[nation]

I started the hard way about a year ago. I had been playing recreationally for a long time but only started getting really serious about it this in January 2005. I had a few hundred in my roll and was playing $40 max live games in college. I ran it up to 2k playing that, and made that into 10k playing 1-2 nl with a little 2-5.

I moved out to vegas with about 20k, but spent way more than I should have in a new computer and TV, about 9k total. Add in living expenses and basically breaking even for the first couple months and I'm down to 8-9k. I'm actively looking for dealing jobs (I dealt for a long time in my hometown poker room) mainly to pay for bills and get benefits. I'm assuming not having bills on my head will help my play; I can also continue to play 2-5 nl instead of dropping to 1-2.

Hopefully, the rest of the year will be better and I can build my roll again like I did last year.