How did you get where you current are?

[Entity]

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A reply to noone in particular but it seems that nobody has grinded his way from microlimits. And everybody has been lucky in the beginning..

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Then I'm the exception to both.

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Me too, but I'm not a high limit player (yet). 10/20 with occasional forays into 15/30.

[daryn]

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A reply to noone in particular but it seems that nobody has grinded his way from microlimits. And everybody has been lucky in the beginning..

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last summer i was dead broke... bankroll = $0. i borrowed $600 from a friend and $600 from my brother and started playing 2/4. within a week or two i had paid them back. then climbed the ladder, 3/6, 5/10, 10/20, 15/30, 30/60

[4thstreetpete]

My story is a bit long but I try to keep it brief.

When I was 18 or 19 I worked at a charity casino in Toronto as a dealer. I would see the same faces day in and day out and that's when I knew poker was a game of skill. At the time I thought these B&M pros who played for a living at 5/10 lead a very pathetic existance.

It changed when I started playing poker, I was terrible at first but picked up the game really quick and built a pretty good reputation for myself at the undground card clubs. I've always been very good at math and just gambling in general and figured things out like bankroll management, variance etc on my own.

I was making good money but I was there day in and day out, I did pretty much nothing else. I then quit poker for a few years because I almost got kicked out of my university because I found school was really boring. Added to the fact that I met up with some new friends who I partied with.

I remember for a few years, my weekends were just a blur. I experimented with drugs and was high every weekend. I would come to school or work high a lot of the times but was having a blast. I met the love of my life and poker was definately out of my life at that time (and for several years later) although we did play home games with my friends at the casino I worked for.

During one of these games someone told me he played poker at paradisepoker and was winning a lot of money. That was my first indication that online poker was legit but I didn't really try it out until much later.

I started playing 5/10 at paradise and sometimes took shots at the 20/40. I remembered getting my ass handed to me on one of the sessions and one of the players laughing. Now that I think about it I really need to thank him as I became obbsessed to better myself.

I found 2+2 and jumped ship to party. Ran really hot there when I started at the 5/10. The games where ridiculously easy a year and a half ago. I won some pretty big tournaments in NL holdem and Omaha/hi lo. So from there just kept moving up.

I now currently multitable the 100/200 and the 50/100 if I can't get a table. I've just PM'ed BK asking for his advice on moving to some of the bigger games like 300/600 and eventually beyond. I've put some serious thought into getting coaching as well lately.

[DavidC]

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A reply to noone in particular but it seems that nobody has grinded his way from microlimits. And everybody has been lucky in the beginning..

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last summer i was dead broke... bankroll = $0. i borrowed $600 from a friend and $600 from my brother and started playing 2/4. within a week or two i had paid them back. then climbed the ladder, 3/6, 5/10, 10/20, 15/30, 30/60

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For some reason, I thought that you were an NLHE player...

I'm also curious about how the hell you became broke, but that's not really any of my business. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

How long did it take you to climb the ladder?

IIRC, I determined that I'd need to spend about two weeks to a month on a limit if I was beating it at 2bb/100 and wanted a 300bb roll for each limit. This doesn't take into account minor shifts in bet-size though (3/6 -> 5/10).

(Notice I said bet size, not talking about game quality.)

[MattSuspect]

November 03. Losing Player. 2/4, 3/6
Stop.
February 04. Losing Player. 2/4, 3/6

June 04. Find 2+2 thanks to a table coach with an interesting name. thanks nepenthe!

After losing close to 5k slowly. And developing an obsession with this game, I deposited $200 into Empirepoker on August 4th 2004. Hit a lucky streak, took shots at 15/30 when the games were at its best. Built a roll. Kept building. Been steadily at mid-high limit since the summer.

I'm completely out of debt, and finally have a savings account.

[DeezNutz3]

I started a 2 years ago watching a friend play who is very solid. He showed me the basics and I began to read a few books and playing 25NL. I began to build a bankroll and decided to try limit, eventhough my friends all played NL. I played the 5/10 6 max games when they were just great. I won a seat in a tourney that following summer in Europe and won the tourney (Austrian Masters). I then had a real bankroll and played 5/10 6 max before moving up to the juicy party 15/30 games. I play from 15/30 to 100/200 on lots of sites now...just about table selection.

[3rdCheckRaise]

Yeah sfer me too...Started at .5-$1 and slowly moved up.Played 20k hands on 2-4 and first shot at 5-10 almost crushed me...then 80k on 5-10 beating it for >2bb/100 and first shot at 15-30 almost broke my bankroll...First shot at 30-60 had a price of 19K...so yeah its been a battle but rewards are all worth it.

[Baulucky]

My story is boring. Plenty of others more successful and skilled and with more interesting stories. Look for the stories in the holdem forum, up to 2 years back.

Maybe the only two gems I can offer are:

1-Only engage in games/activities in which you can double your BR at low risk. It doesn't take long to compound into a small fortune. (In a GOOD game, you should be able to double your 300 BB BR, on average, every 10,000 to 12,000 hands)
2-This one is not mine, but got it from a 2+2 book: "If your opponents are tough players, as well as being extremely tight, forget about the game...Leave that game to the world champions".

For me, the party 30-60 is very tough, and the Stars 100-200 is almost unbeatable. Even the "fish" are very agressive. Of course, you can be a luckbox at either for a while. I studied and tried it and left it.

[sweetjazz]

I started a year ago playing 0.5/1 at Party after depositing $100. I currently play 10/20 and suspect that I am a winner in the game (though still in need of improvement). I intend to move up higher in limits as my skills and bankroll allow, mostly because I enjoy the challenge.

Anyway, I'm not really a high stakes player, but I am told that 10/20 hands should get posted in this forum, so I thought that was enough to let me reply. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] I don't think moving up from microlimits to mid or high stakes on a step-by-step level is that uncommon.

[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.