The buck stops here!
My name is Bart (Barlin630 and I have been playing poker for almost 9 months now. It all started when I met my nephew Jeroen back in June 2012. He was watching a soccer game on a gamble site which included poker. He showed me a couple of moves and explained me the poker rules. We played a couple of hands and we won a few cents. I was caught by surprise and wanted to play by myself. I was completely unaware of the possibilities and made my first deposits at a number of sites. I deposited 50 dollars at Full Tilt and not much later that was gone because of black Friday. I had also made deposits at Pokerstars, Party Poker, Bwin and Everest. I had no clue whatsoever where to start. After some more in depth research I found the Poker School from Poker Stars and the site Poker Strategy very interesting and via Poker Strategy I got a 10 dollar bonus for free at Poker 770.
I believe the Poker Star poker school and the Poker Strategy website are absolutely fantastic and I saw almost every video available. I read a number of poker books (Dan Haringtons and Colin Moshman) to educate myself and I try always to play tight aggressive as taught by the trainers.
I must admit the I mostly play at Poker 770 the SNG tournaments because they have micro micro SNG and you can play a ST SNG for a dime. With the 10 bucks they provided me I managed not to bust for almost 5 months. But all that is left from the 10 dollar are 3 step-4 tickets and although these tickets are worth each $3.30 in the worse possible situation I can play only 3 games. I will finish this tickets in the best possible way to extract as much as possible value and then I will move on to Pokerstars .
So far so good. I am writing this because the last couple of weeks my results are deteriorating. Many hands I dominate pre-flop, flop and turn are beat by the one card I don't want to see on the river. I know it might be variance and I have seen so many stupid things on the table that I know that I should do better in the long run. I play for fun and the time invested is much more valuable than the money involved but if I am a losing player I must quit. If I cannot build a bankroll it will lose much of the fun for me. To see if I can build a bankroll I have setup the following plan:
With my bankroll of $67.80 at Pokerstars I will try to play 1000 25 cent 45 man SNG. Hopefully everything will work out fine and I can build a bankroll and move up the ladder. I will do everything possible to achieve that goal and do as much live training sessions as possible, read and re-read the most interesting books and even will meet with Cowboy for a training session to get some of my leaks fixed. As soon as my bankroll will hit the $120 I consider the mission a success. If however I will get broke I will say goodbye to all the nice people I have met here and move on to another hobby. I will play and win some or I will quit.
While I was writing this I played a few free roll tourneys and guess what. In the $30 tourney I was twice in the money and gained $9.90. In the $200 free roll tourney things went even better and I won $16 (number 4). So despite the above it is not over yet. I will stick to the plan but much more positive than a day ago.
I registered at Pokerstrategy but I joined the poker sites not via their links. So I can play my butt of but get no strategy points at all. I am not sure how to gain Pokerstrategy point other than writing on the blog for 3 days but if anyone has an suggestion (besides buying points or joining other poker rooms) I would be delighted to hear from you.
Barlin63
