[Jdanz]

I started playing in high school with friends at home. I'd host games and order pizza and drinks for everyone, since most people thought of it as somethign to do, rather than bowling or movies or somethign nobody cared about losing 20 bucks. A couple of people consistently won at that game, but i don't think anyone but me won much (though i'm not sure looking back). we played quater ante .25-2 spread stud mostly, with other games mixed in, and almost none of them played correctly.

I realized immediately that with .25 ante's and 2 dollar betting that i'd be much better off waiting for good starting hands then trying to catch up. I was the only person who did this, and it was the only reason i was the big winner in the game.

After beating up this game for like a year or two, it sort of dried up and i moved to ultimate bet. Losts of variance, no real understanding of hold 'em left me depositing a couple times. This was spring semester of senior year of high school.

I'd always tutored or something for money but i'd never had a job that really let me save money as opposed to have money, but over the summer i started caddying at a really prestigious golf course, and over the summer saved about 3000 dollats. This money would for the most part fund my learning at poker.

I continued to struggle at ultimate bet for a long time and frustrated (considering that i so quickly figured out my home games, and thought of myself as really good at math) i bought some books. I think the first one's i bought were Lou Krieger's Hold 'em and More Hold 'Em or whatever they;'re called. That taught me preflop.

(aside I had previously been capping with Ato figuring that my hand was better then average and the games i was palying in had like 5 or 6 to a flop even for multiple bets, so i could convince myself through logic deduction that my hand was better then average, so each bet gained me money. A lot of really seemingly smart things in poker are counter intuitive and very smart people can dselude themesevles into thinking they're playing correctly (It really takes the advice and views of others to point out some very fundemental mistakes).

At this point we're at freshemen year of college, and i made friends with some kids on my floor and we'd play 5 dollar buy in tournaments just about every night, sometimes a couple a night for the whole first semester. I continued to struggle on ultimate bet, but i actually won my way through a serious of satelites into the stone cold nuts the ultimate bet $2000 buy in tourney (my bankroll couldn't have been more then 300 dollars). At this time i was still a losing player.

This entire episode was really odd, as i couldn't play in it as i was flying to Rome for my honor's program at school the day of the tournament. I evenutally made a deal with the little known Fossile_Man on 2+2 to play the tourney for me, for 20% of the prize. He lost, he says he got all in AA vs KK with him on the AA preflop, I'll believe him. Haven't talked to him since. Then he won the World Series. But that's really neither here nor there.

So i lost all my money again and was keeping track of my poker debt on my profile so my friends could laguh at me. At it's height it was around 1100 dollars i believe.

I moved to party during the winter break of that year and started to play winning poker after losing maybe another buy in or two. i switched games constantly eventually settling at the 50+5 SnGs. I eveneutally built my bankroll up to 4k and started taking shots at 10/20, i lost because i still sucked at poker, i had just figured out the pretty basic all in startegy of late stages of SnGs.

My roll went up and down from that point, but once the summer rolled around i decided that i was going to really concentrate on limit, as that was where i saw the largest profits where games were readily available.

In the spring i started with 1/2 having withdrawn a fair amount of my roll, and was playing 2/4 and 3/6 by the end of the summer. I now lived with my friends from last year and we were all playing poker online by this point, and even at 3/6 i was making what i felt was an absurd amount of money for someone my age, though my friend's concentrated on SnGs (IMO by far the easiest game to churn out a small profit at). I took shots at 5/10 and got beat up a lot around december 2004 or so, though eventually i started winning.

I bought myself a new computer in februrary, and lost all my old poker records, it has pretty much every hand i've played since then though. i played 5/10 more and took off. Moved to 10/20 and killed it, maybe played 40k hands at 5/10 but only like 8k hands at 10/20 before trying the then legendary 15/30, i continued to run hot and was up to a roll of about 17k when i withdrew like 2 grand (my first withdrawl since i started playing limit, and was really trying to move up in stakes).

I was the [censored] and was winning unbelievable amounts of money. Luckily reality set in by taking my 15/30 bankroll of 15k down to 4k by the end of that semester. I wasn't really good enough to beat the game yet combined with what i legitemently think was a horrible run of cards. it was with the stakes played my first 300BB+ downswing. (so far only).

I started again in the summer by moving back to 5/10 and crushed it. I worked really really hard on my game and moved to 10/20 and crushed it. At this time the 20/40 and 30/60 games opened up and the beautiful party 15 of old dissappeared.

I stayed at 10/20 6 max most of the summer taking occasional shots at the higher limits, but my rate was so good at 10/20 i was satisfied with grinding it out for awhile, especially considering my recent perspective altering downswing. I'd certainly lost any naivete i'd still had from my high school games that i could win without hard work.

Eventually party made the rake change for six max, at a time when my bankroll was doing really well, and had put in some winning hands at 10/20 so i decided [censored] it, i'll move up to the higher stakes full table games.

I haven't looked back, and am playing 30/60 as my main game, and sprinkling in good 50/100 and 100/200 tables when available.

i won't sugar coat anything, i was a losing player for my first year, and my bankroll management was never great. I was overconfident (and still am to a degree, i can count the handful of players i've met that aren't on one hand). But i worked really hard and kept challenging myself (by which i certainly mean moving up in stakes and getting knocked back down, every time it improved my play).

Poker wasn't particularly easy, but then again it's not particularly hard, work at it, think asbout the best way to play each hand, and you'll simply get better.

There were certainly eureka moments, and having 3 roomates/good friends that play certainly helped my understanding by letting me talk about things with other thoughtful intelligent card players. The books and forums helped too, but nothing beat figuring out the concept of way ahead/way behind, and later that at some of the higher games, when people are good at reacting to your raises sometimes it's better to let the super aggros bluff at you. I learned both those things from playing at limits i wasn't ready for, and where i got knocked down. I think however that it was certainly the right thing to do, as i didn't risk my bankroll, but just took shots, and it really improved my game even when i had to move back down in limits.

I am a wholehearted proponent of the bikecyclekick method of moving up, and as i've said in many posts improvement in skill> improvement in bankroll.

Poker is really really hard, unless you work hard. Then it's still hard, but it's almost a guarentee that you'll succeed. There are very few games where effort spent to readily and quickly related to money won.

You simply get out of it what you put into it, and almost everyone playing a lot of hands, or even making a lot of posts, is auto-piloting way to much to put anythign into it.
Think about things and analize situations, it's that simple, you'll win at poker.

I'm a smart guy that worked hard and still couldn't win for my first 7 months or so of online poker, made maybe 2-4k over the next year, and then 50k in the 10 months after that.

It's not rigged, it's not luck, it's not intelligence, and it's not just you.

It's a very difficult game, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.



EDIT: there is not a chance in the world i'm going through this [censored] storm to edit grammer/spelling.