Winter-Spring 2006 - Pros Aren't Supposed to Break Even ?!?

I was sitting in the cafe marveling at the softness of the 1/2 limit games, when I had a thought. I can beat these games! BADLY even. Didn't I switch to a soft site so I could move up faster? By the end of my first day on Party, I was the newest $3/6 six-max regular on Party Poker. I had PT and PAHUD running (purchased two months prior), I had FPHG set up to datamine, and I was building my database daily. Things were going well on the poker front, but I was slowly becoming aware of a big problem. I was living at home, and my moms wasn't too pleased about me spending 2-3 hours a day gambling on the family computer... can you believe it?? I pleaded my case but she wasn't having it. I weighed my options: A) stay at home, stop playing poker, finish my Chem course, get some bum job for minimum wage...

In mid-January with $7,000 between my bankroll and bank account, and six weeks' experience at my main game, I bought a computer and desk, picked up a bed, and moved into a spare room in a 3-bed apartment adjacent to our city's college campus. The parents problem had been solved, somewhat, but I had created another one: it turns out I wasn't as great a play as I thought I was! For the month of February, I made exactly $0 at the tables, and survived on the rakeback (about $1,000 a month... you won't hear me complaining). I wasn't in financial trouble, but I was stressed over the fact that my hot December run didn't sustain like I thought it would. I decided at this moment that having gone this far, and having moved out, there was absolutely no way I could quit and get a job, and certainly not move back to the parents. This meant taking my focus to another level. In raised or 3-bet pots against other TAGs, I would often be so lost that I would actually check-call all the way to showdown out of frustration, unless I had a sure winner. Those of you who play limit can sympathise. It is a game of very thin edges - thinner still if you consider that I was probably one of the weakest TAGs when it came to battling other regulars. I had poured most of my efforts into table selection ie. finding and destroying fish, and at this time it became clear to me that I would need to round out my game if I were to ever climb any higher.



20 hrs a week... I definitely put more hours than that into college parties alone


A hot start to March prompted me to step up to Party 5/10, where I did not manage to crack 1ptbb/100 over 50,000 or so hands. I had built my roll up to a comfortable $10,000 for the 5/10 games, but I didn't feel my game was progressing as fast as I would like. I always found if I stayed in the same place doing the same thing for too long, my focus and interest would go to **** and my results would follow. As the first half of 2006 ended, it was time for a change. I went back to researching sites, which is good to do every once in a while as sites change their ways and new deals rapidly become available, and I first discovered the opportunities of being a prop player. I know I resolved to stick to grinding in soft games, but how could I resist playing short-handed and earning 100% rakeback??

Keep going! ^^

Interesting stuff Raze, always enjoy your threads, especially the hand reading one.

My Story.

Started plying in home game with friends, lol donkaments. We were all terrible, started a play money account. After my brother deposited on Pacific i did to. I think at the time they ran a freeroll for 1st depositers that i think won it for me to finally put on money. luckboxed a FT a freeroll one night and was chuffed. Messed around not playing much really.

My brother took it all serious and started reading books which became the butt of our jokes at the home games, after hed lose a big hand to a donk play he'd be told, did you learn that in your books lol

He told me to join 2+2 and stop the donkaments and get on stars and grind the micros. Which i did from NL2, played for a while until i moved to everest for 2+2 book offer. Moved back to stars, grinded to NL25 and moved to FTP. Played at FTP and grinded to NL50. Ran really bad and tilted alot of my bankroll, played underrolled for a while and ran a few BI under EV which has killed my bankroll. Have CR membership through FTP. Am back grinding NL25 and hope to be at NL50 again soon.

Sucks to have lost so much money because i ran bad but i learnt a valuable lesson about BR management which i wont forget.

End of 2006 - Why Am I Playing This Stupid Game?

I had heard of a new site with 100% rakeback called World Poker Exchange, so I decided to give it a shot. The games were rocky as hell, reminiscent of the Absolute games, but 100% rakeback was a nice boost from the 25% I was earning at Party (I think I had just been cut off, actually). I was grinding out several hundred a week, maintaining a small winrate, while getting an education in very tough 5/10 games. I was getting into prop player deals. It seemed the industry standard was as follows: smaller sites were willing to pay me between 60-115% rakeback to play on their site, as long as I played only $2/4 limit or higher, I sat alone and started tables, and when my tables filled up, I simply had to start a new one, and I was allowed to remain at my full one. So essentially, I was paid about $1,000 a week in RB to play short-handed and learn heads-up poker, sweet deal! I worked this deal on the Cryptologic network for a few weeks, also taking prop deals on a couple other sites, and dipping into the decent games on iPoker as well.

The bankroll was healthy, still over the 10K mark, and accumulating winnings were nearing the mid-five figures, but I was again coming to a ceiling in terms of winrate. Keeping with my commitment to keep my hourly rate steadily increasing, I knew I needed to make another change. I took some shots at 10/20 (5/10 British Pounds on Crypto) across a couple sites, but I found the competition extremely difficult. Even more frustrating was the fact that I was having a lot of trouble finding ways to improve. Limit poker naturally limits anyone's potential edge. Playing in tough 10/20 games, I felt like I couldn't really grasp what my opponents were doing better than me. All I knew is that they were aggressive as hell. I couldn't get a good handle on their hand ranges, since players tend to open basically 95% of their range HU, and then Cbet 90% on the flop, and Cbet most turns too. It was frustrating and I felt like I was spinning my wheels, but I had to keep pushing up that hourly rate, so what else was I to do?

Over the course of 2006, I took a few half-hearted shots at no limit hold'em. I would read an article on basic strategy, and then I would go play 2-4 tables of NL25 for a day, and finish somewhere between break-even and down a couple stacks. Then I'd say, the hell with it, I've come this far in limit, I might as well keep pushing forward. Now, however, I'd hit a wall with limit. I was making a good weekly earn on my rakeback, but I wanted more. I needed my game to keep growing... that's why I left bonus-whoring, right? I hesitated at leaving behind the lucrative prop deal, but around Christmas 2006, after two years of limit poker, I carved $500 out of my hefty limit bankroll, and I isolated it on Party Poker to take a real run at NLHE cash games. NLHE seemed to be the place to be, according to the five and six-figure graphs I saw in the monthly BBV brag threads. Again, I thought to myself, if these guys can do it, there's nothing stopping me or anyone else from doing the same.

I started my NLHE education right away. In short order, I picked up a Stoxpoker membership, half a dozen basic NLHE books (Little Green Book, Sklansky's NLHETAP, Theory of Poker, Killer Poker NL), and found the SSNL Sticky, which held months worth of reading material. I started datamining, and finally returned to the NL25 tables on Party, the smallest game they offered at the time. I figured I would play short sessions of NLHE in between grinding out my massive rakeback on Cryptologic. I had no idea I had already played my last hand of limit poker for a good year to come...

thanks for the posts raze.... looking forward to the rest of the story

Even though each post is really long, i just have to keep reading, really interesting stuff Raze, keep it coming. Im especially looking forward to the change over to NL and grinding from the micros

In 2005, while still in the final year in university I would skip lectures and use school computers in the library to play SNG's during break. I deposited $100 and about a half year's time made about $3000. I also worked at Sears part time and hated the job merchandising Men's underwear.

After graduating 2006, I found a job in sales, and was making $50k/yr but was not satisfied with my endeavours. I quit my job after 2 years and moved on to my passion of working in a gym. After a year, I realized no matter where I went I hated the corporate world. Gym sales turned out to be even worse than other sales jobs in terms of ethics.

Last December 2008, I talked to one of my buddies that I would occasionally play cards with on wkds. We both had a passion for poker and we both would talk about it non-stop. We both hated our jobs and the corporate world so much that we decided on a whim to quit our jobs and try out this poker thing full time (I know it sounds like a bad plan, without any contingency planning involved).

In January 2009, at the age of 30, I moved back into my parents home (Being from a Chinese, the eldest son is supposed to live at home) took out a $7000 line of credit from the bank and have been grinding it for the past 2 months. I set a goal and I've deposited $300 on party and ran it up to $1250 on SNGs and $50NL. Then I donked it out completely the last 2 wks and now am at $830.

Even though, I'm 30 have no savings, had to borrow a line of credit from the bank, i'm determined to crack $100,000 in 15 months time from now. I've bought myself a whole collection of books from amazon.ca and trying to learn about the game as much as possible. Just to take a quote from Napoleon Hill "You can do it if you believe you can..."

Do I fear failure? I'm sure its in the back of my head from time to time, but this is something to prove to myself, that with the right attitude and hardwork, anything is achievable. Despite being broke, living at home again, i'm very happy with myself...

Yes please keep going raze. im keeping up with yours also. the others posted here are also interesting to me since im pretty new still.

seeing how others did it and how long it took really helps someone new.

Glad you like... and I haven't forgot I guess I haven't played an interesting hand in 3 months lol

Damn that's intense! With that kind of commitment, you'll make it to wherever you want to go.

cmoney, I agree- that is VERY intense. Your story is very interesting. I hope you meet those goals of yours.

Since you're running on a real "bankroll" be very, and I mean VERY careful to play with the correct mindset always. No donking off $, no tilting, just solid play.

Wishing you the best.

Gina

I'm actually quite inspired by everyone's story on this thread. Especially raze and GinaSD, thank you for the support. I admire both your determination and even though I am far from my goal, I am very open to learning.

Just to clarify something, poker is actually a huge passion of mine. Prior to poker, I was the biggest gaming nerd around (ie. Warcraft, counterstrike, Xbox360). Then I figured, if i love mastering games so much, I might as well get payed for it. That's where poker comes into the equation. To succeed at something you must love what you do.

Poker really is a way to become your own entrepreneur. It's very flexible and most of all very accomodating to fit in my workouts at the gym.

I appreciate the tips on bankroll management and emotional control. I've also bought alot of Tony Robbins, Donald Trump, and Napoleon Hill book's to keep myself focused on my goals and emotions.

Starting my career over at 30 has really made me realize the level of humility one must have ir order to succeed. I am trying to absorb as much knowledge as possible and most important of all, half of the people that succeed at poker are becoming younger. I've come to realize there are many people in their late teens or early to mid 20's with +$100,000 bankrolls. That is very impressive and I hope to emulate their success.

Now you might be thinking, "What's a grown a$$ man doing back at home and how do you explain it to your parents..." I'm not too proud to be dodgy with my parents and you need alot of support from a signifant other that will put up with your broke a$$.

I'm no great as a poker player, at least not yet, but I have to say I admire your introspection and think it'll probably help you a lot.

Here's my story, not very long but I've found everyone else's very interesting and I kinda feel like reliving my own. I'm interested to hear a lot more of everyone else, especially the regulars I see helping others such as RoSeeker for example.

My first experience of Poker was when I was 14 at a mates house, we were playing GTA up stairs, I brought my PS2 and TV over to his, put them next to his and he were at it for friggin' hours, 2 screens next to each other getting square eyes, it was amazing. Back to the story though, he went downstairs and didn't return for an hour or so, I went down and he was playing Poker with his Mum and Dad with loads of pennies n that, and they asked if I wanted to play. Obviously I explained I'd never played before and they explained the hand rankings, the higher the cards the better etc and just told me the raw basics. I was terrible and I stopped playing after half hour or so, I found it pretty boring but I was still kinda interested, although nothing happened after that for another 3 years (July '08).

I was on a different forum and there was a Poker thread, there were 2 or 3 people who were bragging (or just posting, whatever) about the money they were making, a few with $11k BR's and another with an $8k, I was like.....!!! So I asked the guy about it and he told me to download PokerStars and play on the PM tables, so I did. I didn't really know how to play so I thought myself at these tables, what hands beat what, how the table mechanics work and how it's structured. I was still 17 at this point and didn't have a lot of money myself, so I was happy enough with PlayMoney for now. I was sitting with 1k, then I'd take it to about 20k, then I'd lose it all, get some more, get it higher until eventually I was getting more and more, and obviously, I thought I was the dogs nuts sitting there with 50k play chips in my account, I couldn't believe it and felt I could be World Champion within a year, I was hooked. I brought a Poker game for my PC and went straight into Championship Mode on the hardest difficulty and won it, then I downloaded a game on my Phone, and beat the mode first time. I was unstoppable, I actually thought I was one of the up and coming stars, I didn't know anything about these forums or anything about the Poker scene, but I really wanted to explore.

I brought CardPlayer magazine (August '08) along with Poker for Dummies and Super/System. I read PFD cover to cover twice to get the basics down and felt good for it, I understood the game, the rules, very very very basic strategy and I felt like depositing, except I wasn't yet 18, I was 2 weeks away. So I waited, kept playing for PM, studying about past WSOP's, reading articles on Poker history and eventually the day came, I was 18. A guy I knew from these forums told me to join SkyPoker, he told me about the freerolls and how I don't even need to deposit, so it sounded good. I created spreadsheets for it, I was going to track everything I ever did, all my deposits, how much I entered sessions with, when I finished, everything. My first deposit was £5 on SkyPoker, and I lost it pretty quickly playing £0.02/£0.04 NL. I redeposited £15 and I ran it to about £25 and I was laughing, before losing it again. I did this a few times over the next few weeks, playing SnG's and Cash Games not really knowing what I was doing, except losing money. After depositing over £60 and losing it all, I decided enough was enough, I was going to have one last crack at it.

I deposited £15, placed a bet on Liverpool to end Chelsea's 100+ home record in the Premier League at about 4/15 or whatever it was, and they did. So I had about ~£50 in my account, I got complacent and ran it down to about £20. This is when another guy told me to deposit on Stars and play @ 2NL, which I did. I was exactly the same as before, I ran it to about $50, then lost it all. I made 2 pretty quick deposits of $15 and $20 and lost them, and thought "I'm not good enough, I quit." I still had about $10 in my account and I thought I'd leave it in there for a rainy day, just in case I wanted to return.

So that was it, by November I'd quit Poker, 3 months of playing an hour a day, ~$100 down the drain but it was fun. The money I left in there was vital though as I kept playing a little here and there, but it wasn't until February of this year that is all got serious, Feb 22nd to be precise. I'd made 2 more deposits in early Feb and lost it all again, and something clicked. If I work at this, I can beat it. I wouldn't give in. I hadn't read more than 10 pages of Super/System, the only book I had read was Poker for Dummies but I was convinced I could do it. Someone recommended me to come here and I did, I started reading and posting some hands (on an old account, it was embarrassing), but I felt I could start winning and making money.

On Feb 22nd after a week or so of reading and studying I said to myself right, this is my last every deposit. $20. If I lose this, I'll walk away from Poker and concentrate on whatever else I have going on in my life - **** all but there we go. So the adventure begun.

I was killing it. The first night i was up to about $60, I was on a sick heater. I quit SnG's by this point, I was only on cash games. At 2NL I was winning at about 17ptbb/100 over 10k hands which was more than respectable, I decided I wanted to move up but didn't really have the guts. I did about a week later and found the bet sizing a lot more daunting, no longer was it 10c as standard pf raise, it was 25c! I was a little anxious when going in for pots with SC's or small pairs, at this stage I didn't really understand set mining and many other strategies with cards which are useless pre-flop, but I wanted to learn more and more.

I settled at 5NL and was beating it for about the same as 2NL, but then I hit a downswing and lost quite a bit, this set me back. I didn't really understand variance at this point so I thought I became a loser overnight. I took a day or so off and came back and I was fine. I carried on winning, nothing major and at this point I found Pokey's posts and many other guides, I bookmarked them all (honestly I've got hundreds of links still to read), but I read the recommended ones and the ones I felt I was lacking in them specific areas.

Nothing major happened, I had to keep withdrawing though for various reasons, so $220 came out of my $300 BR and I was down to $80. Just before this though I took shots @ 10NL and did pretty well, I noticed a lot more 3betting and stuff, but I was 2tabling it so it had my entire attention, so I was confident I'd get it back fairly quickly, how wrong was I!

I hit my worse downswing in my short (very) career, I was down to $20 again. Everything was getting cracked, so I moved down to 2NL again, took it back to $40 and moved back to 5NL. Bad BRM. Once I hit $80, I decided to move to 10NL again, and I took that to $120 in a short space of time before a few coolers lost me 4BI's and I was back to $80. I decided to move down to 5NL until I hit $250 again. I know I can beat 10NL, but I felt much better at 2NL when I moved down from 5NL, and I knew I'd feel much better at 5NL after moving down to 10NL, and I did. It was so easy, it was like 2NL again, so I'm grinding this again just to get BRM back on track, I feel like I'm neglecting one of the most important things in Poker, so even though I can probably grind that up to $250 quicker at 10NL, I want to learn a lot more before I move up, I still have lots to read. I have about 500MB of eBooks on my PC and I've never read a single on, Poker for Dummies remains the only Poker book I've read, I'm ashamed to say.

So here I am today, a winning 10NL player (only over 4k hands or whatever, 9ptbb/100 w/downswing), grinding 5NL because of my stupid withdrawals, biggest mistake so far in my career. I hear a lot of people say that but it's true, it's a real setback and something I guess you can't vouch for until you do it yourself. One thing which does annoy me though is when I play anywhere else except my house, I'm a loser. I don't know if it's just my concentration or what, but when I look after my niece on weekends, I play while she sleeps and I just can't play properly, I can't concentrate like I can at my house so I've stopped playing at weekends, I just don't have the attention span but I'm dying to play. In a way it's kinda cool because I spend that time watching videos and reading 2+2, so the weekends is basically my study time, which I guess is forced upon me in a good way, it'll definitely help me in the future.

Hope that wasn't too long, got a little tired at the end so rushed through it then, but it was good looking back at it and sharing it with you guys. I definitely want to play Poker professional one day, I'll definitely use it as a fund to go back to college aswell for something to fall back on/enjoy my youth, but it's a nice earner and I love playing, I know there's money to be made. I currently play 15/13 which I'm going to have to look at, it's pretty nitty so I'm going to have to open my range up a lot, and I admit there's a hell of a lot of work to be done, but reading all these stories and threads made from everyone inspires and teaches me everyday to get better, one day I hope to be in a position to help the people like I was when I first started out.

Phew that was long..!

By the way, I don't know anyone who plays Poker in real life (cba to teach my mates who think it's boring), so if anyone's got MSN and is interested in talking strategy 'n just general poker, and is at a similar level to me (5NL-10NL), PM me and we'll exchange MSN's, I feel like I'm missing out a wealth of knowledge by not actually discussing my game with someone else.

(Good luck, cmoney, PM me if you're interested mate).

Bump

Gonna grind a 4 hour sesh before the gym, taking a break in the middle to start my NLHE tale, so stay tuned

Just a note to say I'm enjoying the story Raze, it's nice to get a little background on some of the peeps that I've seen around here for a couple years. Looking forward to the rest of your story and how things worked out with your parents. Hopefully good. *crosses fingers*

I won't bore you with the details of my sloooooow grind since I play very casually and am in no rush. I will say that thanks to reading and study mainly on 2p2, I've made only one initial $50 deposit and have multiplied it to work my way up.

Cmoney, gl to you in your endeaver.

To the others, they are inspiring as well, especially CTB, you do run goot!! A+++

Christmas 2006 - $25NL

Back to the beginning. This time, it was 20 stacks for $0.10/0.25 NLHE, rather than 25bb's for $0.10/$0.20 LHE (it's funny to think that if I had been unlucky, and busted out my original five bucks, I might have never even deposited cash to take another shot, or at least it would have taken me a long time to take that plunge). I opened two tables of 6max and got started. With my two years of short-handed limit experience, I probably was able to adapt to the game quicker than most NL newbies, and since I used to bet $20 at a time playing 10/20, I wasn't scared money at 25NL which was another huge advantage for me.

I kept reading everything I could get my hands on. I read every single 'The Well' thread in the SSNL sticky, some multiple times. I read every strategy article there, and I watched every single SSNL and MSNL video by Stoxtrader on his site (there were just a couple dozen at the time). I'll re-type here a page of notes I took while watching one of these vids:

December 29th, 2006
NL100 6max

- Always open 4x + 1 per limper

- Muck UTG KJo, ATo

- Open raise: any pair, suited-connectors, most suited-Aces

- BB squeeze 4 limpers 9x

- CC a min-raise with KTs

- Deep stack in position... can 3bet S/C's

- Raise 2 limpers KQo

- Squeeze less OOP especially with dominated hands like AT

- UTG open QJs J9s

- A7s... sometimes isolate, sometimes over-limp

- DO NOT semi-bluff OESD 4-ways

- Squeeze less against shortstacks

- Drawy board = slightly bigger Cbets


It was all coming together with massive amounts of reading and learning, and focusing on the game flow at the tables. There was issues of releasing old LHE tactics that simply did not work in NLHE... min-raising being of course the most important. I came up with a little theory about the difference in the games: LHE was two-dimensional, and NLHE was three-dimensional. In LHE, the pot always grew by linear amounts... bet 2, raise 4, raise 6, etc. But in NLHE, the pot tended to grow exponentially. Bet pot on flop, 2/3 pot on turn, 1/2 pot on river. It seemed bet sizing was a major key to the game... a concept that I think is HUGELY underrated not just by beginners, understandably, but by players at all levels, but more on this concept in a future post. At NL25, all I wanted to do was absorb as many concepts and strategies as I could, as fast as possible, and process them into my game. My winrate started small, and slowly grew until I nearly doubled my NL bankroll within the first few weeks.

As I approached 20 buy-ins for NL50, I cashed out $500 from my idle limit bankroll as a reward. I aksi took a peek at the NL tables for the first time, on my very first poker room, Tiger Gaming. I shouldn't have been surprised to see that they played exactly like my micro LHE games used to... 5-8 limpers to a pot! I decided to split my growing bankroll in half, leaving $500 on Party and $400ish on Tiger. I jumped into the NL25 games on Tiger and found them a good deal softer than the Party games. In short order, I was feeling comfortable in my basic strategy, my total bankroll had exceeded $1000, and it was time to take a stab at the next level...

in before raze moves down to 1/2 to start 3 betting me !! :P

ps nice post!

Three Years in Poker
tl;dr

What an amazing read, honestly the most inspiration thing I've read about Poker, some of the swings you took though were unreal, though especially your first one at LHE.

Nh sir.

Thanks!

Great story Kurt, and im thinking this post by Raze is different gravy too. Keep it coming bro. It honestly makes me think about the lack of effort, planning and study i put into my own game. Really wishing the toys didnt come outta the pram last summer when i put all my good books on ebay :/

Yayyy. I really like reading this kinda stuff. It's both educational and entertaining. I hope Raze's next edition will be out soon.

Kurtsf that was an amazing read. Somehow while reading that very long and articulated post that you were going to end off as being a winning pro. I admire your humility and honesty in the post. I learned so much and didn't realize the amount of swings that a true grinder goes through. I have gained an incredible amount of perspective from your experience.

I would like to share one of my favourite quotes with you..."You are fortunate if you have learned the difference between temporary defeat and failure; More fortunate still, if you have learned the truth that the very seed of success is dormant in every defeat that you experience." Napoleon Hill

I also agree, I will never return to the rat race. I hated every minute of it, I hated having to brown nose my A-hole of a manager that is a complete pompous fool. I am so much more content with myself being absolutely broke and poor, than I was working full time and having a corporation steal my soul.

Your wife sounds like an amazing person, you are very lucky to have such amazing support.