Some of my poker history (long);
If you are not familiar with me I use to post a lot in SSNL mostly 200nl for about a 2 to 3 month period. I originally learned poker on junior encounter in high school, and felt like it was a pretty neat game. My high school was a private school and was kind of hit by the poker craze, so there were always small $5 live tournaments on the weekends and I slowly but surely became in love with the game! One of my friends would always be at my house and we were bored one day and wanted to play poker. Unfortunately, no one would host a live tournament. At the time, I was to young to go the casino and some kids from my school went in under age but I was not about to risk it. I wanted to give online a shot but my parents refused to use there credit card to put money online because it was illegal and not something my parents wanted to support.
Anyways I went to this forum called
www.flopturnriver.com to read about poker. I read old post from ripptyde, DavSimon etc. and it was beneficial (but the content there is not even comparable to 2p2 as far as poker goes). I remember the FTR forum had an AIM option and I messaged a whole bunch of people asking for like 5 or 10 bucks just to try an online SNG and that I would pay them in the mail. One of the members who is now boomshakalaka now on 2p2 said he probably would and that I should wait a few hours and he ended up just wasting my time with me the whole night and never gave me a dime . But then a member called Triptanes (now on 2p2), ended up hooking me on Ultimate Bet up after I sent him $40 in the mail. I now had a small bankroll to start my grind!
I grinded $1.10 SNG’s on Ultimate Bet until I got about to $70. From there I took occasional shots at $5/$10 SNG’s and my bankroll peaked at about $200 like 5 months later. At that time I was not addicted to the extent I am now and only would 1 table and occasionally go weeks without playing. Someone ended up swapping me $50 on Ultimate Bet for $50 on Pokerstars and I began playing tournaments. I ended up taking extreme shots playing the $11 FO with occasional $6.50 SNG’s on my pokerstars $50 roll. I played way over my roll and ended up getting some nice cashes in some tournaments. My first biggest cash was 8th in $10 19:45 tournament for $200 (huge deal at time) and a few days later I placed like 6th for like $500 or something. Every time I got to the final table I would get sucked out on hardcore and I knew it was a matter of time. Finally one time everything went my way and I chopped the $10 tournament for 2.7k. ROBUSTO…
With my 3k roll, I cashed about $1,500 and put it in the bank leaving me with like a 2k roll. I began playing SNG’s and posted a lot in STTF and it was just a waste of time. Probably 1,200 of my current post are from the SNG forum. I was never that good to begin with and messing around with SNGPT was not my thing. I ended up doing a lot of multi-table grinding at $6+.50’s and $15+1 turbos and made around a couple of thousand over a pretty long period (but I didn’t play all that much). I remember reading about people having $4k months and was shocked and my goal was to eventually multi-table the $55 SNG’s. Bottom line SNG’s gave me good experience and a good foundation for basic tournament strategy but cash is more interesting for me and I am better at it [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img].
Over spring break, I lost all my SNG profits in higher stake tournaments that I shouldn’t have been playing. I felt sick that I lost 2 thousands dollars, which was a lot for me and I needed to re-evaluate what to do before I went busto! My roll dropped from around $3,800 to $1800. A few of my old buddies from FTR (ilikeaces) ended up telling me to switch to cash, and I did. I am glad I listened [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]. I started out at 100nl with like my $1700 roll, and posted a crap load of hands in SSNL. Caterp from SSNL ended up private messaging me and telling me that are a lot of my posts are incredibly standard and maybe I should move down to 50nl, I told him I had the roll and wanted to learn so he offered to just review hand histories and comment on them so I did not waste forum space. It was a very nice gesture, and I was very lucky a player of his caliber was willing to do it for free.
So I started cash about late August of 2006. From there I just went robustooooooo. At 100nl, I played for about 1month and a half and ran incredibly well and would always over bet push and get called (post legislation). At 100nl I was like at 10.4pt/bb over 36k hands but this was right before the legislation. My roll went from 1400 to 6500 to 10,900 to etc. week by week and I was like wow this is pretty cool.
I then went to 200nl and it was a different game and I had trouble at first but eventually adjusted. Started out just 2 tabling it then eventually went from about 4-8 tables. I grinded 200nl for about 150k hands in a 2 month period (Early Nov. to Late Dec.). I played a lot and did decent. My pt/bb went to crap towards end of late December when I broke even over the biggest sample in the world. I think anyone playing pokerstars 1/2nl that is achieving anything between 3-6pt/bb should be proud. If you run better then 6pt/bb then good job but I have seen multiple datamines and not many stars player are doing nearly that well over a large enough sample. If you happen to be one of the few people achieving then Congrats and move up!
I remember taking occasional shots at 400nl (in early December) and using horrible table selection and I lost like around 4k (definitely a lot of it was tilt) and moved down and grinded 200nl even more. I am not sure what finally did it, but when I moved up to 400nl to give it another shot (my bankroll was like 25k at time from all my 200nl grinding + donkament scores), I played decent and stopped playing like a calling station. I tightened up and started adjusting to the table, trying to make good folds, and controlling my tilt. I guess it worked because I eventually felt confident in my game and my roll grew pretty fast. I then moved up to 600nl and had little to no difficulty adjusting, 600nl has some tougher regulars for sure but table selecting always helps. I dropped down the number of tables to between 4-6 at 400nl+ and stopped using HUD. I will also occasionally play 5/10nl when table is right or I just feel like playing a bit higher but that’s where I am at now. Overall my bankroll is like 50k, and I have cashed out like around 10k so my net profit is around 60k mostly all from the past 4 months.
My life(shorter [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]);
18 years old freshman EE major at Washington State University. My GPA was semi decent last semester (3.3GPA) but I pretty much slept in every day and now my classes are getting way tougher so I can not do that anymore [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img].