Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartan1983
Well give us the usual. Outline your poker progression to where u are now.
This might be pretty boring (I warned you) since most of these stories are identical, as in:
1) Chris Moneymaker WSOP 2003
2) Make a desposit at partypokah
3) Hey you can make money doing this!
4) ZOMG move up!
4) ????????????
5) Profit!
Anyway, here's the longer version (I'm not a great writer and I'll be trying to rush through this, so I may write sloppily at times):
ESPN showing reruns of the 2003 WSOP is what got me hooked. In 2004 I started playing $5 cash games with some of my friends in college. I was obv terrible, but so was everyone else, so I did alright. A few weeks later we moved up the stakes to $10, and started playing with more people. I remember my first "big win" at poker. I was a calling station back then, but that night I hit every gutshot, every nut flush draw, and to top it off they kept having the second nut flush with me, so I ended up winning about $140 that night, which was a pretty big deal to me at the time. After that I played almost every day, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. Everyone was so horrible back then that it was just a fun luckfest. For the rest of the year I didn't go to classes very often as I was addicted to poker. I ended up failing some classes due to this, and this was pretty much the low point of my life.
My online poker career began in the summer of 2005 when I made my first deposit at partypoker. I started off playing the $5+1 SnG (lol at 20% rake, but I had no idea back then). I was basically playing for fun, and trying to learn, but I hated losing and had major tilt issues. I also gave 25NL a shot (this was the smallest game on partypoker). I won 3 BI my first session and was like "haha this is so easy I can be a pro" but then reality hit me hard, lol. Due to my tilt issues I made the decision to play SnG's if I was going to play seriously, as tilt does less damage when all you can lose is one buy-in. Around this time I found 2p2 but posted very sporadically. I was single-tabling the $10+1's and doing pretty well. I also bonus-whored at a number of small sites around this time (around 10 of them) but never played a lot on any single site. After a few months I had managed to win a few hundred dollars, so I bought a new computer with some of the money I had previously saved up, with a 20-inch Dell monitor for 4-tabling (yeah everyone has a 24" or 30" these days but back then a Dell 2001 was the nuts). Immediately after buying it I ran very hot for a while (like 50% ROI) and thought for a second time that "playing pro" would be cake, but another downswing killed my hopes. I took a long time off from poker after that, just being sick of poker in general.
In August of 2006, after taking several months off, I decided to give NL cash another shot (best decision of my poker career obv). I bought poker tracker and started 4-tabling 50NL FR. My stats were around 21/10 (lol loose passive pf, nitty postflop). Games were so soft those days that this was a winning strategy. After about a month I moved to 6-max, seeking more action. I crushed 50NL 6-max pretty hard for a month, and started taking shots at 100NL 6-max. My volume was tiny those days (I was 4-tabling and not playing longer than 2 hours at a time). Most of my sessions went well, although that's because I was quitting after winning like $200. Back then losing 4 buy-ins was big to me lol. My stats for 6-max were approximately 27/15 at the time (still fairly loose passive) but there were so many complete fish that I did well trying to see a lot of flops and betting my big hands hard. I did well at 100NL, and began taking shots at 200NL 6-max with about a 6K roll. I did well my first session, but after a few sessions I hit a huge downswing, as my passive play was getting eaten alive by the more aggressive 2p2 TAGs who were better than me. I adjusted my play a lot, starting folding marginal hands from the blinds vs good players, and my results improved somewhat. Due to running bad/break-even for another month I had gotten sick of poker once again and took another couple of months off.
Fast forward to May 2007. I was getting sick of 6-max variance and decided to give FR another shot. I started 9-tabling around this time, and played mostly 100NL FR. Due to having previous 6-max experience, I found FR really easy (most of the players were very weak and predictable), but also boring at times. I crushed 100NL for around 5.5ptbb for 45K-ish hands, and took my first shots at 200NL in July. Not surprisingly I got off to a rough start (a combination of more aggressive players and me over-adjusting). I played a mix of 100NL and 200NL in August and September, winning around 3ptbb but after another break-even stretch I had gotten sick of poker yet again and took 3 weeks off. Around this time I realized I still had many holes to fix in my game. I continued reading the forum a lot, despite not playing.
By the time I had returned again (October 2007) I had made many adjustments to my game. I started double barreling more, 3-betting more preflop, etc... For the next month and a half I crushed 200NL for over 6ptbb and began taking shots at $2/4 and $3/6 with a $15K roll. I did fairly well at first but then hit a $4K downswing in december (my biggest at the time). This prompted another break, but since 2008 I've been playing a mix of $2/4, $3/6, and occasionally $5/10. I'm a pretty big nit on not playing on bad tables, so if the mid stakes tables are really crappy I'll play $1/2 as well. Also sometimes I just want to get a short session in before doing something else I had scheduled, so I just grind 200NL for an hour if I don't want to worry about variance. I've done quite well this year in terms of winrate, but I don't play nearly as many hands as the true grinders of this forum (I only average about 30K hands a month). Currently I'm 21 (turn 22 in a few weeks), out of school, and poker is my only source of income.
Phew, that turned out longer than I expected. Hopefully I didn't bore you guys to death (you were warned though).
