The "Pro's" Success Stories?

[lacky]

14.5% ROI after 2770 played, the 1st 1200 were 4 tabling, the rest 6 to 8 at a time. I didn't play the way I started and have gone back to recently for about 1000 games, so I like to think 20% is still realistic.

Steve

[John Hurst]

Starting playing summer 2003.

Played $11 SNGs at Party and was immediately captivated by the mathematical challenge of playing them correctly. Initially thought the solution was to play very tight on the bubble and slide into 3rd. Lost $200 gradually and realized my strategy sucked and started getting better. Late in 2003 I became a winning playing and moved up to $33 and $55s. Wasn't keeping good stats but my bankroll kept growing.

Early in 2004 I had a strong run single tabling the $55s. Took a shot at Party Poker Million Qualifiers and won my entry on the 2nd shot. Immediately realized I needed to learn real poker! Read every book I could get my hands on and started playing in some underground games in Dallas. Finished 41st in the PPM III in may '04 and took home about $10K. Was still working at the time. Since the PPM III I have moved up to the $109s(mostly) and now 8 table. Never had a bankroll destroying downswing and I quit my job a month ago because I was making much more playing poker than working. Placed in my first WSOP event last month - 138th in event 2. I still don't think I am a great NL multi table player so that is my next challenge. Also, played in my first main event this year which was a great learning experience. So in approximately 2 years I have placed in a WSOP and WPT event and now make enough money to quit my day job. I am sort of the anti-Jackpot Jay(espn.com reference).

Oh yeah, I fell in love with the idea of playing hold 'em after watching rounders and moneymaker so I'm a total cliche.

[WebGuySteve]

meh I'm bored so I'll give this a try.

I know most of you don't know who I am, but, I'm sure at least a few of the 215 regulars do. I currently play the 215s on party with a fair amount of success, so, I hope this is interesting.

About a year and a half ago my friend and I decided to put $20 each onto paradise poker. We both played the same account with $40 in it. We had NO clue how to play poker, but decided it would be fun. Needless to say, we lost it all very fast. Then Pacific gave us $20 free to start. We started playing sit and gos, some days we'd be up, some days down.

Then we had like 24 bucks in the account, and my friend decided he was sick of it, so I gave him 12 bucks and started playing on my own. I slowly built that up to 100 bucks, then 200 bucks. Then I cashed out 50 and put it on prima.

On prima I played the sit and gos, built that up to about 125, very slowly. Then I decided to try their expert series for 20 bucks. I knocked out an expert which gave me 50 bucks and took 2nd place which gave me like 600 bucks. Armed with all this new money, I decided to try their 75K tournament for 25 bucks.

This is where poker changed for me. Looking back on it, I got extremely lucky, but I finished 2nd place in that tournament getting me $10,275. I didn't know what to do with it all! I cashed out most of it, but kept a couple grand in there for bankroll purposes.

I then started slowly building my bankroll again about 2,000 per month. I would cash half of this out every month. Then in december I graduated college and decided I needed to start making more money. I started playing the $215 sit and gos on pacific, I had about 2K on pacific (yeah yeah yeah, low BR, I know) and started beating these for about 20%, but, it was very slow because you could only play one at a time.

In march I had heard how easy the party sngs were. Before, Party was just for the $30 MTTs, and sometimes the big ones. So I had 600 bucks on party, and cashed out 4K from pacific just to test the waters. Well, before the 4K got to my account i used the $650, built that up to about 2K or so, then lost it down to 180 bucks. I jumped into a $50 NL table, made a quick 40 bucks or so, and played another 215, lol. I was determined not to touch that 4K! So, naturally, I won that sng, and built the roll up to about 6K.

At this point I found rakeback. I put my roll onto empire and have logged just 1,100 sngs since then. I have earned between 12-23% depending on when you hit me, lol. I was at 21% through 750, and currently a NASTY $12K downswing.

So! What have I learned? Unless you plan on getting really really lucky, don't play the 215s without at least a 20K BR!!! I sure am glad i hit that downswing when I could afford it! I actually just today made back the last of that 12K and am in the black (barely!) for july.

Also, for insta bankroll, luckbox your way into a huge MTT win in which you had no business playing anyways!

[Irieguy]

[ QUOTE ]


Also, for insta bankroll, luckbox your way into a huge MTT win in which you had no business playing anyways!

[/ QUOTE ]

Anybody who's hung around the live tourney circuit for the last decade or so should get a chuckle from this.

To what percentage of current "pros" do you think this model of BR building would apply? I have an idea.

Irieguy

[Degen]

Its a gradual climb, with bumps and breaks and growth spurts. Different for everybody i'm sure. The funny thing is it is never truly over, even for Giga i'm certain. Nobody is ever just comfortable where they are it seems, certainly not me.

I started out playing LHE a couple of years ago and was a huge fish. I was the most loose agressive player at the indian casino i frequented...all the dealers and a lot of the players called me 'Wild Bill' for a long time.

About a year and probably 10k into it i bought super system. This made me realize my fishiness and I grew a huge thirst for knowledge of the game. I bought several other books within a couple of months and was an RGP regular for a long stretch.

I didn't find my niche (SNG's) until about a year ago. This is around the same time I turned the corner and started consistently beating the game. For whatever reason I began to notice that i was a consistent SNG winner, while my LHE and NL Cash Game results were very inconsisent and i often lost, especially with LHE.

So I started exclusively playing SNG's, and in the coarse of posting hands on RGP somebody emailed me and told me that all of the SNG hands I was posting there would be much better suited to this forum. So I came here to learn.

I played 11's for about a week, then 22's and then 33's primarily, simply because that was the stakes that were interesting to me. To this day the vast majority of the SNG's i've played have been 33's and that is where my highest ITM/ROI numbers are (for significant samples).

I move up to the 55's when I have a roll and now thanks to a nice MTT score I am playing in the 109's and 215's pretty regular and doing very well...so we'll see how long that lasts, I'm guessing I'll be back to the 55's or 33's within a month or two.

SNG skills have vastly improved my NLHE Ring game skills and I play that as a winner quite a bit, and I also do well in large MTT's also thanks in large part to my SNG knowledge.

[iMsoLucky0]

Okay, since there have been several other interesting stories posted now, I guess I'll give mine.

Growing up as a kid my friends and I had always played 5 dollar buying games. I always loved poker but never took it seriously, it was just something to do when we were together occasionally. Then I went to college and got on the internet. I don't remember how exactly but I found pokerroom.com and put 100 on it and played 1 2 and 2 4. I would pretty well break even or win a little and then go lose it all on the blackjack part of their site. Then one day online, I was playing with a guy from my hometown, and he mentioned that he ran a private game on Thursday nights.

Well the following thursday I decided I'd go give it a try. It was a 1 2 blind game with a 2-10 spread limit structure. I lost 200. They informed me that the next night there was a 4 8 game. I went there and lost 300. I was hooked.

I went back and reread the Ken Warren's beginners book. I went back to the same games the next week and won close to 500. The guys there told me about partypoker, and I set up an account there and put 100 on it. I played a 33 multi that night and made the final table somehow and took 7th. It paid around 700 and I had a bankroll! From here I kept attending all the live games around town I could find and played online when I could find time. I would play 33 SNGs, 25 NL, 22 and 33 multis, and just completely random stuff. I then found a game in town that was a 1 2 blind round of NL holdem, round of PL omaha. It didn't take me very long to pick up the game of omaha, and I was quickly destroying these games. I would make about 1000 a week from live games in town and still play online with limited success.

At some point I won a multi that paid around 3000 and decided that I really liked SNGs and would try and focus on those. I started playing a bunch of 109 SNGs and this is where I met ship_it_tome (gigabet's brother). He told me about this site and we chatted online a ton and he helped me form my game. This was in about Novemeber of 04. Then in December 04 I hit a pretty bad downswing in everything I played. I lost like 1000 playing SNGs, then decided I'd play o8 limit. I lost my final 4000 one night playing one guy headsup in 10 20 o8 (i was real tired and just couldn't stop). At this point, I was broke. The next night I logged into my brother's party account and won a quick 500 playing 10 20 o8, and transferred it to myself. From there I ground it out and built it up some. Got back into focusing more on SNGs, playing tons of 109s. Then in March, partypoker decided to open 1000 PL Omaha tables. I had 5000 in my partypoker account and decided to give it a shot. I was on the heater that everyone always dreams of. I just couldn't lose. I won about 35,000 in 7 days with very limited hours of play. It was ridiculous. I capped the weak winning a 109 multi that paid 9500.

At this point I took a small downswing in the pl omaha, and decided to focus on SNGs again. I now had a good enough bankroll for 215s and decided that's what I'd do. So I've been grinding SNGs for the last few months, and still playing quite a few multis (all the specials I can as well as rebuys and 109s). 2 weeks ago, I was lucky enough to luckbox my way to victory in the Friday Special for a cool 38,000. And that is where I'm at now.

I have tried my best to be a jack of all trades and master as many games as I can. I really do want to keep on becoming better and better and better, and hopefully I can.

[Thoth]

Wow, great thread.
Thanks to all the story posters [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

awesome!

thx for all the posters who took time to post thier stories.. Sry about leaving anyone out like curtains/fiery and others, you all are inavaluable to this forum.

Guess I better win a big MTT then!

[johnny005]

Well I've been reading through all the pro stories they all seem pretty glamorous compared to mine but I'll write something anyways..

I started playing about 2 years ago.. when I saw Moneymaker win of a small investment through the net..
My friends and I started playing NL SNG's with $20 buyin every sunday..I had limited success with this scince I hadn't figured out that you have to play tight at the start.. it was kind of confusing for all of us cause the weakest player was always making the money by not playing any hands.. go figure???

By this time I was hooked, I started going to the local B&M about 3-4 times a week.. they have a nightly 3-6 limit game there. I had already read HPFAP at this point which sort of got me in a bit of trouble, scince I couldnt figure out why these guys didnt get what my check raises and tricky plays were supposed to mean. All in all though I was hitting about 1BB/hr after about 6 months of play.

Then I found out about 2+2 and party poker. I started reading the forum every day and playing the $10sng's at party poker, I played about 1000 of them then moved to the 20's. after playing about 500 20's with 20%ROI I decided to quit my job.
I was making slightly more playing poker than my job($13/hr.canadian) so I figured why not.

Things were going great till I got this idea in my head that I could make more 4 tabling 2-4,3-6 than I could playing the 20 sng's... Oh yeah I also tried playing the 6 max 5-10 limit tables on a $1500 bankroll. anyone who plays those knows how smart that was.

After loosing my entire bankroll I reloaded with my visa for $500 and started over at the 10's. I'm now back playing the 20's 4 tables, moving up to 8 next week. I've been playing poker as my sole source of income for 4 months and have averaged $35/hr for the most part. Its not much compared to some of you guys but its better than working 9-5.

One thing I want to say to anyone who thinks they want to quit their job to play poker is... Dont do it unless your prepared for the emotional swings along with the $$ swings. If you dont have at least 3-6 months expenses saved(I didnt do this) your going to get alittle stresses out at some point.

Dont know if this was intesting for anyone but thanks for listening.

John

[protoverus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


Also, for insta bankroll, luckbox your way into a huge MTT win in which you had no business playing anyways!

[/ QUOTE ]

Anybody who's hung around the live tourney circuit for the last decade or so should get a chuckle from this.

To what percentage of current "pros" do you think this model of BR building would apply? I have an idea.

Irieguy

[/ QUOTE ]



I'm no pro, but that's what happened to me. I was a breakeven/modest winning player at .5/1 with the standard $50 start. I struggled for 3 months to get to $300. Then I found the bonuswhores whoring guide and built it to $1200.

I had just bought and read HOH and decided that a $50 multitable tourney on Empire was right for my bankroll (yeah, right!). I played a tightwad game and won it all when I sucked out a flush on the river (I believe over a 2+2'er - ZenofBob). That boosted my bankroll to the point where I haven't had to look back and gave me the leeway to become a better player. I started playing alot of $11's and been able to move up the ranks with a large bankroll relative to the buy-ins...a comfortable spot for me.

My point? Yeah...getting lucky in a MTT is the way to go!

be well