I don’t have any crazy stories of going broke, accumulating hundreds of thousands of earnings, or dreams of becoming a professional poker player for the rest of my life. I would love to play in a WSOP or WPT event someday, but mostly poker has always been a part of my life, something I’m passionate about, and I’m jumping back into the waters again. But, I'm looking to avoid the mistakes I've made in the past. I want to play a winning game and show a profit, even if its not huge. I've been a member here for a while but rarely post, and for some reason I've decided to make this a long one. I'm hoping by making this post, it will help keep me on track. (Feel free to skip the next several paragraphs if you just want to see my goals).

So my poker background, I started out playing online around ’02-’03 taking advantage of $10 in free money given to me…then made a real deposit. My main game was Sit N Go’s, primarily the ‘step’ type SNG’s. Mostly I was playing the Rounders format through Royal Vegas Poker / Prima network. I did very well in those for a year or so…the games were incredibly soft for quite a while. Eventually, however, increased competition and collusion that was occurring pretty much killed the profitability of the games at least for me, and I turned more towards tournaments. I would make it deep and cash sometimes, but never could hit a big final table score. I hit a major downswing and saw my balance drop drastically, and decided to cut down my play and withdraw most of my remaining funds. It may have been good timing; however, as that client banned American players at one point and I took a break completely from poker and focused more on college and other interests.

I came to Full Tilt Poker years later, getting back into SNG’s. The landscape had changed post-UIGEA and it was a shock playing at much lower stakes. While some people start off running hot and climbing stakes…I always had the opposite issue. The biggest leak in my game has always been trying to chase losses during a downswing by moving up in stakes, and rarely does that work out. I started off watching my bankroll climb steadily after joining FTP, until going on another big downswing in one evening where I played way above the buy-in level I should have and ran awful. The smartest thing I did, however, was to quit before going completely broke and I still had about $500ish left in my account. I stopped playing poker until I could convince myself to stay at stakes that I could show a profit at and not waver. And if I played tournaments, I’d stick to low buy in ones.

I got myself on the right track sticking to low buy in games after taking a break, and did well for playing part time in the summer of 2010. I’d graduated college at this point and was only able to find part time work, so I supplemented it with poker. I won a small buy in tournament and had decent results at SNG’s. Nothing incredible, but good enough for a few thousand in profit that summer. I put in some volume and rakeback helped. I ended up finding full time employment, however, and decided to leave about $600 in my account in case I ever wanted to get back into things. Black Friday happened, however, and that was pretty much it for me in poker until a couple months ago.

I got the itch to play again recently, and I decided to take advantage of a first deposit bonus and grind hyper turbo games. This is a format I know very well, feel confident in playing, made a profit on when playing on Full Tilt, and thought it would be good for clearing a bonus. I wanted to clear the bonus and show a small profit from the games, and then use that bankroll to continue to build up and eventually take a shot at some live cash games. But, it hasn’t worked out like that. The swings are often absolutely brutal in the hyper format and are very testing. I feel that I am a winning player at the lower buy-in stakes I play, however. I have to tell myself 50-100 BI swings happen and if I can’t weather that, I shouldn’t be playing. I tried to supplement it with some tournaments, but that compounded the problem.

I’m very close to clearing my bonus and I expected my bankroll to be a lot larger. At the same time, I felt I may have been bleeding away more money than I realized…and yep, a lot of the reasons for losses are because of dabbling in cash games or playing in tournaments I’m not rolled for. If you take those two factors away, I’d be in much better shape, though still down slightly from the hypers (not factoring in bonuses earned). But, I’m looking towards the future now and righting the ship so to speak. My actual poker goals…here they are:

1) Stick to $10 or less hyper turbo sngs, and drop down a level if I fall below 50 BI’s at the higher stake.
2) Stay away from online cash games, period. I feel comfortable playing live cash, but online that isn’t my game.
3) Only play $5 or less tournaments if I do play any. The tournament successes I have had are from low buy in tourneys. If my bankroll falls below $500, play zero tournaments.
4) Do a better job tracking my stats every day that I play, update this thread as well.
5) Play 500 SNG’s in the next 30 days. Increase it after that. I’m not after a lot of volume right now and do work f/t, but I'm trying to solidify my approach and stay within my bankroll.


Current bankroll: $765