The story of a poker player

[KemKings]

"I've often seen these people, these sqaures, at the table. Short stacked and long odds against them, all their outs gone, one last card in the deck that can help them. I used to wonder how they could let themselves get into such bad shape, and how the hell they thought they could turn it all around."
-Rounders

This is how I feel right now. Today I just busted out on Party Poker and Ultimate Bet. On top of that my home game has been disbanded, one of best poker friends moved away, and I've gone bust at the casino. Now my bankroll is at a standstill at zero. Recently, poker has been a grind for me. But when it all started for me, things were different...
First Taste
I started playing poker when I was 10. My best friend tought me how to play five card draw and it caught on me like white on rice. I loved the game. We played nearly everyday. Usually by the end of the month we were both even. After we noticed this trend in our play we decided to expand. At school we would invite other kids to play with us and usually they left with nothing more than milk money. We made our own little bankrolls off those pint sized fish. We even developed our own system of chip placement and dealing. After 5 years of steady poker playing with my best bud he moved away and I stopped playing poker for the time being. Instead I got into selling my old baseball cards and memorabilia on eBay. I always found a way to make money without actually doing any real work. Eventually I ran out of things to sell and the money stopped coming in. A few months later one of my good friends brought over the movie Rounders to show me, he was also into poker. I was mezmorized by the film. I must have watched it 5 times that day. Texas Hold Em had become everyones game of choice. I loved it and we never really played anything besides hold em in our games. With my rekinddled passion for poker I decided to get back into the game. The friend who introduced me to Rounders helped me start up a home game and things picked up from there.

Home Games
Senior year at my highschool I became great friends with a guy named Kyle. He loved poker just as much as I did. He even had his own set of chips with his name embroidered on each one. I discovered he had his own weekly home game with about 10 other players. I jumped at the oppurtunity to play with them. All they played was Texas Hold em, which was right up my alley. Everything they used was professional, the table, the chips, the cards, and the players themselves acted professional. The high stakes action of Kyle's homegames broke my bankroll a few times, but I learned to adjust to the higher stakes and would find myself up $200 in one sitting. Kyle continued his homegames well into summer after school had ended and I had become good friends with many of the other players. So when it was time for college I was devasted that the game was breaking up. Therefore there was anouther lull in my poker career.

Rounder
In college I became quite the poker player. I cleaned up most home or dorm games. When people asked me what I did in my spare time poker was the first thing that popped into my head. I found myself thinking about poker at all times of the day. When my parents asked me what I wanted to do with my life I couldnt give them a straight answer. I started thinking about becoming a pro. Then one day one of my dorm buds introduced me to online poker at Ultimate Bet. The quick action and convience hooked me instantly to online poker. Little did I know it would be the darkest chapter in my poker career.

Online Poker - Present Day
I opened an account with Ultimate Bet and made small deposits at first. Aftet busting out 3 or 4 times I learned that I needed a bigger bankroll to sustain the No Limit tables that I was playing at. So I deposited enough to sustain a good number of bad beats and bust outs at tables. At first I played extremely well, within a week I had nearly tripled me bankroll. I decided to move up in limits and the no limit tables. This is when the storm of bad beats started to formulate. I would loose hands like KK vs. AK and hands were I would have the straight on the turn but the river would pair the board giving the other player a full house. At first I complained about these bad beats but then I realized I was playing alot more hands per hour than I had been in my home games and that the bad beats came just as frequently as they would at home. Then I started seeing flops like AAA, QQQ, and alike. I also witnessed awful sucks outs and quite a few quads. This led me to question the legitamacy of online poker. I went to a bunch of forums and found alot of players complaining about online poker being rigged, but I didnt really believe any of them. If the site gets a percentage of pot (rake) for each hand and there of thousands of hands going on at any given time, then there would be no extra incentive to rig the game for specific players. I ruled out that online poker was rigged and continued to play. Then one dark afternoon I completely busted out of Ultimate Bet after my bankroll had been dwindling on extinction. One specific hand stuck in my mind that I lost a good portion of my bankroll on. I had [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]A [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]K, I raised $3 preflop and I got 3 callers. The flop came [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]8 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]K. I bet out $5 and got two callers. The turn came [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]K. With a great kicker and three of a kind I bet anouther $5, one player folded, and the BB re-raised me all-in, I called. River was a blank. Turns out big blind had [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]K [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]8 and took down the pot with a full house. I looked back at the hand history and saw he called my preflop raise. This isnt really a bad beat, but rather bad play on his part. At that point however I was so sick of being sucked out on I was enragged. I had lost about 10 hands where I was a 90% favorite on the turn and then the other player caught his one card in the deck to help him. After busting out on UB a friend told me about Party Poker and he said the site was full of fish. I downloaded the software and watched a few tables that were almost all fish. So I decided to switch to Party Poker. I made a fairly large intial deposit and play great at the no limit tables. I nealry quadrupled my bankroll within the first week. But this situation couldnt last, the fish had to start catching sometime... and they did. I started going on tilt and was continually sucked out on. Then the competition started getting better. It was as if all the fish had been caught. When my friend was playing I witnessed his AA get cracked by a 67 offsuit who called his allin with a pair of sixes on the board and he caught a 6 on the turn to win it. With my bankroll deminished I started having doubts about online poker and after a few more bad beats that I endured on huge pots my bankroll was down to its last $100. I sat at a NL100 table determined to work my way bank up (even though it would take alot of working). I played tight for the first hour, then I got [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]6 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]6 in MP and limped along with 6 other people seeing the flop. The flop comes [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]6 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]Q. EP bets $3 and I re-raise him to make it $12, everyone folds but EP who re-raises me to $18. At this point I am sick of suck outs and I re-raise him all-in, he calls! Turn is a blank and the river is [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]Q. I think yes-a full house- I've surely won. But alas, the chips are pushed over to EP and I see that his hole cards are a [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]Q [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]6. I was disgusted. I later calculated the odds of the hand and I was a 90% favorite on the flop. So at this point I had busted out of Ultimate Bet and Party Poker. I took a few weeks break and then redeposited on Party Poker today. Within the first hour I had lost half my bankroll on stupid hands and two hours in I busted out again.

Looking Forward
At present time my online bankroll is at 0, my home game bankroll is at 0, and my casino bankroll is at 0. I cant helped but feel short changed. I consider myself to be pretty good at poker and everyday I read about people cashing out thousands from online sites. Where did I go wrong? The storm of bad beats never really cleared, but that is no reason I should completely bust out. At this point I feel like Matt Damon's character in Rounders after he busts out and takes the job as a truck driver. I am torn between giving up poker all together or trying to build a new bankroll. Everytime I get online I feel an urge to play on Party Poker or Ultimate Bet, I cant tell wheather this is an addiction or my thrist for victory and money. Maybe I am playing the game of poker for the completely wrong reasons, because when I first started playing it was all about fun. I just dont know what to think about the game anymore...

[Depraved]

I've been stuck in your predicament on a number of cold late nights, believe me. Could be worse though... I lost thousands playing stupid house games, and then thousands playing holdem before I really learned how to play, and I too was in college. Then one day it just happened - I started to actually make money, and to this day I haven't gone bust although there are always slow/tough spots to get through.

The key was I never gave up, but at the same time I never gambled money I couldn't lose. My friend made this mistake, and his life is a little screwy right now. Just play it cool, and hedge your bets by focusing on making money outside of poker (like college or your job). This will make your life a lot easier, and will make poker more beatable and more fun!

I bet most poker players dream about going pro (I know I do). It's worth noting that a lot of pros suggest staying at the semi-professional level. Sounds like good advice to me...

As far as I know online poker isn't rigged. I've cashed out plenty of money from different sites.

Also, I know exactly what urge you are talking about when you go online. My advice is to not play poker on an urge (especially on an urge to get even).

[MrNobody]

Why are you playing real money NL hold 'em when you obviously don't have the bankroll for it? If you're able to triple or quadruple your bankroll in a short period of time, then you obviously have a small bank roll and a bust out is practically a mathematical certainty.

You need to play in a game where two or three nasty suck-outs aren't going to leave you broke. Start out in limit games where the limit is no more than 1/200th of your bank roll (i.e $400 bank roll = 1/2, $800 br = 2/4 etc.) You still may go bust because of variance, but at least you'll have a fighting chance (which you don't in NL).

If you have an unquenchable thirst for NL, then play in sit and go's. If you're a winning player then you should be able to afford the 10+1 games with a $200 br.

Trying to get rich fast in poker is a certain way to go broke even faster. Might as well buy lotto tickets.

[gonores]

Your story missing the most important part of any good player's career: The long, boring hours of studying.

You have to realize that poker isn't a glamourized art. It's not about making big laydowns or gutsy bluffs or being able to read an entire table's hole cards blind like Damon did with the table of professors. POKER IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE BRUTE APPLICATION OF SCIENCE, or at least it is until you become one of the players in the world. You profit from other players' basic misapplications of the science.

Basically every successful player on this forum, when telling the story of their poker careers, will recall with pride the first few months they could spend with The Theory of Poker, Hold 'Em Poker for Advanced Players, Super/System, Winning Low Limit Hold 'Em or whatever other books they got their hands on. And if you tell me you did study the game and that you studied all the books, I won't buy it, because if you really did study the game extensively, you would be way too proud of your hard work to leave it out (notice I said study, not read). Besides, you said yourself that you are always looking for an easy way to make money. Trust me on this...playing poker is not an easy way to make money. There are plenty of great poker minds out there that will never sit at a table because they found an easier way to make more money than they ever could playing poker.

You began your post with a quote from Rounders about being down to your last out (PS: Do yourself a favor and completely forget you ever saw Rounders if you want to be a serious player. You learn as much about poker from that movie as you learn about golf from Happy Gilmore). You are not in bad shape. You are already ahead of the majority of players if you found 2+2. There is plenty of time left for you to turn your career around, but my advice to you do a few things first (take it or leave it).

1. Stop trying to blame everything and everyone but yourself. If you truly had a large enough bankroll (which may or may not have been the case), you had to have been making mistakes to have gone bust. Tilt is no excuse either.
2. The next time you are jonesing for poker, take the money you were going to use for your buy-in and invest in some poker literature. Study them, study them hard, and study them continuously.
3. Multiply the number of posts you have on 2+2 by 100. Ask specific questions and always make sure you are being honest with yourself about your poker knowledge. I know that for every step I take toward my poker goals I realize there are two more steps I need to take in order to get where I want to be.

There is no easy way to say this. You probably need to put a lot of hard work into your game, and even then you may still be a losing player. You just need to keep learning.

You said you might be playing poker for the wrong reasons, because it used to be fun. If you want to be a winning player, then playing because the game is fun is probably the wrong mindset. Sometimes playing winning poker isn't fun. There are long hours of continuous folding. There are times where you will never catch a draw and you opponents catch everything. You just have to accept that poker isn't always fun if you want to win.

Doug

[Bozeman]

Although you seem to be playing with a very small bankroll, I am guessing that the reason you are out of money is that, although you are a winning player with your A game, you are subject to tilt. If you let a bad beat affect your play, you will lose lots of money, and if you let it negatively affect your mood, it will probably affect your play.

Craig

[Gahnia radula]

[Schneids]

[hashi92]

I think that u should switch to limit holdem. NL has to much variance. If u insist on playing no limit play tournaments. Your risk factor will be greatly reduced if you do either of the above. Most money players play limit.

[Ray Zee]

read gonores post a few times.

you won a little at first because you were playing with inexperienced friends. then when you went to play with the better but not good players you got trounced. its all about skill not glamor which is what you think poker is. you are comparing it to movies.
decide if it is in your future then take the effort to study the game. only then will you have a chance to compete with better players. or stick with the very small games or home games and just play very tight as that may be enough to beat them.

[Losing all]

You recieved a lot of very good advice in this thread. Gonores post is excellent!

Rounders as well as WPT/WSOP do way more harm than good to a player's game In my opinion. If it's glory you're after, join the Marines.