How long did it take you to get good/profitable?

[Josh!]

I've been playing poker (usually NL/PL HE, but with some PLO, Razz, Stud, Draw etc mixed in) virtually daily online for about four months, and I've definitely improved a ton in that time period (having only properly learned the basics a few weeks before starting online). I've read the SuperSystem and am currently working my way through Harrington on Hold 'em, Small Stakes HE, Ace on the River with HE for Advanced Players on my to do list after that. Mostly been playing low buy-in SnGs and 10NL on FullTilt and PokerStars.

I'm still pretty bad, though and for the most part I only seem to read about people who like deposited $50 somewhere and ran it up to some obscene amount while beating the various limits with ease as they went. So after so many months playing and studying and sucking and donking off a few hundred dollars, should I be disheartened? Or are there a bunch of people out there who didn't start to show real signs of progress until a year or two into their poker careers but are doing well now?

[JSmith2007]

90% of those people who deposit $50 and run it up to 'thousands' either were at thousands and lost it all playing bad or 'running' bad and are really good players for the most part, or are just extremely lucky fish with no skill. Don't believe that just anyone can do that (and unfortunately, so many people do).

It depends on alot of things though for a time frame. You say you play virtually online daily, do you play for 6+ hours a day or do you just play one tournament/sit n' go or just one hour of 10NL a day? There's a big difference in that as well. SNGs and cash games are very different and could be hampering either one (SNGs could be bad because you're used to playing cash or cash bad because you're used to SNG etc.)

I don't think you should be disheartened at all. A friend of mine played poker before the boom in about 2000 and he didn't see real profit/progress until about late 2002, early 2003, this after he lost a thousand or two learning the ins and outs. Again, he only played about an hour or two a day, about 3-5 days a week then, now he plays for a living, so there's alot of difference.

Stay into it and it depends on how serious you are to this game. Are you here as a hobby for entertainment? Are you here to make money as a 'part-time' or side job or are you here for your main career/full time job? Those all depend on what you should be aiming for and the time frame it takes.

[RyverRat]

its different for every person. when i learnt i spent 2 years home games thinking i could play, about a year reading books and losing online then the past 2 years making a profit.

So again it depends on your situation, how much you can absorb, how many hours you play. Depends if you are a gambler type, a tilt type, willing to self analyse etc.

I say it can easily take 6 months to turn a consistant profit.

2p2 forums are a great start. I would have been where i am quicker if i had found these forums earlier.

Dont concentrate on the stories of $50 - $1m thats not the normal. There are 100's of people that deposit $50 and go broke. choose your level, beat it, grow your bankroll, move up. If you are cash player it can be a grind but that is online poker.

good luck

[saal13]

I would recommend you pick a game and stuck to it until you were a significant winner. I usually recommend full ring no limit to my friends who are starting out as you can play hit-to-win poker (tight pre-flop with little bluffing) and make money. Full ring also has less variance than 6-max. My coach advised me not to move to 6-max until I was a comfortable winner at full ring NL$100. This was good advice.

Also, make sure you always play within your bankroll. As a rule of thumb 25 buy-in is probably a reasonable bankroll for someone just starting out at full ring.

[dying2win]

i still havnt got there yet...

[GrumpyB]

Well this is my story, if it helps to compare notes!

I have been playing online poker for about six months. I have a good, well paid job and have no fantasies about giving it up to go pro – I just want to learn to play good solid poker.

In my first month (May) I lost just under $350 playing around 5,000 hands of poker while waiting for my two-plus-two books to arrive; a lot of it at $10 MTT. I only cashed out a couple of times but I found that after the initial all-in fest the poker was not as crazy as either the play money or micro tables, so I still think that was a fair entry price relative to the experience gained. [OK, I know that may sound like a lot to a poor student trying to scrape together their first $50 deposit – but there have to be some benefits to completing your education and getting a decent job first!]

Over the following three months (June-Aug) I played 10,000 more hands, stuck to $10nl and studied (not just read – learning doesn’t work that way) Harrington on Holdem 1 and 2, The Theory of Poker (D Sklansky) and NLH Theory and Practice (D Sklansky and E Miller) - and clawed back just over $40 – yippee! At an average of 50 hands per hour (I only played one table at a time – I think learn faster that way) that’s $40 for 200 hours work (not including study time) or 0.20 per hour! [Maybe I can give up the day job after all].

September was a disaster. I tried my hand at $50nl and got well and truly squished. I lost almost $20 over 6,000 hands. But I did learn another valuable lesson – while playing tight can keep me out of a lot of trouble but I really do need to learn to fold marginal hands when playing with folk who don’t go all in with bottom pair, weak kicker.

October has been positive, so far (+$20 over 2,000 hands), playing two $25NL tables at once – as I now find that that stops me playing really marginal hands when I’ve had no action for half an hour. So maybe, just maybe, I will be able to recoup all the money I lost in May by some time in the middle of next year. But I’m not sure that I will ever make more than I would by taking a part-time job at McDonald’s!

[Rek]

Wow Grumpy - nice post. If I had to advise someone starting out, that is almost the way I would advise them. The only thing I would change is not playing MTT's when you start. Too much of a big varience when you are after some confidence building. I would substitute SNG's for the MTT's.

Willing to learn and think and have realistic expectations. Keep it up Grumpy and you sound like the sort of player that will be making more than if you flipped burgers.

[John in Michigan]

I have been playing fairly seriously (4-5 sessions/week) since late Dec. 2006 and am not yet profitable.

I started with MTT's and SnG's. I had some winnings (including first place in a $1 MTT with 560 entrants in my very first week of playing). That was probably more luck and my initial bankroll of $900 is currently $138 (after being as low as $99).

I started playing cash games about two months ago, when my bankroll was around $300. That didn't go so well initially either.

However, since reading and applying what I learned in Professional NLHE Vol.1, for the last week and, more importantly, for the first time since I started playing poker, I am beginning to feel like progress is being made. This week is the first time I have consistently won small amounts (approx. $4 to $ 16 per session) playing limit cash games.

Even though that book is designed for NLHE and I am playing limit ($.50/$1 and $1/$2) the concepts helped tremendously.

Of course, one good week is just that but without a doubt, there is no substitute for experience and a willingness to learn and evaluate.

I can now look at a flop and just know I have no business staying in the hand...or vice versa...and why that is the case. And, as the writer above noted, learning to fold those marginal hands is a must (and something I have been slow to grasp too).

Having tracking software so I can go back and look at the hands where I have taken my biggest hits, it is easy to see the bad bets and calls.

I am guessing there is no magic length of time but it seems to me there are things one can do that shorten the learning curve, like taking advice from this board, reading the leading books and getting software that will let you evaluate your play outside the heat of the moment, seem to be the big three. And, of course, the occasional deliberately-chosen day away from the game never hurts either.

Hopefully this good week turns into two...and three....and on and on...

[SellingtheDrama]

I started playing online back in 2003 (Moneymaker effect).

After about six months on my $50, it was down to $22 and change. I was winning at micro stud H/L and losing it all and more in SNGs. In those days, $5 was the smallest available. When I got down to $22, I pretty much said screw poker and stuck it all on the first ever heads up NL MTT that Stars ran. I came in third.

After that I decided to settle back and get serious. There was practically no educational resources in those days - no videos, very few books, etc. I did a ton of work on my own studying the game using PokerTracker. After about three months of this (honestly playing very little, but spending time testing and thinking through poker theory), things finally started to click. In November, I won a couple tournaments (this was my primary focus from 2003-mid 2006) and had my first decent bankroll at that point. Gradually quality books started coming out, and I use them as supplements and reference guides to my own play. If a book gives me one good idea, it generally pays for itself within a week.

The single most valuable lesson that I learned was how to construct multiple lines for a hand based on my opponents' play. At our stakes, nobody plays perfect (and if you watch poker on TV, its obvious that very few people can do this). I'm looking for everyone else's mistakes and am trying to play based on them. If you really want to get good at poker (not just profitable, but to actually understand the game), you need to be willing to experiment and try many different things. Sometimes you learn more from a disastrous result than from a win.

What I would recommend to someone starting out now: Don't play tournaments except as recreation. The fields are just huge now compared to when I started out, and this varience increase sucks. Find a discipline you can enjoy thinking about, and just go for it. Once you get a comfortable bankroll - one that you won't lose entirely - start exploring. Try the different games..learn them all, while still spending some time on your primary game. You'll be a better player and probably enjoy it more.

[kayaker]

Way back in the day, prior to Moneymaker, I deposited $100 into UB. Playing mostly NL25, I was successful enough to keep from going broke - thanks to the deposit bonus, anyway.

After I got down to $11, I decided to try some SnGs. With enough cash to play two of them, I put my $5.50 into one and won it. Then I won the next one, too, and I was back over $50. I played several more, losing most, but winning enough to keep afloat.

Finally I felt comfortable enough to try NL25 again and was somewhat successful, bringing my bank up over $150. I cashed out my original $100 and moved it to Party.

Party was, at the time, a joke. I dropped less than one buy-in at NL25 before I started winning there. Over the course of about six months I had moved from NL25 to NL25 6-max, NL50, NL50 6-max and finally a few shots at NL100. By the time I got infatuated with another game and pulled my money out, I was up to over $1000.

Now the boom has come and (apparently) gone and people are playing a lot less than before. I started playing online again a few months ago with a $30 loan from a friend. I've been taking it very slow, but I've been able to pay that back and have a small little stack built up. It's nothing like my live poker bankroll, but it's nice because it's all profit.


One thing I would recommend for those just starting out - play some freeroll MTTs to get a feel for things. Ignore the fact that the first hour is about the freeroll donks. If you can get past that, you'll find the players who are actually trying to win. That's when you'll get some decent experience.