How long were you playing poker before you started to show...

...a consistent profit?

Fortunately for me, my first ever session was a winning one, and I've never been in the red.

[BreakfastBurrito]

First live session was a $7 loss in a 3/6 game. Next 20 sessions or so were winners, moving up to $10/20 in about the 7th session and I've never looked back. Online on the other hand, took over $6k and 9 months to maintain enough discipline, focus and tiltlessness to become a consistent winner.

[witeknite]

I doubt you wanted brag posts as responses. What limit are you playing? If it's <=.5/1 online or 3/6 B&M and you aren't immediatly seeing a profit, go hit the Microlimits forum and start reading every hand post there is. Also, go get some books. If it's at limits higher than that, you probably shouldn't be playing there if you aren't already a winning player. There's no shame in starting low.

WiteKnite

I've been playing .25/.50 NL and $10 or $20 SNG online. I just go back and forth though. I am up but I can't get over the hump. Every time I start going up I hit a bad beat or two and get knocked right back down. Should I play limit as opposed to NL. Any tips? Thanks.

I have several books on Hold 'em. Super system, Harrington Vol 1 & 2, Theory of Poker. Can you recommend any other ones.

You mean people actually win consistently? /images/graemlins/shocked.gif

[SUfan5]

[ QUOTE ]
I have several books on Hold 'em. Super system, Harrington Vol 1 & 2, Theory of Poker. Can you recommend any other ones.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would recomment Small Stakes Holdem, but if you're mostly a no limit player, this isn't exactly what you're looking for. It will help with your limit game if you want to improve that.

[Vroomster]

As a beginning player, I'd recommend dropping down even farther. UB has limits as low as .01/.02. If that's just too low for you, then .05/.1 or .1/.25 are options.

It's not hard to become a winning player at these limits by being tight, and you still learn a bit about making better plays, as well as learning not to tilt to bad beats. Keep reading 2+2, and you'll get better.

[Guthrie]

One day.

Full disclosure: I studied the game for six months before making a deposit.

[BigBaitsim (milo)]

I deposited $50 two years ago. No deposits since.

[Aeioux]

"I deposited $50 two years ago. No deposits since."

Brag posts are so lame.

[Azhrarn]

A while. Around a year maybe? I had played Hold 'Em occasionally at our weekly home game (we usually played wild card games) and a couple of times in Atlantic City. I decided to learn how to play Hold 'Em for real, so I put a few hundred bucks in Paradise Poker and started playing 2-4. (Because that's what I played in AC. I thought it would be lame to play lower stakes. Snicker.) So'd I play 4-5 hours a week, eventually busting out and then reloading. Sometimes I'd go on a run, move up to 3-6, and then bust out. This repeated at least a half-dozen times.

Eventually I got the hang of it. Sometime in there I bought and read my first poker book and discovered this website. Probably near the end. Oh, and I started playing at Party, which was also around the time I became a winning player.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Every time I start going up I hit a bad beat or two and get knocked right back down.

[/ QUOTE ]



this happens to EVERY single player (whether they are winning players or not).

If you're bothered by a 'bad-beat or two' then I'm curious what kind of sample-size we are talking about here.

If you are in a situation where you can say 'Geez...I have played 1500 hands and I don't understand why I'm not winning' then you just don't understand the concept of the 'long-run' and that it takes a LONG time for a winning poker-player to ride out the variance that EVERYBODY has.
(this is a common mistake for new players btw).

[bdk3clash]

[ QUOTE ]
...a consistent profit?

[/ QUOTE ]
Still waiting. Your profits, if they come, will be far from consistent.

[bdk3clash]

[ QUOTE ]
Next 20 sessions or so were winners...

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow--20 winning sessions in a row?

[ QUOTE ]
Online on the other hand, took over $6k and 9 months to maintain enough discipline, focus and tiltlessness to become a consistent winner.

[/ QUOTE ]
!!!

[h11]

Bit over two months, at Poker Stars micro tables. I was following rigid rules I read - if you don't flop top pair fold sort of rules. Then I actually started to think, lying in bed before sleep, about poker and how it had to work. That breakthrough - understanding that it helped to actually think rather than just parrot what I read - lead to steep rises in my bankroll for three or four months,until I got enough money to move up, up, up to find my new, higher level of incompetence where once again it's a slow crawl, one or two BBs per hundred hands.

[imported_CaseClosed326]

6 months online. Maybe 5. I was previously lucky, but not much of a winner.

[Rosie5]

I busted out some free 10$ from pacific. And this will sound like a lie but 7 sultans poker gave me 10$ to start and I've run it into 1900$ playing nothing higher than 50$ PL/NL

I ran insane playing omaha at prima. Never put a $ into online poker (that wasn't poker winnings) except when I had to put money in as part of the requirement to cash out from 7sultans

I just took to low stakes omaha so well. I had 40$ from weak tight NL hold em and just started playing and it was 1000$ about a month later. All from 6 max omaha

I've moved to NL now beacause I don't like how high stakes omaha is and if I ever got there I think I'd go through a lot of money to learn how to beat

2k isn't that much but if I win the main event I'll be a huge poster boy for online poker /images/graemlins/grin.gif If you knew me you'd believe this story 100% since I don't have very much GAMBOOOOL in me, enough to play online poker but not enough to put up my own money to do so /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[protocol]

I started playing in the fall of 2001 and was a loser for about 6 months. Then, was breakeven or a slight winner for about 6 months. So, about a year before I was winning at a decent rate.

[stigmata]

Straight off the bat. I ran good whilst still learning, but the microlimits are so soft you don't need to know much. All you need to have is a starting hand chart and some idea of pot and drawing odds.

[silvershade]

Took me about 3 weeks, basically once i figured that I needed to be aggressive as well as tight I started to win.

[bjarne]

How long is not the issue, questions is how many hands.

After 10k hands I started to believe I was winning.
Still, everytime I hit a downswing of more than 80BB
I get my doubts though.....

Edit: Still, my bankroll is higher than my original deposit but who knows, maybe I've just had more lucky streaks than bad streaks....

Oh, cruel variance!!!

[BottlesOf]

Not sure I agree. It obviously depends how you define consistent. I haven't had a losing month in.....I dunno a very long time. I'd call that consistent profits.

[Indiana]

Took around 6 months. I dont play 100 hrs a week or anything like most, but I studied lots of books and easily have made over 50K in this game in the last 1.5 yrs. The biggest factor in improving my game was playing in the WSOP. The level of competition there is much higher than anything I have seen, and I dont know why so many people claim that the field is weak in the ME.

Indy

[bambam16]

Took me about seven months. Read a few books before I started (I'm embarrased to admit it, but Ken Warren's book first, then Lee Jones' cleared up a lot of questions), and then got ahold of the free $10 at Royal Vegas. Worked it up to about $100 before losing it all. Deposited $50 at Stars and broke even for about six months at .25/.50 limit (had no concept of bankroll management). Then got the free $10 at Pacific and never looked back. Biggest thing for me to consistently show profit was working on BR management.

[Uppercut]

I started playing online in June 2003. July 2003 was my first profitable month. Since then, I have had 2 unprofitable months.

[J. Sawyer]

1 hand