History of The Midwest Connect Poker Crew

I started out playing poker like a lot of you. I went to Indiana University to study biology planning on becoming a physical therapist. My brother Scott also went to Indiana University who was two years older than me and a senior at the time. Him and his roommates would drink a bottle of Jim Bean and play one or two tournaments a night. I looked up to my brother and he was no doubt the biggest reason why I had such a huge interest in poker. It was not Moneymaker that did it for me. If Scott was playing poker, than I had to be playing poker also.

I started with micro sit and go’s my sophomore year on PokerRoom.com with my roommate Landon Lengacher. He played a lot more sit and go’s than I did and I was fascinated how much money he was winning on a weekly basis. I played very rarely and had about $200 in my account. I also dabbled in tourneys and profited about two thousand dollars throughout the remainder of my college years from sit and go’s and tournaments. In the end of my senior year, I tried to be a tournament grinder for the winter living in my parent’s house. I played for the first month and made about 600 dollars. It was not cutting it and I knew it. My parents knew it too, and my Dad told me to get a job for the winter. Later that day, I was playing probably the last tournaments of the winter or maybe of my life, when I ran into a player by the screen name of The Maven on Bodog. If you do not know who The Maven is then you must be living under a rock. We got into a chat about something off topic and it really seemed like he was a nice guy and was dominating the Bodog tournaments on a weekly basis. After talking to him for a while he offered to train me in tournament poker from his buddy’s house in Vegas. He said he trained to the likes of daisyxoxo, fitzfitz, and quietwinner. I told my parents about The Maven and that I could make a lot of money with this training. I showed them his stats, I calculated profit, and told them what I could make if I played all winter long. It didn’t matter to them, especially my Dad. He was set on me getting a job and kept saying, “Poker is garbage and it will not get you anywhere.” After a few days, thankfully, I was not able to find a job. During my job hunt, my Mom saw my passion for the game of poker, because I would not stop talking about it. I remember being on the verge of tears telling my Mom that I do not want to regret this me entire life because you guys would not let me go to Vegas. I am really big on not regretting anything in my life, and she knew that. That must have persuaded her because she convinced my Dad to let me go. They decided to let me take the chance and loaned me some extra needed cash. I cashed off my entire bankroll besides five hundred dollars on Bodog and two weeks later I was in Vegas training with the one and only David Chicotsky. At the time, he was living with Alan ari Engel somewhere around Lake Mead. I had a week full of intensive training along side Dannenmann. The experience was great and I learned a ton. I trained in Vegas late January 2008.

After playing for six months, I somewhat made a name for myself in tournaments on Bodog. Joe hebsHebda, an old friend through baseball got in touch with me about tournament poker at a local bar. He was very interested and wanted to know how I became such a good tournament player. He was not new to poker and also played numerous sit and go’s online at college. I told him that I had been trained by The Maven, and he should do the same. He wanted to do it, but he was new to his job and could not take a week off work. At the time, I was an alright player, but not even close to a good player yet. The next week, he asked if I wanted to go to the boats and play some cash games near my house in Hammond, IN. I have not played live since training and it sounded like a fun time. We started playing 1-2 NL around eleven a.m., when we found out that there was a $50 freeze out tournament at noon. Joe, his friends, and I all decided to play in the tournament. I ended up taking down the tournament, my first live tournament after training, actually, my first live tournament ever. After winning the one hundred person field tournament, he said he could not wait for Vegas and that I needed to train him as soon as possible. I insisted that he needed to train in Vegas with The Maven, and that I am still learning the game. I told him that it was a great time and the wait would be worth training with one of the best in the world. He persisted with me training him and I finally gave in a couple weeks later. We came up with a training schedule at my house a week later in early August. Joe had enormous success after training including winning the December monthly leader board on Bodog with a part time job none the less. Not to mention boasting a 96 percent ROI overall. He also is destroying Absolute Poker with a ridiculous 112 percent ROI.

With word of mouth around the region, I got in touch with my roommates friend from college a couple months later. Tony bigtone52Calabrese was extremely interested and seemed like a perfect student. He had no job and my roommate said he would be completely dedicated to poker. I trained him in the middle of October. What a tournament beast he has become in such a short period of time. He is ranked 22nd in the world for 2009 silver player of the year on bluffmagazine.com and not to mention 5th on the Bodog yearly leader board. Oh yeah, he also was in a horrific car accident where he was thrown out of the front wind shield of the vehicle and suffered major brain injury a couple months before training. He had to wear sunglasses when training because at the time he could not stare at a computer screen for more than an hour without his brain throbbing in pain. I am extremely happy with my student’s, now my great friend’s success. While playing tournaments on Bodog shortly after training Tony, andyvanslyke, an online tournament regular coined us three the crew name of The Midwest Connect Poker Crew a.k.a. MWC poker crew. MWC poker crew is growing at a fast pace, and now contains a total of seven online players playing on all different sites. Tony, Joe. and I live in Bloomington, IN where we will be playing full time (30 plus tournaments a day, 5 days a week minimum).

History told on August 5th, 2009 by Steve "StraightNutz" Skowronski