The Bat Cave

“Allow me to reintroduce myself: my name is…”

When filmmaker Christopher Nolan revealed the final installment in his Batman trilogy was going to be called The Dark Knight Rises I wasn’t an instant fan of the name. Several months later, I can’t imagine a better one now that I’ve adopted his film’s title as my own personal mantra for 2012. For whatever reason–the girl I was recently dating would say ego–I felt like I needed a poker nickname. I mean, all the top notch card pros have one, right? What if I blow up someday? Make a TV final table? Are people going to know me as Mike Coombs? My friends in real life don’t even call me that. Maccent? Retired. Mac? Not good enough! So I made it a goal in December to figure out a proper nickname, even going as far as asking for help on Facebook. Bat-Mac? Cute, Mom, but this is grown man business. Birdcage? LOOOOOOOOOL. Nice needle, Ethan. The Serial Killer? Kinda dark, bro. How about Mac The Ripper then? Why yes…excellent. I actually ran with that for a couple weeks and even had a few people referring to me by it. Looking back, I can’t help but think what a tragic mistake that would have been. Then my buddy Vince started calling me The Dark Knight and after some initial resistance on my part, it all started to make perfect sense. My obsession with all things Batman is well-known, as is my complete inability to sleep at night, mostly due to a tireless work ethic when it comes to playing cards; much like Bruce Wayne constantly sacrifices his own personal well-being for the sake of Gotham City, I put my poker career before anything else, even my own health. No, seriously, I played over 220 hours of poker last month. Holy mackarel, Batman, I AM THE DARK KNIGHT.

The designation couldn’t have come at a better time. I was fresh off my first Royal Flush Jackpot and had completely turned my life around, a story you can read in this post. Since officially donning the cape and the cowl, I’ve been on the most ridiculous heater of my life. January 2012 was easily the best month of gambling I’ve had since summer of 2005 and quite possibly my most lucrative month of all-time. To put things in perspective, I had a solid 2011; for someone that had a good day job most of the year and only played small stakes poker, I turned a pretty serious gambling profit for the year. I made $348 less in January alone than I did all of last year combined. If you include the wages I get paid for propping the poker game at All-Star Lanes (and I don’t), then I’ve already made more money gambling in 2012 than I did in 2011. Sick.

I previously noted my life-changing turning point in the post I linked in that last paragraph. The run I’ve been on since that day has been completely absurd. I don’t know if the day’s events lit a fire under my ass or if karma has been rewarding me for having to put up with a bunch of nonsense, but I’ve been CRUSHING ever since. I hit that Royal Flush Jackpot on the 7th, then between January 13th and January 21st, I finished 2nd or better in 5 of 8 tournaments for a $1043 profit, including a 6-way chop @ Freddie’s $110 buy-in tournament that I had to share with a backer (45%) and my running partner (10%). I started propping for All-Star Lanes on January 13th and demolished the game all month long. In 100 hours, I profited $2,476 and that doesn’t include my hourly wage. I decided not to clock on one night so that I could earn hours for their freeroll and hit the All-Star Strike for $375, a jackpot I would not have been eligible for if I was working. I finished the month with seven straight winning sessions. I won $812 in match play bets on the black jack table. I randomly decided to play a day session on the last day of the month (I always play at night) and crushed the game for +$500. I hit every draw I had and I made it hurt. Everything just seemed to be going my way in January.

Well… almost everything. I’m sure some people were getting pretty sick of my run good and I can’t say it hasn’t been getting to my head. I mean, I’ve felt like I could walk on water and do no wrong at times, but I can assure you, I did not have a perfect month. I played my first $8-$16 session of the year at Parkers this past month and had my worst losing day in well over a year (-$636). To make matters worse, I usually sell half my action in that game, but that night I decided to take a shot and I felted over three racks without ever winning a hand. BRUTAL. This past week, I got shutout in Clearwater’s Poker Series. I lost almost $960 in buy-ins, despite having respectable finishes of 9th in the $250 NLHE event and 12th in the $250 H.O.R.S.E. event. A decent showing, but with such a pathetic turnout for the series I didn’t make any money for my performance. In the one event that was worth going deep in, the $460 NLHE Main Event, I busted out just shy of making it to Day 2. Fortunately (for myself), I had solid backing for all those events and only lost about $400 of my own money. But the series left me still waiting for that first big event cash. I have now whiffed the six events total at the Pendleton Round-Up and the Clearwater Series in the past few months and it has me feeling like I have something serious to prove. I haven’t been to Clearwater in years and it’s kind of weird for me to go into a local card room and not have everyone know who I am. While anonymity can be to one’s advantage when it comes to poker, fuck it, I like the recognition. I don’t want to fly under the radar; fear and respect me or figure it out the hard way.

Despite those setbacks, January was an incredible month. That kind of success is unsustainable, but if I can maintain even half that win rate in the All-Star Lanes game, I’m going to have a monster 2012. It didn’t take long into February for me to be humbled. I was worried that as soon as the calendar flipped so might my doom switch and today was a spectacularly bad day. Not only did I run bad, but I admittedly played like shit and lost more than was necessary. Oh well, challenge accepted: I now have a decent-sized hole to dig myself out of for the month, but The Dark Knight always seems to find his way out of sticky situations. Will he turn this rough start into another profitable month or is this the start of the end? Stay tuned next month. Same Bat-Time, same Bat-channel.