[baronzeus]

It was almost 6 months ago to the day.

My friend (who lurks and goes by ncray on the boards) told me about a promotion called "Instant Bankroll." They were basically handing out $75 to everyone who signed up under their affiliate name. I hadn't really played much poker before that time; a few games between my High school friends and me was really my only experience. There was also some promotion Pacific Poker had the year before where I got a set of free poker chips by playing 500 hands at .02/.04. I even took a shot at .25/.50 during those sessions and made something like $8.

So I went ahead and signed up for Instant Bankroll. Can't be too much of a hassle, right? Within 4 days I had $75 deposited and my account and I was playing.

Over the first 3 days I lost $30 of my initial $75 at .5/1. I couldn't understand why. The players were so bad! How could I be losing money [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]. I honestly had no winning sessions over the first week of my play and was ready to call it quits.

Then came the Party Poker new player free roll. I hadn't really played in any tournaments of the scale before and I just sat down to play one day when i was really pumped. The tournament was like watching paint dry. My strategy was basically to wait for good hands and trap my opponents. And they kept coming over and over! I steadily built up my chips and after 3 more hours of boredom I was at the final table.

Once I got to the final table I realized I had no clue what I was doing. After several hands of getting "sucked out" by flushes I busted out in 7th. It was still a big victory for me though not only because it gave me some confidence but also because it added to my roll --$150 in prize money!!

After the tournament and a $25 bonus from party, my roll had reached nearly $200. I "borrowed" my friend's copy of Small Stakes Hold'em and after flipping through it for a few minutes decided it wasn't worth my time and threw it on my floor. My goal was just to grind each limit until I had the roll to play the higher limits, and I was going to get better by playing rather than reading some stupid book.

After winning that tournament I started running hot. Of course, I had no idea that I was running hot -- I thought I was just really good at poker. My roll reached 300. I withdrew 200 and deposited 100 on some prima for some bonus. My roll reached $400. Then I moved up to 1/2.

This was the middle of may. Around the same time another friend of mine (goes by AK13 on the forums) introduced me to two plus two and I started posting. At first i thought it was stupid to post here but then I got more and more interested.

The "middle of the story" is more of me grinding and bonus whoring. I did some of that, moved to 2/4, did a lot more of that and suddenly found myself with a 2K roll or so. It was pretty sweet. I made $2000 playing poker! I rule! Along the way I made some retarded posts on 2+2 and got destroyed. by the members here (namely Joker122 [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img])

It was now the middle of june and I had been playing poker for 3 months. My roll was sitting at 2500 and 2/4 was becoming stupid for me. But people kept telling me that 3/6 sucked and so I started playing 6max on party. TO learn, I played 1/2 for a while, but I was way too retardedly aggrssive lost 200 quickly. I moved back to 2/4 to recoup my losses.

A few days later I was watching a 5/10 table that my friend was sitting at. There was a player named "Prettyboy33" sitting there who I watched and was just absolutely horrible. After a few minutes of watching an open seat popped up. I immediately grabbed it. I mean, 250BB roll, that's gotta be enough, right? (wrong of course but I was retarded) After a few minutes I took $90 off of him and searched for the otehr tables he was at, and sat at those. I played for about 30 minutes and took $170. Sweet. That's like $340 an hour. I rule.

To keep the story short, I'll just tell you that I ran extremely well for the rest of June and the first week of july or so. I made about 450BB after a lot of playing and after rakeback my roll was sitting pretty nicely at around 8K.

Then came the monster of all downswings. One day, in the first few weeks of july, the "Win" switch just went off. I started losing -- every day. My roll kept dwindling. I had withdrawn 3000 for expenses for cars and housing and after the downswing reached 300BB I began to get desperate. I tried everything. I played SNGs, I played NL ring games, I made sad posts on twoplustwo, I really had no idea what to do. I kept losing every day for the whole month. Suddenly, my bankroll was back to 2000. I played in a few tournaments, tilted away another thousand, kept losing, and a 400BB downswing left me with $500 to my name. My friends could tell that I was pretty depressed about the whole thing but I was really out of options.

So I made one more post on 2p2. If it led to nothing, it would have been my last. It was a desperate post asking for coaching. I got several offers, but they were all too expensive and way over my bankroll. Fortunately, NLSoldier had recently drafted me to his HULA team with ALL1N, who had sent me a few messages about "getting to know me" since I had no idea who he was (and vice versa). After replying to his post, I solicited coaching from him (yes I know probably bad) but he said it was something he wanted to do and he was willing to do it for a fair price since he had never coached before.

I took $200 out of my $1400 rakeback check and essentially gave it to him. That was really all I could afford at the time. The end of July was nearing and finally we had our session. I played 200 hands of the best poker I could, sent him the HH files, and he looked them over and we talked. A lot of the things he said were standard to me but a lot of the things were really new to me. Either way, he said a few comments about my play which really instilled confidence in me again, and I went back to playing. 3/6 6max had just been opened and I used my $400 + $1200 left to start playing.

It was as if the "Win" switch had been turned on again. I went on a crazy upswing starting at the beginning of August. After 15K hands of 3/6, 15K hands of 5/10, in addition to rakeback, I was making almost 3BB/100 at those limits and my roll was hovering around 10K.

Then I made the "big jump" starting in the first day of September. 10/20 6m was scary to me because people always talked about how aggressive it was, but I felt like I needed to do it to be better as a player. I played around 20K hands of 10/20 and ran just over 3BB/100 again. By the end of September I was running well and had moved up to 15/30 and 20/40. Soon I was at 25/50. I've played about 10K hands at 15/30, 20/40, and 25/50 each since late september, and my roll is sitting at about 50K.

One thing I regret right now is taking shots at the huge games. I played a little bit of 50/100 in which, although I felt like I had an edge, I lost 60BBs. THis was accompanied by a 100BB downswing at 30/60 so I dropped 12K in like 3 days, knocking off my winnings for september down to 8K or so. But I will keep grinding and getting better and will move up whenever I feel like my edge is big enough that I can handle the variance.


There's my poker story. Not very interesting but at least you get to know who I am.