Two Plus Two Newer Archives - How did you get where you current are?

I just copied and pasted from my "one year as an underage player thread". This was written at the end of June.

As of today, I have officially been playing internet poker for one year. I just graduated high school 4 days ago, and the last year has been very interesting balancing poker with my personal life and school.

I have had an interest with poker for a while, and since my academic performance was pretty solid during my junior year of high school, my parents decided to let me set up a Party Poker account last summer. There were a few ground rules, which were as follows.

1.) No playing more then 2 hours per day
2.) Only deposit $200 into the account, and if I lost it no future deposits could be made.
3.) I had to keep them updated on what stakes I was playing at all times

I was perfectly content with this arrangement, so I made my deposit. At this time, I had good poker instincts, but not enough knowledge about bankroll management and other crucial skills I would need to acquire.

At the beginning of my poker career, I bounced around a lot, playing SNG’s, a little bit of limit cash games, and some NL as well. In my first 3 days, I ran my $200 into $425. Somewhere along the line I started playing SNG’s exclusively. During a brutal run, my account balance dwindled down to $47.00 I then took 1st place in a $10 SNG, and this somehow gave the feeling that I was going to get past this run. For a while I was so emotionally drained that I told myself I would get my initial $200 and quit playing.

As the month of July wore on, my confidence grew, particularly after one all night session where I managed to grind out $180 playing $10 SNG’s. Anyway, by then end of the month had my account balance up to about $1300.

Unfortunately, at this point in time, my bankroll management skills were horrendous. For some reason, I convinced myself that it would be ok to play some $100 NL tables. After taking a couple of brutal beats, I was on major tilt playing above my head at $50 SNG’s etc… By the end of the night I had lost about $700, which was an ridiculous amount of money to me at that time. Anyway, at one point my account balance was back down to $400 when I vowed to be better with bankroll management and get myself out of this situation.

Over the next couple of months, I grinded it out at the $10 and $20 SNG’s and built my bankroll to about $2900 the beginning of October. Then, on a whim, I decided to play some $2-4 limit. I immediately realized that I had a knack for limit poker, and I immediately started crushing the game. I didn’t have poker tracker at the time, but I can tell you that I won about $4700 in October 4 tabling 2-4 for about 15 hours a week.

In November, I moved up to 3-6 and had some good success there, and although I took I week to move back down to $2-4, I still ended the month up $3700. I had a frustrating first week of December, and it ended up being my first break even week since I started playing limit. For some reason, I thought it would be a good time to move up to 5-10 6 max. It was pretty scary for the first two days, but I ran insanely well and ended December up something like $7800, which was about 2 years work at my job. I had been a service attendant at a nice restaurant for almost a year and a half, and while I had some good friends there, I decided that it was time for me to leave.

I continued to have success at 5-10, but in January I decided to give the 10-20 6 max a shot. I quickly had a 200 BB upswing followed by a 200 BB downswing. After the downswing, I realized I wasn’t emotionally ready to play for this much money and moved back down to 5-10. A month later I was giving the 15-30 full games on party a shot. I got off to a blazing start, winning something like $6,000 in my first week. I made this my new home, and made another $5500 in March, when I also finally set up a rakeback account and staring pulling in that extra income. I was a little disappointed with this result, as my winrate was significantly less then it had been at all the other stake levels I had been at. Anyway, April was a difficult month for me, I had some serious issues with my girlfriend with whom I had been together for almost a year and a half. We split, and I ended the month even not including my rakeback. At the beginning of May I was rejuvenated ready to have a huge month. I went on a tear playing everything from 10-20 6 max to $1000 NL tables and was up 7k by the 11th of the month. Unfortunately, a large chunk of this money came after having a few solid sessions at 30-60, and my downfall was inevitable. I dropped 8k in 24 hours, which is a sick amount of money to a 17 year old. I realized I couldn’t hand the swings, and I dropped back down again. I was running so bad and my play was rapidly deteriorating and I knew I needed to take a few steps back.

At the end of last month I moved back to the 5-10 6 max to rebuild my confidence. I’m up almost $5600 this month at the 5-10 game as I am writing this, and I’m back on top of my game. I’m going to stick it out at 5-10 for July and then give then 10-20 6 max a shot in August, I am confident about my prospects in that game given my results from May. After 1 year, my $200 in now somewhere around $ 38,000.

I have come a long way in the last year, both as a poker player and as a person. One thing I am particularly proud of is the fact that I have kept my life balanced despite poker. I have had more then enough time for my friends and for my on and off again girlfriend. I was able to keep a 3.4 GPA and I got my SATS up to a 1330. I also have matured as a result of poker, most poker players know how brutal the swings can be, and they make other things that used to bother me seem mundane. I will be attending Bentley college near Boston next year and would love to meet up with any 2+2ers in the area.

One thing excites me is how far I have come in the last year. I feel that if I continue to work on my game and focus on improving and playing my best at all times, I have a lot of potential. Poker has enhanced my life, and I hope it continues to do so.

Sometimes I still need to pinch myself to absorb what had happened to me in the last year, while I have worked hard to get where I am, it’s hard to always feel like I deserve the success I have had. It certainly makes me feel like I have more responsibility to do good just because of how fortunate I have been. So thanks for all the feedback, and hopefully year 2 will be even better than the first one.

Gabe