Hey guys, this thread is a place for us to discuss our paths taken through the poker limits. I will make several posts, in detail and in chronological order over the course of several days, describing my own path through several limits and poker rooms, from playing nickel and dime limit hold'em up to the present, playing $5/10NL on a handful of different sites. I will describe paradigm shifts in thinking about the game, skills acquired along the way, lessons learned the hard way, upswings and downswings, and pretty much anything requested of me or that I think will help fellow posters. I hope my posts here serve as inspiration and information for those who are looking to go deep in this game.

I want you to post your story too, in as much detail as you care to share. Everyone reading this should share something regardless of your current limit, poker experience or 2+2 posting experience. Hopefully we will all learn tips on what to do and what NOT to do along the way. If you have questions for me or anyone else in the thread, post it please.

Christmas 2004 - Big potential

I was at my friend's house watching him play fake money online, shoving every hand pre-flop and giggling when he scooped 8-way pots with J5o. I had just ended my seasonal position at Sears (my 11th or 12th job) and was a broke college student .I had time to burn, so I made my own play money account and decided to start practicing, so at the very least, I would own my friend in our $2 heads-up games. I quickly realized I wasn't going to learn a whole lot in these play money shove-fests, so I switched over to limit hold'em. Every pot was capped, but at least I got some strategic exercise post-flop. I started googling and reading piles of limit strategy. I learned to stay out of these capped pots holding 72o and such. For those who think practicing on fake money is a detriment to skill, I strongly disagree, especially because the micro cash games played SO closely to fake money games. It's like saying going to a driving range and blasting some golf balls is a detriment to your overall golf game. Sure, you won't learn everything about golf by hitting a few balls, but it's part of the game, so how can it be bad? Beating up terrible players in fake money games probably helped me a LOT to become sharp at hunting down fish at all limits.

A few weeks before Christmas, I found $5 in my play money account! My first thought was... I'm going to get good and run this up! I didn't want to waste this opportunity, so I pressed harder at beating the fake money games, and absorbing strategy articles. I wanted to be sure of not busting out this five bucks. A couple weeks later, I took a stab at the lowest stakes on my then-main site (Tiger Gaming). I played one table of 10c/20c limit for a good hour a day, in 20-30 minute sessions, for several weeks. In between sessions, I would read articles non-stop. I would slack off at school and obsess over the potential of my bankroll. I'd play out poker situations in my mind, on my notebook, etc, I'm sure most of us here know what I'm talking about. I found myself a steady winner right away, running my $5 into $10, then $20, then $50. With 6 or 7 players seeing a flop, and a good rakeback deal, it wasn't hard to win with very basic strategy. After a few double-ups, I realized there was an enormous world to conquer in front of me, and with some work and patience, I could build something serious out of this... and what are these things called Sit'n'gos ?!? More to come

in 2005 i saw an article in the toronto star by a guy that runs a poker forum. the bankrollbuilder... I got 50$ for xmas and deposited it and the madness started. The bankroll builder had a promo that i could get a free book if i signed up through his affiliate (bad idea at the time lol, by fulltilt rakeback) ... but i was off , i played limit holdem and read internet texas holdem by matt hilger 10 times. I was hooked! i started bonus whoring all the sites. and did this for about 2 years. than i quit my job selling guitars and took poker seriously. My game has improved 10 times over in the last 6 months than it did the last 3-4 years! i now have worked my way up to 200nl and hope to continue moving up. I have gained so much valuable experiance in these years i wouldn't trade it for anything. I have been knocked down many times but always got up to fight another day. some of my poker carrear higlights

- being at the table for a party Bad beat jackpot and winning 13k !!
- winning a 1000+150$ ongame grand tourny ticket from a 2.50$ mad tilt all in qualifier and cashing for 2000.
- having my first 5000$ plus month, this month! woo woo

ps. good post raze , looking forward to the next chapters :P

mid 2005 I had nothing better to do. I saw wsop on tv showing moneymaker bluff shoving on farha LOL. I deposited 50 on pokerstars. Won 1 dollar tourney with over 8k players LOL. Then won 180 22s and I had over 1500 to my name. Cashed out all played nothing but sng untill 2007. Now playing micro nl and still a marginal player. To my defense though, I think I only played 150k hands total simce I started.


EDIT: I cashed out everything but 1k and if I lose it, I wont be depositing anymore. I should have done this way back in 2007.

long and macquade?

hehe nah smaller one in barrie. Although we dealt with them quite a bit... I bought a couple guitars from LandM

Spring-Summer 2005 - Leaving the comfort zone

The bankroll was over $100 from playing 10-cent limit for weeks. I was beating my game pretty handily, and something told me it was time to expand a little. I watched a couple of $3+.45 six-max SNGs, marveling at the $13 first-place payout. I did my research, and took my shots. I did pretty well off the bat, showing a small profit week-to-week playing a handful of these a week, and mixing in some 10/20c and occasionally 25/50c limit. I had a wake-up moment playing one of these sitngos: we were still pretty shallow, with the blinds around 30/60 and stacks of about 2000, when I saw a flop of Q-Q-Q holding 66. I figured it was a pretty good idea to just overbet-shove the flop with my boat, but when I got called by quad Queens, I started to see the flaws of my move. Yes, I had a boat, but what the hell was going to call me, especially for a 5x pot-sized bet? Certainly nothing that I could beat, except for maybe the occasional 22-55. Of course I'm getting snapped by everything better. It must have been a powerful shift in my strategy if I still remember it 4 years later.

I ran the roll up over $200 playing a combination of micro-limit, $3 and $7 SnG's when I was feeling brave, but I ran into a rough patch. I didn't cash for several tourneys, and I wasn't winning in the limit games. Looking back, I'm sure it was a combination of a bad run of cards, followed by frustration and deterioration of my play, but at the time, it was pure panic. I decided to make a change: I set up a Neteller account, and shifted my whole roll onto Poker Room. They didn't offer small enough ring games, so I read up on their SnG structures and jumped into the 5's, 10's and occasional 20's. Unfortunately after a month, I realized the competition was a little tougher & more aggressive than at my old site, and not having made a dime, I shipped the $250 roll straight back to Tiger Gaming.

A few more SnGs later, including a nice run at the $2 and $5 HU SnGs, and my roll was over $300, something clicked inside my head saying I should get back to the game where I was able to run up my roll the fastest: limit hold'em. I touched on the 25/50c and 50/$1 games briefly, but I decided to go big and setlle into the $1/2 limit games, permanently. I picked up right where I left off in the 10c games, running the roll up to $400, $500, and even taking shots at $2/4 when there were good full tables running. At this point, I started to experiment with playing two tables, which I found VERY difficult to do well. I'm pretty sure I dropped to a breakeven winrate for the first little while, but I eventually learned to 'separate' my brain onto both tables, and leaving my reads on either table independent of each other.

My hot streak slowed down into August, and with the roll around $800, I started doing some real research on other poker rooms. Tiger was a small site, and seldom had more than a couple full-ring tables running at $1/2 and $2/4. I had heard of bigger sites like Party (the biggest at the time), Stars, etc, and I became intrigued by their bonus and rakeback systems. Bonuswhores.com in particular was very interesting. These sites are REALLY just giving away reload bonuses all the time? Can I REALLY play on 3 or 4 different sites and pick up a $50 or $100 bonus at each site every month? It was at this point I went down the bonus-whoring path, which turned out to be a brake on the development of my poker skill... an issue which became a huge turning point in my poker career a couple of months later. I made a short list of sites to check out, and make plans to divide and conquer with my hefty $800 bankroll...

im liking reading this... i think it gives good perspective to those who don't realize the work required to climb the limits and make money playing poker.

more please!

7-8 months ago, i was getting bored of online video games and i needed a hobby to kill time that would be beneficial instead of another video game. i decided to play poker by depositing $50 on FTP and quickly blowing it away. I posted a hand where I won a big pot on bodybuilding.com where we had our own small poker thread and everyone told me i played it bad. I saw a blog by a guy named DeathByLight or we know him as Amaterasusan and I talked to him for a bit and he sent me to this site.

I posted, I learned, I studied and I got better. I was playing 45 man $1.20 Sit N Go's and he told me I should play Single Table SnGs and I did that for the next 5 months as I built a $25 PStars deposit into $1500 overall. This wasn't bad for a newbie but I felt like it was too little so I switched to cash about 2-3 months ago, deciding to start from nothing but $20 on Stars. I grinded 4 tables or 2NL FR, moved up to 5NL for an hour than 10NL. Once I had 4 BI for 25NL, I took my shot and didn't look back. I was eventually taking shots at 50NL after the 1st week and I didn't do too well but I didn't do too bad.

I talked to some people and they told me 6 max was where the money is at. I tried 6max 25NL and started tilting hard so I switched over to 10NL 6max and grinded away. In a week, I felt pretty comfy beating 25NL 6max so currently I'm at 50NL 6max where things are swingy for now.

Did I follow bankroll management? Not really but I didn't feel like grinding pennies. I make sure I have 10BI+ above 25NL so I can 8 table. Not doing so hot at 50NL but hope to be outta here in a week or two.

2005- sat at my first poker table playing bar-poker. A lot of the local bars had started hosting free tournaments with $100-200 payouts and only 30-50 people playing on average. I learned quickly to play tight early/ loose later, and within a very fast time started taking these down on a regular basis. One month, a few months in, playing these a few nights a week I won $800 dollars from 0 buyin. This got me interested enough to buy a few poker books.

I opened an online poker account and played for a month or two on Party Poker, mostly in the "steps?" type SNG's and did pretty well, then Party Poker disinvited me from playing.

Returned to California 2006. At this time my daughter was very very sick. The ex, daughter and I all lived together. Needless to say it isn't easy to live with your ex, so I scoped out Viejas, Pechanga, O-11, etc. and started playing live for a crazy number of hours each weekend and after work most evenings. I started playing no limit cash games, 1-1 or 1-2. My learning curve was a bit slow and the first year I probably lost 15-20k.

California Live-play 2007: Something clicked (I kept reading and studying) and I became a winning player. I played 1-1, 2-2, and 2-3 games mostly. I ended the year up about 20k (which left me breakeven for 2 years of live play). I also started playing weekend tournaments and profited about 8k from them, and due to the hours I played, won about 2k in players card drawings.

California Live-play 2008: I was playing 2-2 or 2-3 profitably with occasional 2-5 games most often. For fun I went to dealer-school. A few people started offering to stake me to play in bigger games than I'd play on my own, so I sat in 500-1000 buyin games when that would happen, or would stick to the $200-300 buyin games otherwise. Between cash games, bbj, tournament winnings I was up about 45k by August.

It was also this year that I created a Pstars account and started playing online. I probably bled off about $1500 dollars before I realized at the Live to Online skill gap, and dropped in stakes to 25nL with occasional 50nL play. I got a cardrunners subscription. Pulled all of my money off the sites, and decided if I was going to play the bigger games I'd get there by building a bankroll and not insta-depositing one.

Since then I've pretty repeatedly run $20 up to $1k in about 30k hands. Each time I'd find a reason to shop and would pull the money off. I think I've been waiting to really have a good feeling about playing online before I go ahead and play the stakes my bankroll allows (I'm still more comfortable playing at a real table and touching real felt). I put 20 online 3 weeks ago, am now at 220, and will not be withdrawing any $ until March 2011- and am curious to see what happens.

That's about it for me!

I just run good.

Very interesting for players like me to read these stories. I've been playing about 2/3 years online and lost about $200 or so just playing for fun.

This year I want to improve and stop being such a donk.

Great thread, keep it coming please!

As soon as I started playing fake money, my video gaming playing went from hours a day to almost zero. Getting paid to play on the computer is a lot more fun

Good stuff Gina, letting that bankroll blow up is definitely the way to go

This.

Keep those stories coming raze you big tease. Have you been reading arabian nights or something?

nice to read the stories from people, thanks to you all for posting. i just recently started in january so no real stories yet. one day!

Keep 'em coming boys/girls.

Fall 2005 - The Path to Professional Poker

In early 2005, I bought my first poker book, Killer Poker Online. By the end of 2005, I had at least a dozen books, including SSHE, Theory of Poker, and Super System. I was two years graduated from high school, taking an 8am adult high school Chemistry class in order to qualify for a university program. It was at this early hour, slacking off in the back of the classroom, where I discovered 2+2. I dove into this new resource and read absolutely everything instead of studying chem, which ended up taking me six months to complete (normally a three-week course). Six months??? Well, the course was go-at-your-own-pace.. but as I got deeply serious about making it in poker, I started to spend a few of these mornings not at school, but at a nearby cafe, working on all things poker ie. playing online, researching bonuses and sites, toying with a referral business idea, and reading articles and strategy. I kept a binder for notes, one page of which I will re-type here:

October 2005 goals ($1,200 bankroll):

1. PokerPlex, 300 raked hands @ 1/2 for $50

2. re-register with William Hill, play 5hrs @ 1/2 for $45

3. beat 30% @ Interpoker for $100, withdraw?

4. start on Absolute pending $150 bonuses

5. check out new deals: Party skins, CDPoker, other Crypto sites?

6. 790 points reload @ Tiger

- Must find softer tables @ Absolute!

- For multi-tabling, pick the best tables at multiple sites, rather than tougher 1/2s on the same site.

- EASE into multi-tabling.


October 3rd, 2005

- played 4hrs, +$60-80 + bonuses

- getting down 5-10bb's is normal, play to make DECISIONS not to win pots

"Whatever it is you do, do it to the best of your ability". (My chem teacher, minutes before I left class to head to the cafe)

As you can see above, I had become a bonus whore. I was more concerned in grabbing that "free" money than in developing my skills. In a way, bonus whoring WAS a skill, as I became acquainted with a good dozen sites and got experience playing in other currencies, against players on predominantly US sites, Euro sites, etc. However, I was not playing well. I would frequently break even because my interest shifted from improving my game to acquiring and grinding out bonuses as fast as possible.

Also, it was around this point that my winrate began to exceed minimum wage ($7 or $8 an hour at the time), which, coupled with the fact that I could make my own hours, and that I was 100% in charge of my own business, was very attractive. Most importantly, however, was the fact that my winrate seemed to be growing exponentially. I had seen monster graphs on 2+2 of people with 3-figure wages and 6-figure annual takes, so I had an idea of what was possible. So after some more extensive research, I made a major decision: I would do a lot better in the long run committing my focus to moving up the limits, rather than remaining a $1/2 and $2/4 bonus whore, where there was a clear ceiling on what could be earned.



<a shot of my spreadsheet, which I updated daily>


On November 30th, 2005, I gathered my roll from half a dozen sites, which had swelled to $2,000, and dumped it all on Party to take a shot at their notoriously soft short-handed games. I had learned to play short-handed on the very tough and rocky Absolute $1/2 tables, maintaining a small winrate while grinding out bottomless bonuses. I was immediately shocked at the drop in skill level in the Party games. At this point though, I had no clue that within 6 weeks, I would be moving out into a friend's apartment, turning pro after 13 months of online poker...

wow, suprised your not an accountant with all that Excel note taking etc.

currently I am grinding 50NL with about 20BI which is the most BIs I have had for any stake, usually I only grind with 4-10 BIs when I first started and it worked because I was able to beat the stakes quickly. I am running like .5/100 at 50NL where I am making less than I am at 2NL hourly but luckily rakeback adds $9/hr but I believe I am making far less than If I just grinded 25NL which I can beat.

I moved up aggressively because of a few things. Impatience, confidence/arrogance, and it's my last shot of making a decent living for myself besides the Air Force which I have about 2+ months left until I leave for bootcamp. If I could do well and make it 'semi-/pro', I would not need to ship for bootcamp. So I have about 2 months left of part time working, exercising and grinding poker to move up to be a 100NL reg. I told myself that if I could be a 50NL reg, I would be satisfied but I guess you are never satisfied at the stake you are. Of course, I have to be a winner first so my search to get better and my grind is going to be moving forward for the next 2 months.

Started with $0, freerolled, SNGs up to 400, tournament score for $950, 25nl cash then 50nl cash. Stake for HU, HU.

And here I am.

Thanks for the great stories...they are not only interesting but very informative.

I started playing poker back in 2001-2002, a year or so before the big poker boom. My online account was through UB but I didnt view it as a viable place to win money and play poker (believe it or not) but just as a proving ground for playing live games better. At the time there were two poker rooms I frequented, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, both in Connecticut. Steadily, I built my bankroll to a couple of thousand by playing 1/2 limit up to 5/10 limit and the game I really enjoyed the most and played as much as possible was seven card stud hi/low. I would still only play this game but it has died a slow death.

Besides playing at Foxwoods, I also went to Vegas a couple times a year and have competed in the WSOP on three occasions. (Not in the main event) One time I actually played in a $150 satellite against the guy who wrote the book on Seven Card Stud Hi/Low that I memorized to get good at the game. Short story, I ended up winning the satellite and beating the guy who wrote the book...and I have the pictures to prove it.

As most people do, I ended up taking a break from poker for other reasons...relationships, work, etc. My account online lingered after I cashed out a few hundred dollars and never played much.

Not sure why, but the serious poker bug has bitten me again and I am in the process of playing, studying and learning the landscape of winning online. (I have sense moved to North Carolina, so no cardrooms for me) So many choices...which site should I play? What game? SNGs or micro NL? So that is why I am here on 2+2. My understanding of my game is pretty good...I am pretty solid, but I know I have a ton of work to do before I start making a run at the bigger stakes. Building my BR and assessing my game is the focus for me now.

Thanks again for the informative posts...I look forward to more.

the title changed lol

Sorry if my post was OT, but I wanted to share why I am so interested in how people climbed up...

Still on the lower rungs here lol, but ...

- Deposited $50 in Aug 08, went busto in 2 days
- At 5 AM and despondant, I deposited $10 and swore to NEVER lose it!
- Had three separate swongs up to $60, only to get crushed back down to the $20's.
-Figured out that I'm much better at SNG's (or maybe the in-game variance is LOT less stressful, idk), have crushed the 0.25c tourneys, playing well at the $1 tourney's, BR at $82 and rising.

Post more soon raze, your story is inspiring dude!

I first got interested in poker when I learned that it was really the only gambling game where you can have an edge and win and possibly make a living. This was around January of 2008. I was bored with my job and desired an income playing poker. So I started reading books. My first book was Poker for Dummies which taught the bare bones basics of poker and texas holdem. In that book they referenced twoplustwo.com and then I came to this site and the clouds lifted and the birds sang and I learned a ton about poker that I couldn't learn from any book. I remember being a stone cold newbie asking what OOP meant and what a float was and then gradually becoming more expert in the lovely game that is poker.

After reading and reading and reading and not playing at all, I decided to click on a link to a pokersite that was linked off of twoplustwo and this brought me to pokerstars.com. I downloaded the software and deposited 10 dollars and played 2NL until I lost my money. Then I read more and learned more and deposited 30 bucks and played until I had about 60 and then I deposited about 70 more and moved up to 5NL because I didn't think I could stand the grind at 2NL. I played 5NL for a couple months and built my roll up to around 300 dollars then I started grinding 10NL. I ran hot and blasted through 10NL in about 2 weeks and got to 25NL and ran hot for the first 2 weeks there too and ran the money up to around 950. Then I hit a 20 BI downswing and lost about 500 which was pretty devastating. My AA and KK and AK just kept getting crushed over and over. It was very sickening. I learned that poker can be a capricious beast that you will never really tame but can only ride out and wait for the long haul to take effect so you can see the results of all your hard work.

Then around late 2008 I moved back down to 10NL because of bankroll issues and ran bad for about 10k hands and my roll dipped to around 300. Then I hit another heater and shot back up to 500. Around this time FTP gave me 50 bucks to play with so I started grinding 10NL there too. I also played 50NL HU a little bit and did well at that making about 110 dollars in one day which was pretty big for me. So I've been grinding 10NL since the end of 08 and my roll is now back up to 830 bucks because I've been running better and I'm taking shots at 25NL. Unfortunately I'm running bad almost every time I take a shot at 25NL. I'm thinking that I might just try to skip 25NL and go straight to 50NL. Spenda from grinderschool.com did this same thing cuz he didn't run good at 25NL either. I don't know though.

Throughout my time grinding I've been doing session reviews and posting hands and reading strategy articles. Just trying to improve in every way I can.

Some of my major learnings:
-Changing from running 23/5 to about 20/15 and then to between 25/21 and 32/30 because I started raising everything first in. I started raising all PPs and suited connectors. This was due to Lego setting me straight when I posted that I would only limp small PPs and suited connectors and I WOULDN"T CALL A RAISE WITH THEM EITHER because I thought I was being priced out of a call. How wrong I was!! Thanks Lego.
-Learning to fastplay strong hands on wet boards
-Learning what different board textures are good to cbet and which aren't (thanks Tubasteve from deucescracked)
-And I'm sure I learned a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember right now too.

haha sweet

I've got some better stuff coming up as I'm writing from back in 2005-06 solely from memory, and from the few notes I still have. This thread is like fine wine; she will only get better with age