[DeathDonkey]

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Hi DD,

just one question for now - could you tell us about your journey thru the levels of limit hold em? Like, where/when did you start, how long did it take you to progress through each level, did you have moments of difficulty along the way, etc.

Do you feel you've completely mastered limit as well as one could hope to master it?

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Copying some of this from an old post as there is a lot...

I was a product of the Rounders era of poker, before the Moneymaker era. Probably 5 years ago I started playing in the dorms during college and at the local indian casino, when I discovered I could play online and opened an account at UltimateBet. I played play chips and at that time they had weekly freerolls at 2:30 in the morning with real money prizes, so I'd stay up late and play in those hoping to make a big score. After a couple months I won one of those tournaments and had myself a $15 poker bankroll on UB. The thrill of winning that tournament is still one of the memories I'll never forget.

I began to play penny limit and NL holdem and around then discovered 2+2 and with the help of this micro forum, I moved up to 25c/50c and probably had a bit over a $100 bankroll. Then, one Sunday morning I played a $3 satellite on UB to their weekly $215 tournament (which was one of the biggest online at that time) and made it. I played the tournament later that afternoon and lucksacked my way to the final table! I took fourth for $4410 (I'll never forget that number), first prize was over 16k.

Suddenly I had more money in my UB account than I did in my bank account! I resolved that day to get serious about poker, started a Party poker account (hadn't earlier because 50c/1 was the smallest game they had) with an ambition to move to higher stakes. Playing lots of micro to small stakes limit holdem, and reading and posting in this forum and the Small Stakes forum during the golden age of SS in my opinion. bisonbison, chris daddy cool, evan, guyontilt, sfer, entity, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting were playing huge games online like 3/6 and I really thank them for inspiring me to get better and work hard and play a lot and try and reach those same levels.

I kept taking shots at higher full ring games until I was doing well at 3/6 and then at the time the only choice was 5/10 6max on Party. As would be a recurring theme I ran hot right away and got comfortable playing 6 max in no time, I was taking shots at 10/20 6max within a few weeks of starting at 5/10 and wound up doing pretty well there too and the money felt huge to me (as it really was in real world dollars). Right around then the party and empire split occurred and I wasn't sure what to do for a month or so, then everyone stayed on Party and I somehow checked out Empire and realized the games were amazing. Within 3 months I went from 15/30 to 100/200 on Empire, and played every 20/40 and 30/60 game going every day. I had 3 months straight of huge winnings and I've still never duplicated that which was almost 2 years ago but the games were amazing, I ran very well, and everything just came together. The sites re-merged and there were no more 100/200 games as soft as I was accustomed to so I don't really play that high now because I have too many responsibilities and other things taking up time to play in games where my edge would be so small (if any) but big live games still hold that edge for me IMO so I will play much bigger live.

-DeathDonkey