I started taking poker seriously about March of this year. I went overseas to where my cousin lives. He is also a poker player and is a very successful online player playing at FL $5/$10. He signed me up to Stars and gave me a $10 starting capital free. In a span of about 2 weeks i just played $1 SNG MTT/STT and built my BR to about $68. When I came back home I continued to play and I couldn't win anymore. My bankroll went back down to $40. My cousin emphasized that I don't touch cash games until I have $250. So I listened to him and just played $1 SNGs... nothing else. I graduated from high school in 07, but a friend of mine who was the year below had just recently dropped out. He was bored at home one day and randomly called me up for lunch. So we met at Subway and talked.
I then told him I just started playing on PokerStars and managed to turn $10 into $68 in 2 weeks. I told I started going on a losing streak as I returned home from overseas. He told me in 06 he also played on Stars and got his BR to $100 but then blew it for unknown reasons (this friend of mine has ADHD he just won't admit it so he gets bored easily and causes a lot of trouble - this is probably why he blew his BR). Anyway he came up with a scheme that I transfer him some money to get started and whatever we play we play we split all our winnings
For the next few months I did this and noticed I wasn’t getting anywhere and stopped. I noticed my game had dropped severely and was ignoring everything my cousin taught me which was to play TAA (tight and aggressive). I kept going broke and deposited about $20 every week for 2 months all because I let my ADHD friend get between me and my game. I eventually stopped hanging out with him in the tables for a while to try and resurrect my game. Note at this stage I was new to the game and didn't know about bankroll management or any other thing this site teaches. I just played or tried to play a TAA game like my cousin told me at $1 SNGs.
My cousin works for a site similar to this but called poker professor and told me to join get a $150 starting capital for Titan. I finally succumbed and signed up and got the $50 capital. Everything started out well and managed to build my BR to $130. Then after one bad beat to the other, I went broke due to poor BRM (which I didn't know at the time). While playing on Titan, an opponent told me about PS and referred me. I signed up and got my $50 capital on Full Tilt. I read the articles, most of which I already knew about due to professor, but i did learn some new things like BRM etc. I was doing really well on Full Tilt and unlocked the +$50 bonus pretty quickly and by playing NL $.10 I got my bankroll to $370. This was the best i have ever done on online poker and was starting to think maybe it is possible to win, whereas before I thought it was all rigged.
Subsequently, I realized I wasn't winning in NL $.10 anymore, one day I would make $10 and the next I would lose $10 hence getting nowhere. So I moved up to NL .25 which wasn't a bad idea considering I had $350+ and ended losing a fair bit of money. I then gave FL hold'em a go. After believing the myth that Limit hold’em has less money and less action, I would soon prove myself wrong. I realized the answer to my prayers and became addicted to FL hold’em. It was safer cause you couldn’t go all in, there was heaps more action because there are always good pot odds and as a result a lot more money than NL hold’em in my opinion. Because in NL you could sit there for hours on end and be card dead and not move, and then when you finally pick up AA everyone folds to your bet. With Limit this wasn’t the case.
I ended up moving straight to FL $1/$2 because the lower limits were too boring. Pots were too small in my opinion. So with bad BRM i played the $1/$2 level and my bankroll dropped from a comfortable $370 to $100. I then managed to play heads up and win it all back get back to $350. I then went back to 6max 1/2 and once again lost and went back down to $150. So as you would I did what i did last time because it seemed to work so i played heads up and this time the poker gods weren't so kind. I blew most of it and was down to $20. I was distraught. I told my family what happened - that I lost $US350 (which is about $AU600) and they told me I had a gambling problem. They are right i do, I have stolen to support my habit (in the earlier Stars days - remember the weekly $20 deposits) and I play to win back what I have lost.
There was some good news out of the end, since I generated so much rake I got a nice surprise on Friday night - $45 in rake back from PS, so my Full Tilt account is back to $65 which is comfortable. Moving on though, everyone told me to quit and just play socially with friends for fun in your weekly home game on Wednesday nights (which I pwn in btw). But I thought hmm wait a minute. Sure i could blame my losses on the sites being rigged, or just bad beat or suck out after the other. But there was one common element in all my ventures on each site. What made me lose was bad BRM. It’s simple, if you have good BRM you can withstand even the harshest of variance. I have four accounts a TAF/PS investment account with Party, a IAF/professor investment account with Titan, a PS account with Full Tilt and an indie account on Stars.
My news years resolution however is to make Stars my primary account because that’s where I started from and where my cousin plays. My goal is to play with him someday and make comfortable money in the FL tables. Although Stars has been cruel to me, I believe it was just bad BRM that caused it. So I have decided to make 2009 a clean slate and make my poker new years resolution a $200 deposit on Stars. With this $200, I not going to jump straight into the NL $.10, which I can, or the $3 SNGs, I am going to start at the micro stakes which is NL .2, FL $.2/$.4 and $1 SNGs. This way I will have a $150 margin from the recommended BRM model which is a BR of $50+ can move up to NL .5, FL $.10/$.20 and $3 SNGs. With this greater margin in my BRM, I really cannot see how I can go wrong. Sure I can go on tilt one day and blow it all again but this time i won't. Firstly, I am going to play less hours, and as PS says in the quiz, if I have a bad day, close the tables for a day instead of trying to win it back. I am going to try and grind it slowly but surely.
Sorry about writing this essay but I wanted to give you all a background of my career so it would make more sense to you and see what you all think. This is pretty much my online poker career in a nutshell and I am sure some players in this forum have had similar experiences as I have. Please comment and let me know if you agree or have a better solution as to depositing $200. Also feel free to share your experiences and how you have remedied them.
