Hello, my name is Htufty and I'm playing poker for over 3 years now. One month ago I turned 21 which allowed me to play on legal sites. So I started playing on pokerstars. I deposited 100$. My start was very good I made like 150$ in three days on the 0.08/0.16$ zoom tables. After a few bad beats I decided to play some 15$ SNG's (tilted?) after losing two of them I said to myself 'let's play one more' which I did. The prize pool turned out to be 375$ which I won. Now after 3 weeks I lost it all .

I really don't want to give up my dream to become a winning player. And I want to work for it but I really don't know where to start. I bought 'Harrington on online cash games' which is a very good book but it's just too much information to remember. I also can't affort myself to pay 100$ for upswinglab if I don't even know if it will be good. Can anyone recommend me something? I just don't know what to study.

I also need some good advice about rakes. Since I'm using PokerTracker, the free version of it, I realised that the rake I'm paying is just to much.
I've played 22,264 hands and I lost 70,46 euro and the total rake I paid is 214,78 euro. Here is the picture:



I live in Belgium and only a few sites allow Belgium players. I really need a good rakeback deal or I need to quit cash games and start focusing on MTT's.

Sorry for my bad english and my bad writing skills

That's terrible br management, you had like 7 buyins and you don't even know if you are a winner yet. You should of started at nl2, play 20k hands and if you are a 5bb+ winner you can move up to nl5 and then follow 20-40 buyin brm from there. Switching to mtt's is a good option to consider.

MTTs can be a good starting point but you need a bigger bankroll for them, just something to keep in mind.

Bankroll management wont help you win right now though, it will only help you lose less fast, which is still a very good thing.

I would personally recommend playing at 2NL and get some experience. Play as much as you can. This should teach you a lot for free (well you do pay in the sense that you lose money but at 2NL its not that much).

Harsh reality: If you cannot figure out how to beat 2NL on your own, you should basically accept you play for fun, not profit. This doesn't mean you should be beating it within a few days/weeks, but if you don't win at 2NL after say 200.000 hands you will likely never get there.

Thanks for the answer. I started at 0.08/0.16$ because that's what I use to play live. But you can't compare live poker with internet poker I guess. I should indeed started at 2NL. I think I want to make money too fast which makes me lose.

Thanks for the answer. I will start at 2NL now. If I can't beat 2NL I would be suprised but you never know

Yep, start at 2nl

Be prepared to go busto a couple more times.