[KingOtter]

Hmm... my last year...

Last August I really had only played play money on Pacific. I played with it pretty seriously, and had built up the free $1000 they give you to like $14000, playing various games but mostly hold'em. I preferred the SnG's, and I played some 7-card. I was very nervous to start playing with real money, but I had heard that a co-worker played for real money. About October I deposited my first $50 at Pacific. I mostly played SnG's to start with, and played by the seat of my pants. After having quite a bit of success I started taking money out in order to buy books to find out what I should be doing. I read about limit (I had always avoided limit, I hated it) and started playing it. My first book was Ken Warren's book. I liked it well enough, but felt really stifled.

So I got Phil Hellmuth's book. That felt better... a little more aggressive, but I still felt a bit lost. Like the books just told me to do stuff and I had a hard time knowing why I was doing it. My bankroll was starting to dwindle a bit.

So I went back to the bookstore. And there I sat, with SSH in one hand and Brunson's Super System in the other. I didn't really like the idea of a 'system'. I just wanted to play poker, and Doyle's book really only seemed to have one chapter for what I was playing, so I chose SSH.

By Christmas I had moved from Pacific to Paradise to play .25/.50 on more than one table, and then I moved from Paradise to Party to play .5/1, since that's where everyone seemed to play. I immediately took a nose-dive at Party (I'm sure people still my remember my 'Party is destroying me' posts), and kept waffling and going back to Paradise where I could win. Finally I got tired of whining, cashed out of Paradise, moved it all over to Party to play .5/1.

I'm now about 20k into 1/2, and am eyeing 2/4. Financial pressures keep dwindling my bankroll, but I'm just glad I have the poker money to fall back on. I don't know what I would have done in the past 8 months without my poker earnings. I'd be seriously up a creek.

I'm also a lucky-if-I-hit-10k a month player.

KO