It's been several months since I begun this blog and still couldn't find time to update it with some bio/background information. There always was something more important to do and still there is. But I'm having a break now and I'm in the middle of the tough patch in life - it makes sense to take some time and write it down. For my own sake perhaps, even if no one else is going to read it - at least I'll look back to how my life went, what I've done, what I could've done better or at least try to, and maybe it'll help me to find my way into the future. So here it is - Jay's story.
Origins and early life
Spoiler
I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Well, at that time it was called Leningrad, USSR. Both of my parents are Armenians and come from Yerevan, Armenia. At that point it was one of the Soviet Republics, so it was quite easy to move around at will. So my parents did - after they got married in 1979 and I was born in 1980. So for whole my life I had both sides in me - Armenian and Russian languages, culture, traditions, education etc. Of course at some point Armenian part was suppressed, perhaps after I went to school when I was 7. Still I can understand almost everything in Armenian (well, sometimes it's complicated with dialects), can speak more or less (with childish accent though, as some of my friends have noticed) and can't read at all, except for couple of letters.
Let's go back a little to add some more confusion. My parents gave me a Polish name Andrzej. It became Andzhey in my international passport - and that's impossible to pronounce for most of English-spoken people. Actually it came from Rolling Stone's song "Angie" - which is of course a girl's name, but my parents liked the sound of it so much that they picked up the name as close to is as possible. They still call me exactly as it goes in the song - it does sound more like "Angei" than "Angie" though. Basically it consist of two parts "And-Jay" - so most of people I know call me either "And" (which is more shifted towards Russian language) or "Jay" (which is more English).
My brother joined us in 1982 and we lived together as a family for 20 years until I left to study. Well, that happened much later of course. I would say my childhood was as happy as it could be. Only later when I grew up I had a chance to compare my family and my parents to other people and I learned how blessed I was. We had good times and tough times, but we always stayed strong and fought through everything as a family.
Guess who's the happiest boy in the middle?
Education and career
Spoiler
Kindergarten was the worst of all I remember of that time. And thank God - I remember a little of it. Perhaps I was too young to socialize with people plus I was more Armenian-oriented kid too - my parents didn't speak Russian too good, and they still are not perfect. The school was much better - I was a smart kid, not physical though, but my mind helped me to handle the surroundings. I still remember one particular teacher - she was picking on me ALL the time no matter how good I was, just because I wasn't her nationality. She actually was a Russian-language class teacher and I was always one of the best students - that didn't stop her. That's how at age 8-9 I was taught about "the difference" and hated that since. All people are equal - that's what I've learned and it's rooted deeply in my conscience.
When I was in the last year of the school - I still wasn't sure what am I going to do after. The last couple of years I moved to another school and there was this old lady - physic's teacher. And she was great - firing up interesting in physics in all of us, but perhaps the most - in me. I was fascinated by the simple yet complicated laws of nature that surrounded us. And they were expressed with math the way it could be broken down to smallest bits and digested. I am still thankful to that woman - she's one of the main reasons my life went THIS way, not some OTHER way.
So after the school I passed exams and ended up in Physics department of Saint-Petersburg State University. Actually, my uncle was a physicist too - but I met him once in several years so he didn't impact my decision. But afterwards when I was choosing the direction to go in physics - he came up with a well timed visit. I was hesitating between Astrophysics and Nuclear physics - didn't know which is more interesting - the smallest objects in our Universe or the most gigantic. And he was the nuclear physicist, gave me some books and advice. One of the book was especially fascinating - it was called "Quarks: The Stuff of Matter" - and oh boy, I was blown away. I immediately signed up for nuclear physics and never looked back.
I had such a great time in University. Met my future wife on the first day. Met friends I still appreciate. Had the education - or I would rather say - the work-ethic, or even more precisely - learn-ethic - that is still in me. It was a great time indeed, well, probably, it's always great when you're 17-18 years old, full of energy, hope and bright future lies front of you.
After a while I ended up in the laboratory group that was working with ALICE experiment on the LHC. In the end of 2002 I went to CERN, Switzerland to work for a month. Since then I spent more than a year total over almost 10 years of my scientific career at CERN. Looking back now - it was amazing. The LHC was on it's way, we had tons of work to prepare and simulate events, and the whole world was mine. I traveled all over the Europe, participating schools and conferences. One of the greatest experiences were the night-shifts in the actual ALICE/LHC control room during the test-runs, those monitor setups and blocks of code are what science meant to me.
The problem was - that didn't allow me to move out from Russia with my wife and son - so that brings us to the year 2011 when I got my PhD. Before I do that though - there are some other topics and passions of mine I'd like to shed light to.
Guitar
Spoiler
I don't quite remember exactly how old I was when I got my first guitar. It's around 10-12 years old. The guitar was terrible of course, piece of wood came from Soviet timber company or something. After seeing us fooling around for a while my father hired a teacher for me and my brother. Actually I've always dreamed of being a drummer. But around that time I was listening to Deep Purple and decided to give it a shot. After some lessons of making stupid guitar noises and singing nonsense songs I realized it has nothing to do with the music I loved. So teachers didn't help much but I've discovered a book called "Rock Improvisation". There were guitar solos from the great rock hits including (finally!) Deep Purple - so I dove in. Now... if you think about the guitar I had... with thick metal strings... my actual age... the whole complexity of the music I was trying to play... those sleepless nights in the kitchen when I was doing that trying not to wake others with my "music"... it's kinda crazy. I still remember the time when I had deep cuts on couple of my fingertips and I had to fix them with the ducktape so they won't bleed... Geez... But I was having fun of my life and eventually learned to play some of those solos.
Electric guitar came into our home when I was around 17 years old. It was whole new world of course and the books were already torn to pieces. Bit later I've discovered music other than Deep Purple, more guitar-oriented too - virtuosos like Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, later bit different guys like Andy Timmons (who's signature model I actually ended up buying), Nuno Bettencourt, Steve Salas - I mean, I could go on and on forever. At that time I joined my first band and also begun to compose some simple music. I played in public too, it was lots of fun. Later in around 2005 I was invited to a first more or less serious band called Athruta as a lead guitarist. The music they've played wasn't the type I enjoyed the most - but I took the opportunity to take part in a serious project. We had couple of great years playing on several festivals and actually releasing one cover-song in a 2CD album. We had some of our own songs and were doing some records but then again - it's all had to stop at some point.
After 2011 I shifted more towards classical music, discovering another beautiful world of classical acoustic guitar. My experience and background allowed my to catch up pretty quickly and I'm happy with the pieces I am able to perform, but I realize how much time I have lost, so I'm not having any illusions of becoming a really high-class guitar player. But... anyway - music and guitar take a special place in my heart, and they always will.
Sport
Spoiler
I never was a physically advanced kid. But I was always fearless and competitive - to some extent. I was always motivated and driven to become "the best in the yard" in whatever I did - the problem was - it stopped at that point. I mean - after reaching certain level I would consider my mission completed and move on to the next one. At first it was soccer - me and my brother were always one of the best players. My technique was always my focus - I wasn't strongest or fastest on the field, but smartest and quickest - for sure. Then there was ice-hockey - although I've never played on real ice. It was just a substitution for soccer for winter season - we were cleaning a yard, stomping and pushing the snow around till it was flat and slippery. Then we were playing damn hockey! Me and friend of mine became Gretzky and Boure - destroying everyone who tried to play games with us. I also loved to play as a goalkeeper - took my mother's old wide boots and was a goalie no one wanted to face.
When I was 14 I suddenly became a HUGE basketball fan. Again - I wasn't tall at all, my highest was around 175 cm, but damn I was so into it. I was playing days and nights and soon became "the best in the yard" again. At the age of 19 in the University I reached my best shape - and I was able to touch the rim when I jumped. I was also asked to play in a Uni-team once but at that time I was focused on some other stuff.
I might add Go and Poker to this list I guess. Go is the ancient Chinise game which I fell in love with when I was a kid but never had a chance to learn or play up until I was around 25 years old. Me and my wife went from zeros to decent kyu levels in months with no help and ended up organizing a whole Go club in University, which was the best free student club in whole Russia. I was doing the coachings too, some of my students went as high as 2nd place in Russian Go Championships and high places in European Pair Championships.
I think poker deserves it's own section in this bio and I will come back to it later in this post.
Programming and gaming
Spoiler
Being competitive and a gamer in my heart and soul for whole my life - I was also fascinated with computers and programming. I think first sort of a computer I got was when I was less than 10 years old. The name was ENTERPRISE and it looked like this.
It had built-in BASIC interpreter (not even a compiler) and a HUGE manual in English which I didn't know of course. I still remember those days I spent deciphering the manual, learning the languages (both English and Basic) on my own and those moments of happiness when the code actually worked... But anyways... I got carried away as always... Fast forward like 25 years, skipping tons of programming for fun, FORTRAN for science, Perl for both science and Web, C++ in CERN and then for fun again... to this day... In 2015 Unity (and Unreal Engine too, but I stick with Unity) announced their free-to-use license and I jumped in, refreshing my knowledge of C# and OOP (it's "object oriented programming" this time, not the "out of position" ) and fueled by my passion towards gaming. I've created several basic applications and "games". And now I found couple of interesting start up projects with reasonably deep game mechanics etc - and I'm eager to dive into it again.
Family and Germany
Spoiler
This is the toughest part to analyze and explain. And the most personal...
As I've mentioned I've met my future wife in 1997, she was the smartest and of course most beautiful in our group. We got together a couple of years later and got married in 2003 - I went for the honey moon to work in CERN right after! Of course I worked my way through the system and the same Summer we had a great two months back in CERN - together this time. She also went on with her career, choosing theoretical physics - quantum mechanics to be more precise. But she wasn't as lucky as I was in terms of career - so while I was traveling around she had couple of conferences and not much more. And although I had a good things going on in CERN and future was bright - I knew she's way smarter than me and she deserved a chance of her own.
Our son Rin was born in 2008. Now it wasn't just about me and her - it was about our kid too. He was struggling with environment too - food, weather, etc. So even physically we knew it is better to get away from our country as soon as possible. Now, don't get me wrong. Our Homeland did both good and bad to us - we never were huge patriots, but my wife being a Russian - probably is less patriot than I am, being not-Russian. Go figure.
Anyways - our plan was - we're going to get our PhD's around 2010-2011 and we're going to look for a post-doc position abroad. Several factors came in - but basically my wife found a decent spot here in Germany. CERN was "here and there" basically - I was associate researcher and couldn't get a long-term position at that time - Russia wasn't a full-part member of collaboration, more like a sidekick. So we decided to give it a chance in Germany - it was a one year position and we could work our things through from there.
So in January 2011 at age of 30 (and kid was 2 years old) we sat in our car and drove to Germany to our new life. It looked like a dream but came out to be a nightmare in some ways. First of all - we had no idea what's in there for us next year. Every year we hoped for another year - and we actually got it. But you can imagine how tough it is to settle down when you have no clue about the future. We begun studying Deutsch, then we stopped, the continued - etc. Then - me and a kid. I was going to take care of him and find a job when we find a Kindergarten. Well, I didn't have the permission to work until 2014. OK, so 3 years went by with me with a gap in my resume, no job, no ideas. Then I got the permission - great! Is been two years since then - I still have nothing. They don't need me here in Germany - they have a lot of young smart students who can fill in any position instead of a 35 years old immigrant.
So for the family - it was a great decision. My wife has a great career going on, it's getting better recently in terms of stability. Kid is healthy and happy, he thinks of Germany as his Homeland and I'm sure his future as way more well-shaped than ours, so I think we played our role in terms of evolution. But me personally... it feels like I'm dead. You know how the fruit gathers juices and vitamins only to drop on the ground at some point, dry out and give it's all to the seeds? That's the way I feel - like I sacrificed a lot for others and the worst part - they don't really appreciate it.
I lost my shape, gained weight... lost my hair... lost my focus... and finally I was diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes last year. Bah, we've seen worse... But that's the way the stress, pressure and losing myself affects me. I hope I will be able to turn things around and fix some of the stuff I fucked up before it's too late - I can't imagine what else I might face around the next corner.
The poker part is going to be described later - here I'm just wanted to explain how it worked out in this context. So basically I had a lot of time when we came here in 2011 - and I dove into the studying and practicing. I had to give it up when I got the working permit - I was hoping I'm going to get a decent job soon, but it turned out not to be that easy. So now I'm a bit desperate, still looking for a job, trying to fix all the mental and physical damage the past 5 years dealt to me and my relationships with my wife, chasing all the shadows from the past including basketball, guitar, programming - and also giving it another (probable the last one though) shot at poker. Speaking of which...
Poker
Spoiler
We've been playing all sorts of games since I was a kid. My father taught me and my brother chess, backgammon and other games, including card games. Poker never was a favorite in our home, my father wasn't a fan of gambling idea, just playing for the sake of getting better, learn new things and exercise the mind. But later when I was around 17-18 years old we began playing more complicated games with my friends, favorite was of course Five-card draw. Bit later I've discovered No-limit Hold'em and whole world of online poker, testing waters on Betfair and PartyPoker, weekly freerolls for cents etc. It was all fun and games until I got a poker-set for my birthday in 2008. We played regularly with friends of mine, from 6 to 12 players, on weekends - it was tons of fun. Of course I was the biggest winner (still have a Excel graph somewhere) - it couldn't be the other way, because everything new and challenging I met in my life - I wanted to study it inside out. And while others did nothing - I jumped in, reading and learning as much as I could. At that time I've discovered PokerStrategy.com - go first 50$ and tons of materials to dwell on.
I begun to treat online-poker more seriously in around 2010 - just before moving to Germany, because I knew I'm going to have time to spend on it. So in 2011 I begun my journey. Before that point I was doing several formats - including some MTTs, SNGs, a lots of DoN/Fifty - and some FR/HU poker. Actually been studying Omaha too for a while. But in the end I've decided to pick one type and stick to - shorthanded cash games.
I worked my way from 2NL up to 50NL in the early 2011, reaching bankroll of 2k. But then dropped back to 100$, couldn't handle the 50NL I guess. Next year 2012 went the same way - reached 50NL (this time playing newly introduced Zoom on PokerStars and with MSS 50bb strategy), then dropped back. That year I grinded extremely hard the last 3 months (300k hands at 25NL) to get the Supernova - and did it. And the next year I had the biggest success money-wise - had deep runs in MTTs. I spent some of that money to work with the coach (now he's a popular coach here, on PokerStrategy.com) and also moved from MSS back to BSS.
Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler
Basically those 3 years I cashed out around 3k total profits - which is 1k per year. In the end of 2013 after another tough and fruitless period I looked back and decided that it was not profitable enough for me to continue. I summarized my experience and... well, tried to figure out what stopped me from being successful. The whole background situation was stressful enough, then add the pressure and expectations to that, overall mentally I was pretty unstable - and all that basically didn't allow my advantages to reach their full potential.
Current period of poker started in Summer 2015 after 1.5 years of break. This time it feels like I have nothing to lose, even though it's the same "wall behind my back" spot - but I don't feel the same pressure and expectations. I focus on other important things (you can see those in this blog) and treat poker as one of the opportunities and options. I'm working now full-throttle and trying out all possible directions - and if poker is going to work out for me - it would be as good as finding a job or having success in game developing area.
Now I'm looking forward to year 2016 - the first six months are going to be the most intense both in terms of poker and pushing myself in other things. It's all-out all-in swim-or-die year for me and I hope you'll come along and enjoy the ride with me.
Thanks you for reaching so far! I really appreciate the time you spent on reading all this stuff and it means a lot to me. It gives me strength and motivation, and hopefully it might give strength and motivate others - that would already be a success.
But who knows...
)
