My Evolution as a Hold Em player (long)

[NoChance]

I’ve been a gambling fool ever since college. I roomed with 5 other gambling fools as well. Picture the living room with one large consol television, three smaller televisions sitting on top of it, 2 large couches and 2 small rocking chairs. This was our living room set up while I was in college. The large consol TV would typically be used for watching regular television or movies while the three smaller ones on top always had various sporting events going with the sound turned down. You see, we bet on ANYTHING that we could watch it on TV.

In addition, we used to travel to the local casino. This was in Wisconsin and the only games they had were blackjack or slots. Thus, I became a blackjack player. I read books. I learned to count. I became quite good at it and could even count a sex-deck shoe accurately and hold a conversation with the person sitting next to me. Let me tell you, even though I could count the cards, it still didn’t give me a big enough advantage to come out ahead very often.

While I was in college I worked as a “leadout” at the local dog track. A leadout is the name given to the people who walk the dogs down to the starting box, load them into the box, and then gather the dogs when the race is over and walk them to the trainers. That was quite the experience and I can tell that from 2 complete summers of doing this, by the end of each summer I got pretty good at simply knowing when a dog had good odds and was worth betting on. I could pick many races just by hearing the names, without seeing a racing program.

Then a job opened up for me in Minnesota. I moved to the Twin Cities. It didn’t take me long to find Canterbury. You see, horse racing (while not identical) is similar to dog racing. So, I started going to Canterbury to bet on the horses. After a few months, I noticed they had a card room. It was at that point I started playing the card games instead of betting on the horses.

From my High School days, I knew what 7 card stud was, so naturally that was the game I started playing. I got to be a pretty decent player so that I wasn’t losing money. I wasn’t making money though either. I was a break even player. Then one day the table next to me won a bad beat jackpot. It was at the point that I realized that the Hold Em jackpot was usually around $50,000, while the Stud jackpot rarely went above $10,000. I wanted a shot at the big score so I decided it was time to learn Hold Em.

So I tried Hold Em. The first few times I tried it, I was put on tables where the pot was capped almost every hand. I now realize that is not the norm but when I first started, how was I to know the difference. Naturally, I had no idea how to play or what hands were considered good starting hands. With all the capping, I lost pretty fast. Now it was time to try and figure out a strategy.

I am very good at math. I knew that there had to be a lot of math involved when selecting a starting hand. I was smart enough to figure out that a pocket pair was a good hand to play. I was also smart enough to figure out that most of the time you needed a pair of aces or kings to win. So, given my observations, I knew that it was better to play with bigger cards. So, I came up with a strategy that I thought would be perfect. I decided to play all pocket pairs, all suited cards, and all hands where the two cards added up to 15 or more! No way I could lose with this new strategy! Well, as you can probably guess, that didn’t work so well.

Then, about March of 2003, I heard someone at one of my tables talking about playing poker online. They mentioned Poker Stars. That very night I went home and did a search and downloaded the site. After browsing the site, I saw that I could play as little as $0.02-0.04. This was perfect! I decided to deposit $50. That lasted about 2 days.

Even though I lost, I couldn’t get enough of this game but I knew I had to improve. It was at that point I started searching the internet for “Hold Em Strategies” and stuff like that. I found finally found some information on decent starting hands and stuff like that. I decided to deposit another $50. This time I started to hold my own and could at least break even.

I started playing bigger stakes like $0.05-0.10 and $0.10-0.25. At the same time, I continued to search the internet for more information. I just couldn’t get enough of it. Then one day I found 2+2. I think it was May or June. I was just a lurker at that point but I started seeing posts about Party Poker and how “Fishy” it was. For a long time, I didn’t make the move because I didn’t think I could handle $0.50-$1 being the minimum table stakes until one day I had finally build my Poker Stars balance up to $125.

I kept reading over and over again about how the people who played at Party Poker were just terrible. I knew I wasn’t very good yet but surely I had to be better than these people, right? Well, after reading 2+2 for a few months, I made the decision to deposit $100 into Party and give it a shot. My first positive experience was getting that $20 bonus for my initial deposit. I did not have that experience at Poker Stars. This was great!

Anyway, if I remember correctly I built my bankroll up to about $300 or so. I was slowly improving and I think I owed almost all of my success to 2+2 and all the good information I got here. On 07/17/03 I finally created an account here and began posting. That was roughly the time when everyone was bonus whoring. I too got caught up in all that. I cashed out my $300 and then took an additional $200 and created an Empire account. I finally figured out after reading all these posts here that I would benefit most from depositing and getting the most out of the bonuses. I also started playing two tables at a time based on many of the posts suggesting that here at 2+2.

I went bonus crazy. I did all the Party skin welcome bonuses (IGMpay too), Pacific, Paradise, True, as many as I could. Before I knew it, my bankroll was over $1000. Along this same time I had read that it was a good idea to start tracking my results. I got Poker Tracker, created Excel spreadsheets, and tracked it all.

Sometime in October I made the move to the $1-2 limits. The play was almost the same and I never looked back. I was now a slightly winning player and by the time the end of the year rolled around I had made $4,500. Much of this, probably $2500 of it, came from all the various bonuses I took part in. I had also tried a couple casinos and hit some big scores for about $4,500 so when the new year started I had made $9,000 (including the casino wins because I considered them part of my bankroll). I used much of that money to pay off a couple school loans, buy a new computer, and buy new tires for my car (winter was coming). My basic plan was to always keep $2000 in sites/Neteller combined in case any new bonuses came along. I was cashing out anything over that amount every Sunday.

It was also in December that I participated in the TGC open internet challenge. I managed to get as high as $3-6 before losing a little and deciding to call it quits and cash out while I was ahead. It was that experience that made me experiment a little bit with $2-4 and $3-6 at Party. For some reason I could not beat those levels but was winning consistently at the $1-2 limit. I decided since this is just a hobby for me, I was best just staying where I was at and cashing out a little bit each Sunday.

Then in March I decided to do my own personal internet challenge (thanks to JasonHoldem for the inspiration). I started on March 1st with $600 in Empire at the $1-2 limit playing two tables at a time. It took me 7 days to get to $1200 at which point I moved up to $2-4. It took me only a couple days to go from $1200 to $1800 and move to $3-6 limits. I played there for about two weeks and finally made it to $3000. This was huge for me. I have never played $5-10 and here I was about to play it, two tables at a time. Well, I made it as high as $4,400 before losing $800 in one day. I decided to quit and cash out for $3,600 for a nice $3,000 profit for March.

I used some of this internet challenge money to pay off my credit cards still looming from my college days. So, I returned back to $1-2 and continued to beat up on that limit. Eventually I had enough to pay off the remaining $4,000 on my car, a TIVO/DVD machine, and buy a new 19” flat panel monitor for my computer.

There have been plenty that had suggested I should have moved up and started playing $2-4 earlier this year. I resisted that temptation because I was happy winning what I was winning at the $1-2 limit. My goal was to pay off some debt and I knew I could beat the $1-2 limit with very low risk. Now that I have paid off some of that debt, this last weekend I made the move to $2-4 and as of last night my total winnings going back to last September are $16,782.

I know nobody likes to hear how much anyone else has made. That is not the purpose of this post. I simply wanted to provide an evolution as to how little I knew a year and a half ago to what I have accomplished today. There are plenty of people who read these boards who are just starting to play. I am trying to show that I too started at the microlimits and for the most part have played entirely at the $1-2 tables for 10 months. I am guessing that bonus whoring has provided at least $6000 of that total. It's a great way to build a bankroll.

I also want to take the time (like so many others have) to thank 2+2 and all of the posters here for all the advice and strategy help along the way. Hopefully I have contributed to someone’s success like many you of you have done for me.

Good luck at the tables!

[Lost Wages]

Nice post, congratulations on the success.

I know nobody likes to hear how much anyone else has made.

Are you kidding me? Everyone likes to hear how much everyone else has made [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

One question (OK two); how many tables do you regularly play and how many hours per week?

Best of luck,
Lost Wages

[Sponger15SB]

very nice post, i have a roomate at school who loves to gamble and is horrible at poker, hopefully he will end up like you!

[tyfromm]

[ QUOTE ]
and could even count a sex-deck shoe accurately

[/ QUOTE ]

A sex-deck? Wow, what have I been missing in Blackjack? Where can I find a sex-deck?

[csuf_gambler]

i really want to read your post but its just too damn long. someone spark note it please

[NoChance]

Lost Wages,

I have a regular day job where I get up at 6:30 in the morning, head to work, and play when I get home. I am 34, single, and live alone so I don't have to worry about supporting a family or anything like that. I still only play two tables at a time. I have tried three tables at a time but I just don't enjoy it as much. I am a big note taker and when playing three tables at a time it gets to be a chore. I generally log in when I get home each night from work and play for 3 or 4 hours or so while I watch TV. I also play the weekends when I have a free one. I am guessing I play anywhere from 20-40 hours per week depending on the schedule, sometimes maybe even more.

[jasonHoldEm]

Great post...congrats. (You should move up. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] )

J

[TimM]

[ QUOTE ]
Where can I find a sex-deck?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sex-decks here

[ewile]

great stuff! My story parallels yours alot...starting at the real microlimits (Pacific .05/.10) about a year ago and moving up with lots of bonus whoring.

It's a great hobby for sure!

[Baulucky]

Nice post. Thanks for openly sharing.