During my college school I used to play online poker like many others. In the good old days of Party Poker, PokerStars and Fulltilt Poker. Watching Phil Ivey, Patrick Antonius, Tom Dwan and Victor Bloom battle each other at 6max 1k/2k NLH. Where a single raised pot was more than my entire roll.
I won small amounts here and there online. Then Black Friday hits. Online poker changed forever. I tried but couldn’t adapt and win, don’t even know how. So I moved on with my life, aka had to work for the monies.
Went from job to job. Then Covid hits the world and put everyone on their couch. Bored as hell, I was scrolling Facebook. Came across some poker videos and thought it would be nice to play some cards with friends from a while back. I contacted a friend and got into a game with boys I know from way back.
Ran well the first couple of times with the old school low stakes knowledge. I remember in the first session there was one hand of the Cadillac of Poker, where I 3bet pre-flop with AQo, flop comes KT2r and I cbet. Opponent call. Turn a blank, I jam and he snap call. I opened my hand, he showed KT for top 2 pair. I’m drawing to 4 outs and 1 card left. The river, a miraculous J to give me a straight and scoop the pot. Like a freaking movie!
I managed to build connections, drag my roll though ups and downs of home games to a point where I can consider to quit my job. After a long while of doubts I decided to quit my corporate career and play cards full time. Because one decent session could earned me as much as a whole month of salary.
When playing at the table, I still had the habits of the online days, tracking opponents mistakes and making notes. I wrote everything I thought it could be something down in my notes app on my phone. When I started travel around to play live tournaments also, my notes system became more of a burden.
I had to make a screenshot of my table, copy one player name from the screenshot, paste it in the search field of my note app to see if that person is already in there, go to Hendon Mob, find that player there, summarize the information and put it in my note. Sometimes I have to go back and forth between my note app and the website. Did that 7-8 more times for the remaining of the players at the table too.
Changing table was 30 minutes of spreading my focus between finding players info, playing a hand, while paying attention on what is happening at the table. Far from ideal situation. That’s where the initial idea for this app comes from.
I had plans to find a coder to build the app for me. But I figured 100k to find out if my idea would be a success was like chasing runner runner quads. So I put this project on hold. But then AI came along to make the development of an MVP (minimum viable product) a bit easier and cheaper. So I gave it a try.
Now I’m in the app development rabbit hole trying to turn my idea into reality. Let’s see if I’ll make it out of the Wonderland.
One thing is for sure: the app is built by a live poker player, for live poker players.
