Entrepreneur

i think i am a unique individual, i have terminal uniqueness. not in the way that we all have our own DNA, fingerprints, etc…, but my whole being operates quite a bit differently than most people i encounter in day to day life. in some ways i may be unique, some i may not, but since they have come up with verbiage to classify every style, emotion, feeling, thought, perception, action(must stop there), it seems that entrepreneur does indeed fit me pretty nicely. i shudder to admit this type of square definitional defeat but i can make do for the sake of a blog post.the writing was on the wall for me at a very young age……..my mom always joked with my father that i would either be the bank robber or the bank president. well i am sitting at the helm of an 8 figure company in the online gaming industry, mom what does that make of your prediction?i have so many stories of my ability to make money, or see better ways to bring resources together so that all parties are better off for it. i will stick to my gaming endeavors, and hopefully will come back to this post and dredge up some of my other lemonade stand type maneuvers during my childhood.i am a poker player and love the game, so you other purists out there please recognize that i was 9 years old and would never consider cheating like i did 20 years ago. brad was my grade school friend who shares the same penchant for making money that i have. having the actual money isn’t what drives the bus, its making it, and finding ways to generate income that make the world go around for a guy like myself and brad. brad is living in chicago now, and doesnt see any reason to head back east to NY. i used to think he was brainwashed, but after moving out here to the midwest, i concur with his sentiments. he could sell shit to a statue and supposedly just setup a 120 gallon fishtank in his home…i need to hear about how its going, since he and i used to bond over fish tanks for most of our childhoods together. So we setup a poker game in my room circa 1986. we found an old set of chips that were probably one of my older brothers. we invited muzzy(true nickname) and brads older brother rick to the game. it became a regular thing. brad and i began using signs to tip eachother off to the strength of our hands. monkey face was one of them, and the thought of how obvious and obnoxious our cheating was makes me laugh right now, but we got over on rick who was two years our senior, so we thought we were the cats pajamas. i think this lasted about a year before laser tag was the new thing and poker got shelfed for a handful of years……….then in 7th grade on thanksgiving day, one of my brothers brought over a bracket thing. you could pick 4 games for a certain payout, 5 games on up to 10 games. if you got 3 games correct out of 4 you won at a ratio times the value of your bet. THIS WAS IT!!! I was floored by this, and began immediately to research, read, understand all i could about this, spreads, lines, overs/unders….I could care less about the underlying games, i never really cared for watching sports, but i LOVE to play them. Anyways, i make my picks, i think i chose 5 games. Solid logic being, 4 games the payouts were too low, 10 games was utterly impossible to hit, so i want the best chance of hitting money at the highest rate of return. i did some doogie howser mental math in 7th grade that landed me on a 5 game pick. i have no recollection who i chose, but i lost my very first pick on that thanksgiving day. i lost my second pick as well. so my ticket was worthless. i gave my bro the five bucks but kept the ticket with me, playing around with what if i chose this, and that, and there, then what….? whoa that would of been great. to be honest though, i dont like betting on anyting i dont have some say in. a sporting event is 100% out of my hands, so the results have nothing to do with me, to this day i never bet sports, i just plain old dont like it, feels like pissing money down the drain to me.This post is getting too long so i will have to have a part two. but with the football betting in 7th grade. i decided to play the house. i wrote out a bunch of tickets identical to the one my brother gave me and put in the games for the upcoming week. i also, looked at the lines and adjusted them where i saw fit. no idea why i would have done that, but i did, i thought i could fix the lines in my favor, but didnt realize that the punters could just bet the other side, so much to learn little padawan. i think i had about 8 or so of my friends decided to give it a whack. my one friend Evan hit his damn picks. He broke all the income i had from the other punters and then some. i was devestated, i couldnt win at this thing being the bettor or being the house. i paid evan back who is nowadays a big swinging dick(this is from a book ‘Liars Poker’ fabulous i highly recommend) on wall street. Evan and I share one characteristic, and we always have, we thoroughly enjoy the fruits of our success but its the process of getting there that makes our worlds go around. He was the youngest muni bonds trader on the street when he worked at Lehman Brothers and is now doing some crazy hi finance crap with CitiGroup. We are both heading places, just taking different paths. Its nice when our paths cross and we can shake hands and act like kids, which he needs to do more often!!!!!! i am pretty accomplished at it.i will follow up with a part two which includes me playing guts instead of caddying and running a blackjack game at my highschool behind the tennis courts!!!!