Intro:
Hello everyone! Very excited to officially put my goals down on paper. I am a 26 year old bartender from Maryland. Since the start of 2014, I've made about $4000 playing Live 1/2 NL (mostly), but also some 4/8 Omaha 8, 2/2 PLO and mixed games. This is in ~150 hours of play time. I previously didn't have a lot of opportunities to play live, but my son just started kindergarten this week and my girlfriend started her career as a middle school teacher. I'm home alone from about 9:30 AM to 3:50 PM Monday-Friday, so the time is ripe for me to start playing 25 hours a week and really supplement my income.
Bankroll Considerations:
My family and I just moved into a new apartment this past week. Unlike a lot of the 20-somethings, I have an awful lot of bills between rent, car payments, insurance, student loans, etc. Luckily, I make enough bartending to pay my bills and cover living expenses. There just isn't room for much more. In addition to making money every night at work, we are also tipped out by cocktail servers and servers. We receive these tip outs in envelopes as early as the next day. In order to ensure that I take care of my obligations, I am using my tip out envelopes to begin to build a live bankroll, while using my regular income to take care of the bills and living expenses. In a perfect world, I will run well early and won't have to add any more tip out envelopes to my bankroll after the initial buy in, but I will allow myself some leeway with this due to Mother Variance. I will focus on just playing 1/2 NL and fixed limit mixed games. PLO can wait until I have a roll built up.
Now, I will also be dabbling a little bit online. BetOnline is the only site I can play on in Maryland, so NL and PLO are really my only game options. I made a $50 deposit a few weeks ago and have shown horrible bankroll management thus far, taking bad beats at PLO10 and playing $5+.50 SNG's. I currently have $7 on my account and will be exclusively playing NL2, freerolls, and micro stakes SNG's, .25 and less. If I lose the $7, I'll allow myself one more $50 deposit, and if I lose that I'll stick to live poker. (I've always had success live, and haven't ever found it online)
Current Bankrolls:
Live- $244, obtained from tip out envelopes I picked up last night
Online- $7
Goals:
End of September-
- Put in at least 30 hours of play a week between live/online
- Establish myself at 1/2 NL live and have a bankroll that sustains itself without funds from my job
- Grind online bankroll so that I can move up from NL2 to NL4 by the end of the month
- Increase knowledge of online poker, statistics, tracking software, etc. My current knowledge in this area leaves much to be desired
End of 2014-
- Online, continue to grind and make it to NL25
- Live, build up a big enough bankroll that I can comfortably switch to 2/5 NL
- Continue to learn and grow as a poker player
2015 and beyond-
- Make enough money playing live that I can finance a couple vacations. Go to Vegas with my girlfriend. Take my son to Disney World.
- Become a 2/5 live reg and maybe even take stabs at 5/10
- Build an online bankroll sufficient to play NL100 by the end of 2015
- Make my life a lot more fun and a lot less stressful financially!
I will regularly post results and will do my best to post specific hands. I don't really know how to post hand histories and other online things. Don't have much technological knowledge haha.
Also, I appreciate anyone's help and advice. I have a lot to learn about this game, but it's a lot of fun and I have shown a history of winning live. If I fail, I still have a great family and job, so life is good. I hope I end up succeeding though!
