to have a social place to play poker again. Doesn't mean i won't try to be helpful where I can, but I'll stop at the point where like I know ways to add chat colors and start a bunch of unneeded chaos. You need help, i'm here to help, but other then that, I'm here to play and hopefully, here to stay :)
