How did your mad poker skillz0rs develop over time?

[Kimmo]

This is my first post here, so hello everyone and I hope there hasn't been too many of these threads already.

I started playing online poker about six months ago. I didn't know anything about it, I had only played video poker machines before. I was speding a lot of money in Blackjack and decided to give poker a try as I just wanted to try something else for a while. I started with texas hold'em ring games, 0.25/0.50 and such mostly. I lost about $200 in a week. I also tried 5 card stud (which is the national game of Finland, my homeland) and sometimes i won something, just to lose it the next day. I was disappointed and returned to BJ.

Something got me started again and then i found SNG's. I was surprised to find myself being almost every time in top3, usually 2 or 1. I ended up playing $50 and $100 SNG's, and won averagely about 2 of 5 games or at least came second and got my buy-in back.

Soon I had $700 on my account, thinking i was a poker superstar. I think i really had something going on there as after that it was all downhill.

I started reading more poker theory online as I got pretty interested in the game and how to be even better.

It didn't take many $50 and $100 losses to go back to zero and I found myself depositing a lot of money again and losing it in a few days.

Now after about six months of playing I find myself leaving SNG's as fourth or sometimes even earlier, only winning or coming second maybe every tenth game. On ring games i usually first go up some $50 just to lose it in a big mistake on one round. On MTT's i usually end up in top 60, once 6th, several times top 30.

I wonder if this is a normal phase of learning, or what the heck is going on? I've read about FPS and Tilts, could I be on one of those? For this long? I don't think i'm "fancy playing", i just find myself often losing to a better hand when I thought I had the best. Did I start betting with weaker hands than i did in the beginning? I also find myself even calling raises or betting when I very much suspect the opponent must have a better hand but somehow I just have to see if I was right or try to scare him out.

I hope I'll get over it. A couple of days ago i bought a book and i'm about halfway reading it, i think i've already learned something but it didn't help yet, i think now I'm just trying to learn how to put in in use.

What was your learning curve like? I've read a couple of success stories in magazines where someone tells he started with $100 or even less and has now made over $300 000 in under a year, i'm starting to doubt that. Or my ability to learn poker at all, i estimate i'm down some $5000 in about six months /images/graemlins/smile.gif (i hope one of you got some of that money and spent it well). I have to slow it down for now as i can't afford losing that much any longer.

Were you an instant winner or did you lose everything you owned while learning?

[ThePopinjay]

I racked up $50 to ~$800, then proceeded to flush it all away in one tilt-fueled session full of NL200 and 100+9 Sngs. My advice: read more books, post more hands, read more threads.

[knightunner]

I would suggest starting from the bottom up. I made around $500 my first couple weeks of playing online. Thinking I was hot stuff, I moved up and lost most of it, forcing me to drop down levels again. Instead of playing $100 SnG's, try 20s or even 10s. Work on mastering these before hitting the higher limits up.

~knight

[Airpoaneman]

When I first started, I did non stop NL 200/15 SNG's because I wanted to be on the top of the Party Poker Tournament leader board. I ended up losing over 15,000 that first month and when I did get to go Heads up vs the other Leader Board winner, I lost. (Sounds like a few people I have played with on PP)


But for me.
I played play money for a while then moved to real money where i preceded to lose my $50 deposit...over...and over..and over again. Then I won 500 playing nl30/3 and NL50/5 SNG's...then I lost it faster then I made it. With my time playing at the higher buy-in games the 5/1 and 10/1 didn’t feel worth it to me because that wasn’t much $.

So...when i got $50.00 in i played a NL30/3 SNG praying that I would win...which effected my play....so on and so on...i think i won it once...then lost it all

I was down about 2,000 after figuring it all out when I won a few bucks and played in a NL100/9 MTT and got 7th. Cashed that out. So Now i was down about 1,100.

Few weeks later dad went to Vegas and came home with 1,200.00. That same week I won 9 NL 30/3 SNG's out of 13. Placing 2nd in two as well. Net profit of about $1,100.00. Also won a NL 50/5 game so i was up about 1,300 that week.
Cashed out

Lost most of it so i was down to about -400. Won 1,000 some how ( dont remember ).
+600...lost 800 in a bad streak of bad play.

Won 5th in a MTT 50/5. Up 1,500.00
Won 9th in a MTT 100/9. Up 1,900.00
Won 7th in a MTT 30/3. Up 2,300.00
Won about 1,00 in nl 50/5 tables 3,300.00
Cashed all but 500.00 out

Lost the 500.00
Now I am playing .5/1 Limit Holdem games.

Once you are used to the big $...Just say " No "

Go back to small limits like me...it can be done

Going to college in 5 days. I have 4 years to build up my bankroll...no hurry now.

[Ray Of Light]

I started out playing only freerolls online in December 2002. After half a year of that, I then deposited $30 into an online poker room account and lost that money within a week. I then deposited $10 into the account two weeks after that, got it up to $30 in four weeks, then proceeded to simply grind out small profits on nano-limit tables ($0.05/$0.10 level), cashing out my profit every time I reached 150BB profit whilst all the while I was learning, improving my discipline, working on my patience and simply having fun /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Then in April this year, I had a bit of a shakeup in my life, so I left the game for a few months, cashing out all of my money out of my poker account.

However, this July, I deposited $20, and lost it within 3 days (arrogance, and impatience from not having played in a while). After that, I decided to take this game seriously, coming up with goals and aims that I hope to achieve within poker over the next coming months. I deposited $10 on July the 6th, and I have decided that I am going to work up through the ranks from scratch. After grinding it out on nano-limit tables, and a decent multitable tournament finish (entered via a satillite Sit n go), I've managed to grind my cash up to $540.

The reason I have started so small, (rather than depositing a larger amount), is because I am aware that there is the chance of my becoming addicted to the game. My father was a gamblerholic, but he overcame his addiction just before I was born. So my whole family frowns upon any kind of gambling whatsoever, and so do I. But ever since I read up on the mathematics behind cetain types of gambling games, I have been interested in Poker and now I love the game so much, I don't ever want to give it up /images/graemlins/smile.gif

I think that $5000 is kind of a steep learning curve to have online, when it is possible to learn at very low cost to yourself. My advice is, if you find yourself having to deposit another $100, instead, split that money, and use half for the poker game, and the other half to purchase a useful poker tutoring book.

Good Luck /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[4thstreetpete]

Here's my bio on poker.

I'm 29 now but I really started playing when I was 18 or 19 at the B&M's. I don't think the internet was around back then, if it was it's nothing like it is today and definately no online poker.

I worked at a casino as a dealer and sometimes a pit boss. Without a doubt the best job I've ever had. The job was okay but it was the friends I made and the people that I've met. Good times.

It was around that time that I started playing poker having been recently introduced to Canada. I had no clue how to play whatsoever so I paid my dues. /images/graemlins/blush.gif

However I'm an extremely quick learner and I've always been very good at gambling so it didn't take me too long before I started making good money. I knew from working at the casinos that we have our regulars and some of them would win practically every day. So I knew very early that poker had a lot more to do with skill than with luck. I also had a talk with one of the pros there that really made me change the way I look at poker. I didn't know it then but it will have a dramatic impact on my life and the way I play poker.

Anyways, due to some government regulations all the charity casinos had to close down. 'Underground poker clubs' started popping up and I fold myself going to them A LOT. I just started university then and even though I was an honours student in high school I found it increasingly difficult to concentrate when I was in university. My grades started sliding because I was spending too much time at the poker clubs. God I wish we had online poker then because this wouldn't have happened.

When I went to the poker clubs I looked really young. I was 19 or 20 then but I looked 16 at the most. /images/graemlins/grin.gif I don't think a lot of the players respected me then, they thought I was just a kid with a bunch of money. They soon found out that I won practically every single day.

I never really thought of myself as a good poker player until one day I soon notice that all the tables that I sat on soon began to break up. There were people that refused to play me /images/graemlins/confused.gif. One regular came up to me and asked me how was it that I won every day. He's never saw me lost.

Of course this is not true. I have lost, but I was consistenly cleaning house everytime that I went. Seems back then I had already understood the concept of bankroll management with a very strong selective/aggressive play.

Soon afterwards, the poker clubs started to close down and I decided that I would spend more time on my studies and more time with my girl.

So I didn't play poker for a few years after that and then recently I discovered online poker. I started playing at paradise and did very well playing 5/10. I then struck gold and won a very large Multi tournament.
With a decent bankroll I headed on to empirepoker. I play there exclusively now and have climbed the limits to 15/30. I play 4 tables of 15/30 and so far I've done phenomenal.

One thing that has made me successful in poker I believe has to do with my personality. I'm very cool and calm when it comes to poker, meaning I can suffer the ugliest bad beat ever and it wouldn't affect me all that much if at all. I'm always focused and never let my emotions get to me.

[whiskeytown]

first I learned how to play cards one bust out at a time... - playing coin flips too early...being too aggressive near the money - I learned how to play that way.

but I didn't learn bankroll management, so if I racked up a $400 win in a tourney, I'd sign up for a $100 tourney based on past success and next thing I know, my $400 is gone in 2 days.

Now I practice bankroll management. I don't play a tourney I can't afford to play 15-20 times over - that means I'll need a thousand in the account before playing the 50 buck ones again.

slowly clawing my way back into the positive money for the year.

RB

[kgbwins08]

Play in MORE than one game. Dont focus all your play online, get involved in multiple home games, or try the casino. The more people, styles, and games your involved with the better you'll develope and the more you'll learn about other people. ...my two+two cents

[Blarg]

I learned two different ways, with two different and in some ways predictable results.

I don't think I played poker for over a 10 cent limit when I took up card counting in blackjack. I learned Ken Uston's system and practiced the daylights out of it for six months at home. My friends admired my discipline the way you would admire someone retarded who could do one thing really well. Not that they thought I was dumb, but all that work on one thing so obsessively, to get a proficiency that seemed so irrelevant to anything else in the real world, seemed absurd.

Went to Reno for a weekend try and did okay, but I was a poor college kid living entirely on my own and my bankroll was tiny, to say the least. My expected earnings were low, and as to my actual earnings, after expenses, I wasn't far enough from break-even that it mattered. Plus, I looked exactly like a casino employee's image of a card counter -- young non-drinking white guy with glasses who seems alert, varies his bets. Worse, I sometimes could be seen watching the cards that came out. So I immediately drew suspicion when I sat down. Got banned from one casino and followed out of another. No good; blackjack doesn't want winners. I decided that blackjack showed me I could do reasonably difficult mathematical calculations in my head even though I stink at math, through sheer discipline and repetition and concentration on my memory. But putting it into practice showed me my look was exactly wrong for getting away with doing it, and I hated being sweated for just playing a game.

A few years later, I found out that there were poker casinos in California. I had been here in Los Angeles for years without knowing. Nobody I knew went to them or talked about them, and it wasn't something you ever read about in the press or anywhere else. Gambling being still thought of as downscale or somewhat "sinful" here in America.

But one way or the other I heard about poker and then saw Doyle's book in a bookstore. I bought Super/System and set about studying and memorizing the section on 7-stud, the only game I was familiar with in it that I had any interest in(five card draw bores me) with the rigor I had put into learning blackjack. Now my friends saw me crazy about something else! I found Ray Zee's 7-stud book and was very impressed, then Theory of Poker. Just like I did with blackjack, I made up flashcards and drilled endlessly on them. Odds, strategic concepts, whatever I felt I would want to have at my mental command every moment of play. After months of that, I went to my first live casino game.

I started at $2/4 stud. The rake was awful, but it was even worse at $1/2, and I had to start somewhere. It was frightening and fun, and I found I played much better than the majority of people from the very first hand. Many didn't know the odds or virtually any strategic concepts. But some did have good people-reading skills, much better than mine. And experience.

Playing strictly by the books, according to what I figured were the best minds in the biz, sometimes I lost and got outplayed. It was very hard adapting sometimes because the poker books I was reading and had done everything possible to get deep down into my blood and bones were really suited for games where people were more logical and predictable. I kept reading players as likely to respond to my plays in ways I could take advantage of when actually many were just playing certain ways because they were old and wanted to beat the young guy, or brown and wanted to beat the white guy, or intimidated because the white guy's wearing glasses made him look smarter than he really was. Or they were just playing "favorite" cards - like taking any pair of deuces to the river, just for a lark. They were drinking and silly and crazy and showing off. And I was playing them mechanically and assuming they were trying a lot harder to make sense than they really were. Sometimes I got bounced hard.

However, I had worked the $200 bankroll I started with up enough that I wanted to take a shot at $5/10. I did, and instantly the games started getting much better for me. Phenomenally so. The players were more predictable and easier to put on cards, and influence by my play. Sure, they were better in general, but the fact that many of them tended to play in a more systematic fashion at least gave me a chance to decode their systems and play accordingly. I could finally force someone off a hand, and was doing pretty well manipulating them. Whatever people skills I had that seemed of minor relevance in lower limit games really seemed to click in $5/10. I could read systematic behavior better than chaos, and adjust to it better. The concepts in Super/System, Theory of Poker, and Zee's 7-stud book started to bear more than just a passing relationship to the play I was actually seeing at the table. I kept drilling with those flashcards and rereading the books obsessively.

I played like crazy, and somewhere around three months after I started playing in the casinos, took a shot at $10/20. The level of play jumped up very sharply, but the concepts in the books I had studied applied even more, and I had been getting more experience and courage day by day, and I found myself comfortable in them. I played $10/20 and abandoned $5/10 except for when I couldn't get on a $10/20 table. I noted than when I went back down to $5/10, I seemed to really dominate the game more than I had before moving to $10/20, which really sharpened my game. Eventually I found myself at $15/30, and then played it when possible, or $10/20 when I couldn't get a table.

Eventually, I certainly got my fair share of bad beats.

Then I went to graduate school and had to give up poker. The timing dovetailed perfectly with a terrible month of insane bad beats that ate a couple grand, which for me was a terrible loss even though I was playing at the $15/30 level where that level of loss is actually pretty trivial. I had always been terrifically underfunded. But with graduate school coming out of my pocket, the bankroll couldn't be replenished and I simply didn't have the time.

Enter years later. I'd heard about online gaming but had no idea how big it was. I thought it sounded way too scammy, but I was done with school long ago, and figured what the hell. I downloaded a few sites and decided to try hold'em, which I always thought was probably a better game than 7-stud simply because you could have the nuts or know the chances someone else did with much more clarity than stud, and because the game played so much faster than stud, you could conceivably make more per hour and be safer doing it.

I bought HEPFAP and read it, and skimmed Theory of Poker again. I did a few flashcards, but didn't obsessively prepare. I was curious how I would do, frankly, just learning the game by the seat of my pants. I wondered if doing so would enable me to avoid the rigid, mechanical style of play that had made me clumsy when I was first trying to apply book-learned stud to real live games. I had played a little hold'em in casinos years back, but not a lot. At least not by my standards of what a lot is. I wondered what the virtues might be of someone learning the game the opposite way I'd learned stud, and figured I would be playing low limits, so it probably couldn't hurt me that much to try supplementing experience with book knowledge instead of getting book knowledge and then cannon-balling into the game like a raw green recruit unsure how to apply it.

I figured my success at learning blackjack and 7-stud meant I could probably eventually do fairly well at hold'em, and I could kick in the kind of rigorous study necessary when I wanted to or when it seemed apparent it was needed.

So, I went online and tried live play and also SNG's. I had done pretty well in 7-stud tourneys and think I may have some sort of knack for them somehow. At least live, I seem to read people pretty well in tourneys. A lot is on the line in a short period of time in tourneys, and people's behavior becomes more obvious than it does in ring games. Anyway, I went back and forth like crazy in limit games and in SNG's seemed to start coming in second right off the bat. Like crazy, but never a first. Still haven't figured it out, but always have fun. I obviously just stink at no-limit heads up.

Eventually wound up going on prolonged losing streaks. Got Pokertracker and got Matt Hilger's hold'em book, started looking at 2+2 forums obsessively, basically started doing more of my learning from reading as opposed to strictly trying to reinvent the wheel and work out everything I needed to know from my own experience and observation.

It helped. I've started a lot more slowly in hold'em than I did in 7-stud, but I expected that. I came in a lot less prepared. As I've studied more, I'm getting more in the old noggin to draw on and learning more how to apply it. I initially have had the same trouble in hold'em that I often did in stud, in that I applied concepts too mechanically because I followed the ideas in books as best I could.

But I've adapted faster than I did in stud because my stud experience showed me how dangerous being mechanical could be and how easy it is not to spot it in your own play, so I've started out looking for ways to adapt and be flexible with book-knowledge very early on.

I began in May and now it's the middle of August. June was a losing month but the others are winners. Just not big winners. I multi-table and play exclusively at Party, usually three tables at a time, which I worked up to. Four tables I can do but I find I can't make nearly as good notes on people when I do - the time I spend on the 4th table is the time I normally use to write notes! Plus I tire out sooner. I can play three tables for a very long time and be fine, but I can start to feel it at 4 tables.

I've logged over 42k hands in Pokertracker, over 26k of them in $1/2. When I got Pokertracker I was down about a few hundred, and since then I've made it all back and lost it a few times, but now finally made it all back and am up about $500 from when I first got the program in May.

I know from watching the stats that I've had more than my share of bad luck, but in a way I'm pretty proud of the results of that in some ways. I've gone through the wringer and still have a good positive attitude, and my hold'em game has improved quite a lot, even though I'm still quite mediocre. But hey, I've just been playing a few months and don't expect miracles. I've got a full-time job and probably have a sleeping disorder, and am often exhausted all week, yet still am not getting creamed and am actually experiencing increasingly good results. I think that will continue.

I do think I'm making it easier on myself by concentrating on one thing in poker at a time. Better to do one thing well than be a jack of all trades and master of none. I will play a SNG once in a while now and actually think I probably have more tournament talent than ring game talent, but I don't want to spread myself too thin. Learning one type of poker -- limit hold'em -- and working full time is more than enough on my plate for now. I'll worry about other types of poker later.

I miss live play for the ability you have simply to play the people and not the cards, and miss 7-stud sometimes too simply because I felt I had lots of experience and well-earned confidence in it, but I would never play more than one 7-stud table online at a time. It's too important to memorize as many of the cards as possible in stud, and that would be impossible on multiple tables. For multi-tabling, hold'em is perfect. And the fast pace is perfect too, to press your advantage(if you have one) in terms of bets earned per hour played. I can just get vastly more hands in playing 3 or 4 table hold'em than I could ever dream of playing a single table of stud.

Anyway, my earn rate is 0.96 BB/hour and 1.54 BB/100 in August. I think Miller's book helped a good bit, and that I can probably sustain this level. Hopefully I'll improve it too! We'll see.

A not terribly auspicious beginning, but I didn't try my hardest. I wanted to try an experiment, and you can see the results. In terms of play time, I did much better starting out at stud and advanced much faster by studying hard for months before I played a single live game than I did at hold'em, where I did little study before playing.

But I'm not sure what the end result will be when you factor in the months studying when I neither won nor lost a dime. I do think prizing flexibility this time around is going to pay off for me eventually. I like that I have this much experience and more than 42k worth of hands to puzzle over in such a short period of time. I've gone through several adaptations of my starting hands requirements and general gameplay in just a few months, and experimented fairly extensively with them already in four levels of hold'em ranging from $.50/1 to $3/6. I still have the books, and am incorporating them more holistically into my play rather than heavily front-loading my learning curve with book study. I hope I'm adaptable and smart enough to wind up in a good place even if I've put book-study in a different part of my curriculum this time around.

It will be a long time till I become as good a hold'em player as I was a stud player, if I ever do. But I've had some fun to go along with the frustration, and have recovered my losses and am ahead half a grand, which to me is a nice enough start. My goals are immodest long term, in that I hope to, first, constantly improve and second, to one day be an excellent hold'em player, but they are very modest short term.

I want to learn a lot and enjoy the pride and confidence that comes with seeing that happen, and hopefully not have to go through too many long losing spells, or have them get me down too much. Eventually winding up ahead would be great, but that's not nearly so important as winding up a very good player in the long run. My short-term goals don't matter much compared to that.

[Kevin]

still grinding so can't say it is anywhere close to mad poker skills.. but I remember early '98 (I am 32) I played poker at my bosses house after an all day meeting. We played seven stud, seven stud high/low (declare), 2/22, 3/33, 2/27 - not exactly a casino type lineup of games. I think I won about $90 that night, and of course, thought I invented the game - when in reality I had a horse shoe falling out of my arse and with any skill at all, it should have been about $200 in profit. I played his game a few times over the next year or so, lost more than I won and one time, he introduced Texas Holdem. We played it only once, but I was mesmerized by the game. We went to Vegas for a meeting in early '2000 and stayed at a small off strip hotel that at the time had a 4 table poker room. I sat in the 7 stud game with 5 old people and lost $100 in a 1-5 game in about 60 minutes. I shook my head as I put in my last chip in, convinced that the world was against me and I could not get the cards.

Two nights later, I went to the room to get on a 1-5 list, but no one was playing. There was a full 4-8 holdem game going, and although I had not played it outside of that one time in our home game, they made an 11th seat for me (you would not believe how fast they were willing to make room!).

I lost 200 in about 40 minutes, I had a couple of pops, so I was feeling it a little but I was hooked on the game.

I went to the ATM to get more cash (my wife would be sooo mad), but it would not allow me to take any out as I had reached my daily limit. We left the next day, but I wanted to learn that game.

I watched Rounders for the first time and thought it was the coolest movie ever. I bought Masque's World Series of Poker (the one that McManus talks about in PFS) and got to the point that I won the whole thing a couple of time - I had now officially invented the game. After that, I bought Wilson's Turbo Texas Holdem and played hand after hand with sidewinder Syd giving me feedback on my play. For Christmas '00, I got Lee Jones WLLH and a lightbulb went off. TOP was shortly after, then Kreiger's holdem book, then HEP and HPFAP. I found Poker Pages.com and played every single tourney that I could play. I won a couple, lots of final tables, had a rating of 75+.

I can't remember how I found Paradise Poker, but I did and one night I put $50 in. it was gone in 48 hours of $.50/$1.00. The next one, the same thing. I then found UB and they had a $.25/$.50 game. They had a $25 minimum deposit and I would deposit $25, cash out when I got up to $31 or $32. I would redeposit the next day or weekend depending on time (back when paypal made it easy) and the $6, 8, $12 dollar wins added up to soon I was up about $150-$200. Poker winnings plus a fantasy football win and I had $500 to take to another Vegas trip in early 2002. I played 3/6 and 4/8 and ended up finishing down $13 playing a very weak tight style that wasn't right for the low limit games that I was playing - but hey, I didn't lose everything like I had the time before.

When I got back, I went back to Paradise. I think it was a 20% bonus buy in deal. I would deposit $200 on Friday and cash out Sunday night, no matter if I was up or down. Almost always playing $.50/$1.00 but if I was winning especially well, I would go up to $1/2. I had PokerStat and had a ton of hands. I remember trading hands with a couple of people on this site so that I could build my database.

I graphed every weekend as an individual session and about June of 2002, if you look at the graph, I made a breakthrough. I don't know if a lightbulb went off but my graph started a natural uptick. I won $8,800 in 2002 85%$.50/$1.00, 10% in $1/$2 and the rest an occasional shot at 2/4 or higher. At the end of 2002, Paypal stopped taking transactions and it looked like it was going to be tougher to play. Paradise was still the king by about a 3-1 margin in players over second place. I claimed it on my taxes with all of my charts and graphs and stuck my chest out - but in the back of my mind, I was convinced that it was still a lucky run and the other shoe would drop soon. Early 2003, I did my $200 weekly buyin and for two straight weeks, I lost $100 plus. Now, I was sure that the other shoe was dropping (when in reality it was my first of many downturns..). We decided to build a house, so I stopped playing - not wanting to put my roll at risk. I used the roll in 2002 to buy a laptop to play on and used nearly all of the rest of it to buy the granite countertops for the house. I stopped playing all together for about 6 months and then in August of last year, I started playing Poker Pages again. My roll was down to a couple/3 hundred dollars - but lo and behold I won the playoffs for fantasy football and that was worth $600. Throw in the traditional birthday money that still comes from Grandma, mom, etc. and my roll was back to $1000+. I was supposed to go to Vegas in late February for a national meeting - on strip the time at the MGM. Two weeks before I left, I deposited $200 one weekend at Paradise and won about $1100. I now had about $2200 to go to vegas. I played mostly 8/16 at Bellagio and won about $1400 in 40 hours during the week. I kept seeing people talk about Party here and had been watching the WPT - so when I got back, I put $1000 into my Neteller account. I deposited $500 at UB on a 20% buy in bonus. I took the $600 to about $1700 but started going backwards somewhat, so, like I had always done, I cashed it out. I went to Party (could not believe how big they had gotten - Paradise got fat and arrogant). I won about $1300 but then went on a terrible -$600 run, so I cashed out everything except $500. I put the original $1000 back into my account, so I knew that if I lost every dime, it was all house money and I would be kinda) okay with it. I got Poker Tracker and started importing hands in Mid March. I continued to read and study. I was beating the 2/4 game for about 3.1bb/100. I had a system set up after a couple of months where, if I got 50 hours over 2 weeks, I would win about $1000 on average. I would keep $1500 in my account, give $500 to the general fund for fun money and I would keep $500 in my slush fund. I moved up to 3/6 - beating it for about 2.2 bb/100. I had a terrible run late April/Early May where I was wondering again if I was just on a streak that was bound to end. But, it ended and it went right back to the 2.2/100. It taught me a lot about +EV and getting it in with the best of it and letting the results take care of themselves over time. June was a slow month, but July more than made up for it. When I would win more than $1000, I would keep the excess in my account and as of the past month or so, I had about $4000 on hand (and another $4,000 in my slush fund) - so I have been working the 5/10 game in. It is a lot harder to find a good game and the swings are big, but I am +2.4 bb/100 with about 9000 hands of 5/10 in. Very small sample, and I am not sure if I can beat the game yet, but I will continue to work to improve. This year, playing about 25 hours a week online, I am up (since March 8) $14,000 online and about $2,000 live - including the Vegas trip. I just crossed the 100,000 hand mark in the DB and I have been about 2.3-2.4/100 with 65% of the hands in 3/6 - and the numbers move up and down much slower now.

So, I am pretty sure at this point that it is no longer an extended run of luck and I can beat the lower limit games. I still need much work on value betting - although I am getting better at it after reading Ed's book. i play 3-4 games at a time and so it works out to about $24.00 an hour (I just picked up the 4th game). So, the next step will be beating bigger limits - but I am not in a huge hurry because I have a pretty good system that has been pretty predictible income. I export my session history and graph them. I filter so that I can see bb/100 based upon average pot size in big bets. I subtotal by day and graph that so I can see what it looks like daily. I have won on 69% of the days and lost on 31% of the days. I have read Kreiger's O8 book trying to expand and learn that game if the HE games ever dry up the O8 games are where the money is. I don't defend or steal well, I find myself getting tighter and tighter and going into rock mode a lot and have to force myself to raise a hand like K10s late.

It has been a long, strange, trip. I hope to get better and one day be able to sit with the 2+2ers in the 15/30 game or play a 20/40 game next year in Vegas with confidence in my skill level and the bankroll that I don't have to play the money.

We have it made these days. We can get 100,000 hands in 6 months online and we can read poker literature that shaves years off of a learning curve. In closing, I would only caution that it is a process, not an event. Play as if every hand you play will be posted here and you will hear about it if you make a bad play. It really helps keep you straight.

Best of luck to you, play well,
Kevin

[pokerkai]

Im sure my beginnings are very similar to most people.
I turned 18 and where else do you end up when your 18.

1. BAR 2. STRIPPERS 3. CASINO

So I started playing the pit games and eventually got curious to check out the poker room. Busted out my $50 buy ins a couple times in the 3/6 games but became fascinated with the game.

My brother was playing online already and he let me play on his account with his real money. I played a 10+1 SnG and won it and proceeded to place in the money quite a few times after that building a nice bankroll of $100.

From that $100 I spent a month playing 10+1 SnGs non stop and built it up to $500. At this point I was getting kind of burnt out on SnGs so I jumped into 2/4 action which was exciting as hell because "every bet mattered" which was very novel having only really a tournament backround.

I studied the game intensely reading everything I could relating to texas hold'em.

I steadily built my bankroll to $3000 playing multiple 2/4 tables, moving up to 3/6 tables where I play now very comfortably while dabbling in 5/10 tables.

Ive played well over 100k hands and have been pretty much a winning player from the start. I think I have been EXTREMELY lucky. Every time I started a new game or new limit Ive had a great run of luck which eased my transition and allowed me to adapt without having to feel pressured or nervous.

[ctv1116]

I've been able to build up a $1.40 freeroll to over $8000 in 8 months--with discipline and a lot of hours it can be done.

[Monty Cantsin]

I'm sure my story is similar to many other 2+2ers. One morning I was pulled out of my 7th grade English class and told to go to the principal's office. There was a tall man with a briefcase standing next to my mother and father, who were smiling strangely - like they were sad and scared but trying to be brave.

The man's name was Mr. Morgenstern and he told me about his job studying school records looking for children who had a certain rare combination of mathematical ability and pathological aggression. He said these children had a special gift and that no-one is truly happy if they don't reach their full potential.

Then he handed me a deck of cards and told me to say goodbye to my parents.

The Camp I was sent to was a converted boy's school somewhere in the desert. In the mornings we drilled Markov chains and Nash equilibria, in the afternoons we drilled transverse psychology and all the differential calculations of greed and fear necessary to map the currents of the coldest and hottest tables. In the evenings we were given fruit plates and watery cocktails and we played cards.

We slept in staggered 4 hour shifts in blackout curtained cabins. When we couldn't sleep we would sometimes play poker from our bunks, calling out bets and raises while one boy, who kept the entire deck in his head, would shuffle from bunk to bunk whispering hole cards.

And it was no secret many of the boys practiced another kind of hold'em to stave off the lonely chill of those cloudless desert nights.

The Camp had its own baroque hierarchy of influence and respect only loosely associated with the different stakes that we played. We never payed much attention to bankrolls because they were given out and taken back pseudo-randomly by the counsellors. But we knew we knew each other's edges down to the fraction of a degree. And we kept our distance from the "plankton". Every two weeks the mulch at the bottom of the pool would be culled, and a handful of boys would be picked up by shamefaced parents and taken away to careers as investment bankers and computer programmers. This was the only risk of ruin that haunted our nightmares.

Because we had nothing to spend it on we came to view money as a cipher, and we craved it not for its tawdry exchange value but for its ultimate and true meaning as leading indicator in the economics of domination and control.

Eventually it became clear that the counsellors set up our games for something more than educational purposes. Top boys were pitted against each other at tables where the stacks, positions, and temperaments were carefully composed analogues to certain real-world economic and geo-political situations. Through one-way glass the optimal solutions to complex multi-agent dilemmas were recorded by balding men with visors and clipboards.

The internet bubble, for example, corresponded to a ridiculously long run of good cards caught by one "Tubby" Peterson, who eventually went mega-tilt and lost everything in a spectacular reverse rush. Later that night he tried to hang himself but the rope broke.

Certain key confrontations of the Serbo-Croation conflict were modelled with tense heads-up matches between notorious LAG Micky "The Tooth" Chambers and a brilliant but insane little TAG named Steven who was widely rumoured to have kept a severed human finger under his mattress.

Most of us, myself included, had no curiousity about the shadow world behind the mirror. To us these messy scenarios of civil unrest, disease control, and oil prices were just warped reflections of the ideal realm of pips and digits whose combinatory circulation was the alpha and omega of our private, perfect empire.

When I was too old to play they sent me home. I was 15.

Nowadays, I'm allowed to make a certain amount per month, and the counsellors monitor my accounts to make sure my win rate stays sub-anomalous. But to be honest, I'm not sure I'm even capable of breaking that rule anymore. I have a family now and hobbies and interests. I shop, I ski, I watch television. These things, and the pills I take, have dulled my edge enough to make me harmless. I can cut but not kill and so I'm safe.

And I'm happy enough, I guess, to have reached the full potential of something once, though I'm not sure what it was.

/mc

[Blarg]

I loved that thing, man! That was killer funny and just plain fun!

Great job. That's the only thing I've copied from here just for the writing besides that college entrance essay that kid wrote years ago.

[slidewinder]

Yea, that was terrific /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[Blarg]

If it wasn't ripped from something already published, it's completely publishable. If it's not from somewhere else already, it would be an absolute crime if that died here!

[pokerkai]

*clap clap clap* ENCORE!!!

Eerily "PRETENDER" like...although im sure that is not that archetype.

[ThePopinjay]

WOW. Great post, that was awesome. You should write a book, call it "Monty's Game" (like Ender's Game).

[bisonbison]

Monty, I appreciate you.

[playerfl]

damn that was good.

I hope you get a job as a screenwriter or maybe write a novel, i would buy it.

[nickey009]

Kimmo-
In my opinion poker is a slowly developing game. It's not the kind of thing you can just jump into and dominate right away. it's gonna' take some time. A lot of time. Moving up slowly in denomination is going to take some getting used to.

I started playing .5/1 tables. Cashed in for 50 bucks. I lost that 50 bucks in like 10 days. I decided that I really didn't like that taste in my mouth so I redoubled my efforts. Tightened up my game a little. Read a few books. Started keeping records of my sessions. I eventually won that money back. Moved on to 1/2 game. Then to a 25 PL game. That was about 18 months ago. I've been profitable at the 25 PL game and I'm thinking about moving up to the 50 game. 18 months it took me before I could feel comfortable though. I'd say you have to stick with the 10 SNG's until you are beating them consistently. Then move up to the 20's. It does no good to jump from 10's to 100's and back down again. Build your skill as well as your bank roll slowly.