Originally Posted by Jdwarriors5
I have found a deep love for the game of poker. I started about 2 years ago with only $20 in my account, playing $2 HU sit n go's. I started out playing occasionally just for fun, whenever I was bored or something. I started out about break even, but found that my main drive for continuing to play was my naturally competitive nature.
I have always been an avid athlete, and I find striking similarities on the poker table and out on the basketball court. That same desire to win, more for the fact of beating ur opponent than making money (which is obviously more of the mindset of an occasional player than a pro) caused me to go nuts whenever I lost (I have a few holes in my wall to prove it). This intensity and competition that I was able to discover on the computer screen through poker when it was too dark to go outside and play basketball caused me to keep playing and working on my game.
After a slight upswing in the sng's, I went through a terrible downswing of almost $100 playing $2 and $5 HU. It was a combination of horrible money management and tilt. At this point, it was my competitive nature once again that propelled my poker career to the next level. The simple fact that I wasn't particularly good at the game caused me to start studying the game, reading magazines, watching pro's, and thinking of the game from a new perspective. In my particular case, poker has never been a matter of money, but always a challenge that I have felt obligated to conquer. So, thanks to the help of one of my good friends (who happens to be a pro himself) as well as my new studies, I began to excel at my level. I began to see literally a straight line form on my sharkscope graph, and began slightly moving up limits for sng's as well as trying new games.
My next biggest obstacle came from my futile transition to cash games. I wrongly figured that since I was a major winner at small stakes HU sng's, I would be able to handle the .25/.5 HU NL games. Boy was I wrong! Right before my eyes I witnessed my account shrink from about $700 to a mere $200. During this time, I had a horrible mindset. I kept telling myself that since I started with only $20, everything was a gain. So, heeding to the advice of my friend, I moved back down to lower limits and sng's. After about a year of grinding my bankroll back up and truly studying the game, I moved back to cash games, and my shot has worked. I am now a regular .25/.5 PL HU player and I have witnessed my bankroll burgeon up to $1,300 without ever depositing money from when I started with only $20. It has been a long and trying road thus far, but what I've learned from the game is indispensable. I know that I could've made much more money in the same amount of hours from a regular job, but I wouldn't trade my poker experience so far for anything in the world.
Overall, the game of poker has taught me many things. It has fueled my natural competitive drive, taught me about positive money management, taught me how to control my emotions and prevent tilt (on and off the table), taught me how to read opponents, and ultimately stimulated my mind in ways I've never known before. I find it crazy when people declare that poker is not a sport, because coming from a man who has played both traditional sports and the game of poker, I find the exact same emotions, mindset, and perspective in both. Just because you don't physically move when you play poker is not enough to classify it as a non-sport. No matter what happens down the road, poker will always stay a constant in my life. And as a result, I can undoubtedly state that poker is GOOD FOR YOU!!!