My One-Year Anniversary on Twoplustwo

[davelin]

Tomorrow is my one-year anniversary on the boards so I thought I’d share a little bit about my online poker “career” and what I’ve learned in the past 365 days. It’s been a long road since these days link . For those of you who have been on the boards for awhile, I’d recommend going back and reading your earliest posts. Quite humbling let me tell you…

I started playing online around the fall of 2003. I deposited a few hundred dollars, played some 2/4 and 3/6 limit, a level much over my bankroll and skill and pretty much immediately got cleaned out. Of course that didn’t stop me from re-depositing but this time dipping my toe in the low-stakes no-limit games. I remember back then having a VPIP almost around 100% thinking that it’s only 50 cents to see the flop and had the potential to double up if I flopped a monster. I actually had some decent short-term results but it was only a matter of time until my bankroll dwindled to nothing. From then til the end of the year, I was in a cycle of depositing, cashing out some winnings if I had gotten lucky, re-depositing, going broke, re-depositing, etc.

Sometime in early 2004 I finally hit an upswing and was able to maintain a semblance of a bankroll. From like March to August I played about 30K hands of NL50 at about a 3BB/100 clip. Just goes to show that anyone can get lucky for a hand number of hands and the long-term is truly long-term.

Somewhere at the end of those 30K hands, I experienced somewhere around a 100BB downswing so I made the decision to move over to limit because I believed (incorrectly) that my swings would be lower in limit. I didn’t start at .50/1 but instead at 1/2 because it was the same “stakes” as the no-limit game I was used to. At around this same time I discovered twoplustwo (not sure exactly how) and spent a ton of time reading, thinking and posting on the boards. It’s totally true, you’re going to get much better posting and reading other’s hands than posting your own hands. I hope some of the advice I’ve given out here has been helpful (or at the very least not detrimental).

I want to give a special shoutout to my bro Grunchcan who’s been very helpful to me on these boards. I still remember a PM he send to me that really encouraged me to be more active on these boards.

Just a few things I’ve learned in the past year –

1) Low pocket pairs are under-rated
2) Slowplaying is over-rated
3) Put your opponents into two categories: those who fold too much and those who do not fold enough. Punish each unmercifully.
4) 4-tabling while surfing por….er…twoplustwo is a great way to spend the evening
5) Rakeback and bonus whoring is the bomb
6) I still get upset when someone hits their 2 or 3-outer against me on the river
7) I check my account every 20 minutes still to see if my bankroll has gone up or down.
8) I’m a wuss, I haven’t ventured any higher than 2/4 on Party
9) I still don’t use 85% of my reads
10) I love limit cash games and NL tourneys. I hate NL cash games and limit tourneys.
11) Check-raising is more a matter of position rather than hand strength in limit (thanks Btspider)
12) I play too tight pre-flop
13) I fold too much post-flop