[Victorvdb]

Here I'll chime in with a piece of prose.

Before I had played online poker, I had a little dabbling into live poker. I used to play Magic the Gathering (at this time semi-pro) when I was 19, and in the card club we played at, sometimes with some other Magic players we would play Holdem as well. It was $1 ante Holdem, with $2 and $4 betting structure (2 guilders, etc but translates to this structure in $) Yes, this game is pretty much a crapshoot considering the amount of money in the pot, but I did end up being a winning player there, even though 1 guy cheated, and 2 guys teamplayed. After being about up $2100 in it, I tilted, lost $800 and quit poker forever (yeah right).

Fast forward four years. I hear of Magic players who choose poker over magic. Confused as I am, since these players are extremely good, why would they forfeit playing in a tournament where they can win $20000 over poker? I learn more and slowly hear there's much more money in online poker.

In the end I decide to swap $100 real money for $100 online. This first $100 online disappeared pretty quickly on .5/1 on paradise, while this friend was watching and he assured me that although I didn't play very well, I was also very unlucky. I decide to try for another $100, and end up swinging between $30 and $300 for approximately a month in this game. Eventually I break the $300 and it slowly starts growing, and I promise a friend I will buy her a ticket to a rave if I hit the $1000 before the rave. I manage to break that, and win a $20 tournament in paradise for $660 which was my BIG TOURNAMENT WIN in this pokerstory.

I find out about Pokerstars and Partypoker, start playing there a bit as well, and through MTTs, SNGs and limit I keep on progressing through the game, build up the roll to about 8k, hit another psychological barrier at 10k, and never get past the 10k. I cash out some, head towards 10k again, still can't break it. Eventually, play deteriorates, and after a while, I am down to the last $200, together with some roommates who basically went through the same process. We make a propbet for some retardedly small amount, to race each other to $1k. I don't win, but finish 2nd. After that our game was back in gear and bankrolls start growing again, I get back to about $8k, and I graduated from university. At this point I knew I could beat the games up to 10/20 and 2/4NL, and 215sngs. Decide to give poker a shot, but accidentally get addicted to WoW. During a break from that game, we went on a holiday to Vegas, I win about 12k there with 215 sngs (dont ask) and a MTT score in Vegas itself. Eat the roll, and was down to $200 again beginning of this year. Quit the devil of a game, when I looked at the /played, and multiplied that time with $5 an hour, and realised the opportunity cost. One of my new years resolutions was to make $100k with poker this year, and I had to do it off that $200. Start playing some headsups again on stars, win a bit, take a shot at the $55+5s when roll hit $600, won the first two, played some more, hit a massive heater and at $6k, ran some 10/20 6max, bankroll grew to about 10k, do one of my pokerprojects, which is basically a shot as well but forces me to focus completely on one table, that ends up +6k, and I play some more sngs and full ring. Currently still there, playing some 30/60 when I think the games look good or 215s when I think 30/60 doesn't look so hot. Not doing any NL Cash atm, because I don't feel as confident in that game.