Turned 90 cents into $50,000 playing online poker

DMoogle · #1 09-12-2007, 01:55 AM

Well, I made my last two landmark posts when I hit 100K hands and another when I hit $10,000 , so I guess it's time for another.

Most of my story you can find in the $10K post, but that was at the end of April and since then I've quintupled my bankroll, playing 1/2 and moving up to now playing mostly 5/10 and 3/6. I'll also venture into a 10/20 game if there's a huge donk.

Basically in April 2006 I started with 90 cents that a small poker site gave to me for free when I was 17, using my mom's name of course (with her permission!). I played the lowest limits (LHE) available there, which was $.05/$.10. Obviously 9 big bets isn't much of a bankroll, but I was still lucky enough to not go broke. Fortunately I DID know about proper bankroll management, and I'm extremely disciplined about it. I grinded $.05/$.10 until I reached $80 or so, then moved to $.10/$.20... and, well, the rest is history!

Once I had reached $500 (bonus whoring contributed greatly) still playing poo-flinging hold 'em and occasionally some donk-n-gos, I took a shot at a MTD (multi-table donkament) where the buy-in was $24+2. I placed second out of 180 or so and scored $1,000. I withdrew $400 to buy a real monitor, a Dell 2007FP, which I love, and decided that I wanted to learn how to play NL because that's where I had heard the real money was to be made.

Well, I experienced a decent amount of success and grinded my way to a bankroll of over $5k, but after the UIGEA I had a lot of trouble winning. I eventually took about two months off (Dec. and Jan.), moved down to $.05/$.10 NL to re-evaluate my game, and joined CardRunners. This was a recipe for success, and since then I've been able to move back up and beyond in limits.

I feel that I've been improving vastly every month. The only thing that's been somewhat detrimental has been my discipline to putting in the hands. I used to be able to do 3-4 hour sessions a day almost everyday, but now I struggle to play more than 2 hours.

I've played over 260,000 hands online lifetime and I still have lots to learn. Anyways, a very big thanks to the 2+2 forums, the 2+2 books, Cardrunners, and all of the "casual" players out there who have helped me reach this point. I still have a long ways to go if I ever want to reach and beat the biggest games on FTP, but I'm sure that if I work hard enough at it, I'll be able to reach my goal. Maybe I'll even do it before I turn 21. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Here's a graph from my first database:

Here's the same database in BBs:

Here's a graph of my current database, which I started a little while before the time I decided to move down to re-evaluate my game. The first 20K hands are before I moved down, and took place at $.50/$1 NL:

Same database in BBs:

And finally, here are my PT stats for my current database:

Interestly enough, my PTBB winrate since I started playing MSNL (over 70K hands total) has been higher... 5.70 PTBB/100. My hourly rate since I started MSNL is $164.13/hour, which isn't that bad for an 18 year old. I've also become LAGier since I've moved up.

Thanks again poker.