The dream being starting at the micros and grinding up to the I don’t work anymore I play poker for a living stakes?

Not referring to anyone that may of started in small stakes like $1/$2. I mean literally 0.01/0.02 up to 0.05/0.10.

In hindsight this may if belonged in BBV. I’m on Tapatalk and can’t delete it and repost in there. If any mod agrees please move for me.

Not sure why you would exclude people because they started above the smallest stakes as a new player?

There are hundreds of accounts on 2+2 from players who started out with $50 or even free rolls and managed to make a lot of money from that. The vast majority of them don’t post here anymore and most quit playing poker seriously a long time ago.

Reason why I left off small stakes was because if you can afford a to proper bankroll starting at 200nl, while you still did grind your way up, you weren't coming from the bottom so to speak. You could afford to deposit several thousands of dollars. To do that you needed to be in a good financial position to begin with.

Sorry my title doesn't show that intent.

I am talking about the college students working part time, or guys (ladies as well) stuck in dead end jobs that grinded up part time then quit their jobs eventually.

I am sure there are several, probably 100s on 2+2. Just would like to hear others stories and it's pretty hard to use the search function to get the desired results without filtering through 100s of threads (tried it).

The REAL reason I am asking is I am in that situation. I hate my current job and love playing poker. I am a commissioned based sales person in an industry that is trending downward and is in a downswing in sales at the moment. I built a $100 bankroll in to over $6000 last year on a sick micro MTT run and had to withdraw the money for bills in the winter time which sucked so bad. I wish I could of moved up in stakes and kept rolling.

Starting my roll all over at the lowest stakes and looking for inspiration I guess.

i started at the smallest stakes now i play up to 400NL as well as like 60PLO
i consistently grind out between 1-2k per month playing 3-5 hours per day and studying maybe another 2-3.
when you think about it, its almost a full time job, still puts me arguably around poverty line, and everytime i lose a pot in 400NL i want to hang myself
more like living the nightmare

Yeah. I don't think I will ever quit working. I like it in some aspects but I guess the end game goal is to be working less (work 60 hours a week) making someone else rich. I'd like to find a job I actually like doing while having benefits and paying in to social security JIC I need it one day and not worry about the pay while making poker a second job I can build my retirement bankroll with while using some of it for life as a supplement to the job or vice versa.

This is not an accurate statement. Just as there are some who went from a series of freeroll events or from a $50 buy-in, so to will there have been several who never put more than a few hundred into an online account.

You forget that not everyone who plays poker subscribes to any theory of 'bankroll management' that mandates ten or twenty buy-ins be sitting in reserve...

The environment fifteen years ago was VERY different from what it is today.

I'd suggest you try searching for threads in PGC with single words like zero or nothing in the title and you might find some good stories.

I tried it and found immediately https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...hlight=nothing for example. The OP says, "... I am literally starting from nothing. I currently have no bankroll and no computer. ...", so he might be the kind of guy's story you want to read.

Oh. Wait. His penultimate post says, "... As of right now the bankroll sits at $38.88. ..."

But I'm sure you will find some better success stories if you browse, particularly, the longer threads you find.

Cool. Everyone I was finding was "Micros to millions" types and they are about 7 posts long at most. lol

I deposited $50 and started playing NL25 with that. Not sure why that would disqualify me, but OK. What should disqualify me and most others: I started playing poker >10 years ago when it was easy to win money.

More importantly, why would you look for people who started in college? Those people, including me, had the absurd advantage of not being trapped in a ****ty paying day job without safety net. There are obviously others, but among the many successful poker friends I made over the years, almost everyone came from a solid financial background. Not trust fund kids, but being able to play without any fear of ending up homeless if that poker journey ended unsuccessful. Among the most important factors to move up in stakes, besides the obvious stuff like talent and work ethic is “no bills to pay”.

Yeah that is correct. I know Ilsidur1 came in on a borrowed $2,000 (may of been after 1st busto) then played what would be horrible BRM but made a successful run. I deposited $50 in to ACR initially and 1st a micro MTT and got my free $50 after a few weeks and had winners tilt with my <$500 and went to $1/$2. Just recently redeposited $60 so that didn't work out.

Every time I play out of my bankroll and take a bigger shot than I should I am guaranteed running in to some kind of cooler. Top 2 AJ vs set of J's. Flop Q w/QQ and board runs out AA vs AQ. It is insane. I won't not do BR management now.

Wasn’t trying to belittle anyone’s experience. It seems like everyone I’ve ever talked to or read about didn’t do “proper”BR management until they made their poker roll their life roll as well. But they all got it going during the poker boom or won a big tourney or something along them lines.

I played back then as well and started out as a fish playing my lucky hands and eventually learned ABC right aggressive poker and remember how bad the players were.

For the last few years the average reg is so much better. So following that philosophy of I’m good but not so good I can run over my competition so I got a bankroll and managed it and moved up in stakes and I was there now I’m here is more along the lines of what I was thinking.

I guess the college student or person with the ****ty job was a bad reference. Could also be some guy who has money but still climbed up from the micros.

Poker has kind of realised my dream of not having to do **** all for almost 10 years now, but that was more from a couple of lucky tournament cashes than from grinding out an $10 deposit.
I'm at the point where my poker winnings have bought me a mortgage free house and I only need to make about 3k a year to cover all my base expenses.
The other side of the coin is that my funds for fun things are running a bit low, so I'm starting to get back into poker again.
This time I have to go at it a bit more seriously though because the chance of a lucky run in tournaments and some godlike running in highstakes cashgames is pretty slim :P.

I make this much playing $30 husngs and coaching, and have been traveling around Asia playing mainly online for the past couple years. Last year I made something like $20k? Not really getting ahead, but enough to live comfortably in most of the places I visited (Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia...not so much in Japan ).

I also only put in about 20 hours a week including study time, pretty lazy.

Started from the bottom many years ago, biggest mtt score ever is maybe $2k so it's not like I had a lifechanging milli ship or sth. It's doable, and while life is stable and traveling is interesting, it's a grind repeatedly relocating and I live a basically comfortable life but nothing glamorous.

How long has it taken you to get to this point? and do you still like playing/studying?

That's awesome. I read a lot of Blackrain79's stuff and he made the move to Thailand because it was the perfect combo of low cost of living and nice.

If I was single I'd make a move like that in a second. Maybe I will get lucky and my girl will decide to leave me one day.

Over 10+ years ago, you'd find a lot more micro to money stories. Today's games it's much more of a grind. I deposited $50 only once playing limit holdem 15 years ago, and never re-deposited. Moved to no-limit, some PLO, made hundreds of thousands in cash games, and some money in tournaments. For a while it was enough to quit my 6 figure corporate job. I knew it wouldn't last though and even when I was crushing I started a business knowing I'd need to diversify.

Sure enough Black Friday hit, and the poker landscape completely changed. Fish/ rec players aren't as enthusiastic to deposit on sites when it's a pain in the ass to do so. Many countries started cracking down on online poker. Nearly over night the easy games became more rare. Solvers started coming into play, better poker training sites, and AI was good enough to beat micro and most small stakes games. People want to blame HUDs for how the games got tougher, but it's just absurd. HUDs literally have nothing to do with it. They were there before black friday, and the games were juicy.

Having said that, the games are still beatable, but you just have to have a lot of discipline and put a lot of hours in. Table selection is really important. A lot of players I know are lazy in those areas and it costs them.

I only play part time now and for vacation money basically. I also don't have the same passion I did for the game 10+ years ago. Once you beat it for awhile at some of the highest stakes, it losses it's luster a bit. I keep it fun by just playing knowing it's just fun money, not to pay bills.

As others have said, it's harder to grind it up today than it was several years ago.

The last guy I know that went from posting in BQ to having his hands in the NVG high stakes thread was doctor877. If I remember correctly, he went from 25NL to 2000NL+ (against the likes of Jungleman and RedBaron) in about 18 months.

His PG&C is closed now, but it ran from late 2015 when he was shotting 100NLz, and featured some huge downsw0ngs as well as upswings: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...takes-1565880/

FWIW, that thread features some comments from a certain Deeepz, who'd made a similar thread previously when he was struggling at 10NL. He's better known as LLinusLlove, arguably the greatest player of all time. https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...-6max-1385616/

it took me about -5k and two years of cumulative "treat it like a job" play and study. there was a 5 yr gap where i quit.
looking back, the 80/20 rule seems at work (20% of the things you do lead to 80% of your success)

i love studying and playing when im running well, on breakeven/losing stretches its hard to describe how close to quitting ive gotten.

you and me both bro, sounds like duncelanas is living the dream. maybe the 3 of us should get a flat somewhere, we can grind all day then at night just chill n watch netflix together. ive heard good things about malta, duncelas u in?

I never say no to chill and Netflix

Plenty of people accomplished it 10-15 years ago when poker was actually easy to beat. But I'm not sure why you're asking about that era, because that's the past and online poker is never going to be that easy again. Your question should be phrased as "has anyone achieved the online poker dream in the last 2-3 years?". The answer to that would be "probably no one".

What's stopping you from leaving your "girl" and moving to Thailand to grind poker?

1. I wasn't asking about that era. I was asking about any era from anyone that is active on the forum and can see the question. Confused on why that was assumed.

2. I got a keeper. If I have to grow old with someone I'd be smart to do it with her even if I can't go to Thailand and grind poker. Trust me I been through more than enough to know that.

Obviously, it has become much harder to achieve the dream but you also have less very smart people looking to pursue the dream. Back in the day, the likes of Haxton was studying computer science at Brown University. It is safe to say he was a smart kid. He gets introduced to poker and with a minimal amount of work can see very quickly the lucrative opportunity that's available and the risk/reward to pursuing that dream is worth it. These kind of people getting into poker were ten a penny.

Someone getting introduced to the game these days has to work much harder to beat a decent stake online. Couple that with the fact the games are getting harder all the time. Legislation problems. Software is likely to kill them in the coming years. The opportunity to pursue poker just isn't nearly as appealing to smart people with other options.