AcesUp46 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Warning: Very long...Cliff Notes and graph at the end.I have some free time today and instead of putting in a couple of hours, I thought it'd be therapeutic for me to write this post. You're welcome to flame away, criticize or give positive feedback. I first played poker in college with my friends in dorm. At that time, circa Winter 2004, I had no idea what was going on but I thoroughly enjoyed the game despite losing $10 every weekend playing a couple of $5 buy-in 6-9 player SNG tournament in my dorm. I do remember my first bad beat though. A friend invited some of us to a "high stakes" cash game at one of the frats. The buy-in was $10 and the game was 10c/20c Spread Limit Holdem, max bet was $3 per round. Anyway, to cut the long story short, I got KK vs TT and we managed to get in the max bets on all streets. Of course, he rivered a set on me and off I went. A lonely walk of shame back to my dorm in the cold Chicago winter. At least, I had a bad beat story that I would tell to anyone who would listen for the next year or so.Around Spring 2005, I decided to make my first deposit in online poker and put $50 into UltimateBet. I chose UB cos one of my friends said that it was not rigged, unlike some other sites (lol!). Anyway, having very minimal understanding of poker, I somehow manage to run up my bankroll to $200+ and was ecstatic. I remember sending text messages to my friend saying things like "sweet...I just made $30 in the past 10 mins player online poker". I thought the game was very easy and all I had to do was just keep on playing and the money would continue coming in.However, it didn't take very long for this newly minted fish to lose $200+, about 2 weeks to be exact. I can't recall any specific hands but I suppose they mainly consisted of me thinking that having an Ace preflop is the nuts and then shoving a full-stack over a raiser. Anyway, from Spring to Summer 2005, I kept reloading $50 at a time to UltimateBet and also PokerRoom.com, only to lose it after a few of weeks. I suppose that by mid-Summer 2005, I was in red for about $400-500 online.Sometime that Summer, I decided to read Harrington on Holdem that I had actually bought a couple of months before. Unlike many other players that found the book to be groundbreaking, etc, I wasn't too impressed by the book at that time. My main takeaway from HOH was that hands can be planned in advance and to think through what your opponent might have based on his actions. Just use logic and you can have a decent guess and what hands your opponents might have.With that, towards the tail end of Summer, I redeposited $50 into PokerRoom.com and started 2-tabling 10c/20c Limit Holdem. I had written down the starting hand table on a post-it and stuck it on my table. Using basic starting hand strategy and helped my horrible players, I manage to move up to 50c/$1 Limit with a bankroll of about $130 by mid-Fall 2005 (lol bankroll management). Then, I decide to play a $5 MTT on PokerRoom. No, it didn't change my life cos I didn't win it. However, right after busting out of that tournament, I signed up for a $10 MTT that had about 300 players and took it down for about $750. I was ecstatic! I told my friends about it and they got free beers. Of course since we're all still busto college kids, free beers meant PBRs, Huber Bocks & the occasional Bud Lite. I felt like I was the shit! I used some of the money to sign up with Bodog in order to place some bets on the World Series. Being a White Sox fan, I placed some bets on the ALCS and World Series and rode my luck and made about $200 or so. So to my friends, I was officially the man! To further solidy the fact that I was the man, a couple of weeks after the Sox won the Series, I actually placed 2nd in a Bodog MTT to win $1098. Woohoo!!! My friends stopped drinking crappy beers that day and starting living the life with Bud Lite and the occasional Sam Adams.Overall, in Fall 2005, I made about $2500 through online poker and sports betting. I felt good about things because it was only last year that I was working as a Research Assistant for $8hrs per hour and would only have made about $900-1,000 during the same amount of time. I used the money to buy myself some things and also to pay for a trip to Europe during the Winter-break. During the early part of 2006, I started lurking on 2+2 and also posting on FCP. I started to read and learn more about the game and finally decided to step up the stakes. I started 4-6 tabling the $5.50 SNGs on PartyPoker using the basic strategy of "ultra tight early, ultra aggressive late". I also started going to the casinos in NW Indiana to play Limit Holdem (lol minbet) and started with 3/6 at the then Trump Casino in Gary. Since I was basically still a broke college kid, I didn't have the car and had to ride the El (aka Chicago subway) to the Chicago Chinatown in order to catch the casino shuttles. One thing I learnt is that I didn't want to end up being like 99% of the people who took the Chinatown shuttles to the casinos. They all had that glimmer of hope in their eyes that perhaps this one time, Lady Luck will smile on them and grant them a fortune. I didn't want to tell them - Sorry, it's hard for Lady Luck to smile on you when you're giving up like 13% equity on every pull playing the penny slots. At the poker tables, I also learnt some life lessons. I suppose poker brings out the worst in people. The worst are those that berate the dealers for giving them bad cards. I once saw a quiet decent looking guy got so upset at being rivered a bad beat that he threw his cards into the dealer's face. Quietly, I also pitied those that have to continually reload by withdrawing money from the casino ATM's using their credit cards. Every so often, I am lucky to get to sit next to and have pleasant conversations with fellow players. My most memorable one was with a guy told me that he was a pig farmer in Indiana. By the end of a few hours talking to him, he had taught me a fair bit about the pig farming trade.In Summer 2006, I managed to save up enough to take a trip to Vegas during the WSOP. Earlier, I played a couple of $300+ qualifiers on Stars but didn't manage to win a package. Anyway, I had enough to pay for a $1500 NLHE event, but as it turned out, I didn't need to use it. I played in a $230 buyin MTT at the Mirage and ended up with the lion's share in a 4-way chop to win $4,700. So I bought in to a $1500 NLHE but busted out in the 4th level. I posted my TR hereBy Fall 2006, I had worked my way up to the 20/40 at the Resorts and the $55 SNGs on PartyPoker. Being in Chicago and having to ride the El back to & from the casino I often walked around with a couple of thousand in my shoes. This strategy paid off once when I was sorta mugged late at night at the train platform. A couple of black kids about 16-18yrs old came up to me and one of them told me to give me all the money in my wallet. He seemed nervous, so I guess it was his first time doing it. Since it is very probable that he or his friends had a knife or some other weapon hidden, I cooperated and took out my wallet and showed them that I only had about $10 or so. I gave them the money and continued on my trip to the casino, with $1,500 safely hidden in my shoes.In late Fall 2006, the entire poker world got dealt a bad beat. The UIGEA was passed and suddenly a lot of poker players knew that Bill First was the Senator from Tennessee. PartyPoker was no longer available for me and after withdrawing a fair bit of money, I transferred my remaining bankroll to PokerStars. On Stars, I tried playing the Limit games but it was basically a rock garden. So I spent more time playing small buyin MTTs and the $22/180 SNGs. I had decent success there, making a couple of thousand dollars while finishing up stuff so that I could graduate in Dec 2006.Graduation came and by Jan 2007, I had left Chicago and started work. Due to my work, I could no longer go to the casinos and couldn't spare blocks of 5-8hours to play MTTs. So I decided to start playing NLHE cash games since the LHE games were sucky. Being busy with work and all, I couldn't spend much time on poker and basically never really got anything going. I bounced around playing anything from $25NL to $400NL with both full stacks and short stacks and made about $300 per month on average for the whole of 2007 playing cash games. I did however manage to donk a $3K~ score playing one of the few MTTs I played that year.Starting Jan this year, I decided I needed to put in more focus on poker. I re-started at $50NL and 5-9 tabled while trying to play a solid game. However, at that point, a solid game basically just meant set-mining (I was running really passively, something like VPIP - 12, PFR - 4, AF - 1.5, lol...setmining nit). I suppose I played this way cos at that time, I had way more experience playing MTTs where playing like a set-miner in the early levels isn't too far off from a good strategy.However, I sucked so bad that for the first 109K hands, I basically made nothing but FPPs. I then decided that fck it. I'll play $100NL and if I bust my roll, that's it. I'm getting a new hobby. So I moved up to where they hopefully respect my raises. And guess what, I again made nothing but FPPs for the next 50K hands.I took a break for about a month and watched some videos. And it dawned upon me how weak and crappy my game was. I was still basically only a set miner at $100NL. The only difference was that I was stealing blinds once in a while. No wonder I was breaking even.So I decided to cut down my tables to 6 and focused on playing a positionally aware and solid aggressive poker game. I started off playing 12/7 and slowly ramped it up to 16/12 and added more tables along the way. As the graph below shows, I've had a fair bit of success. For the past 3 months, I've put in about 110K hands while 12-15 tabling and beat it for about 7.7BB/100. FPP "rakeback" adds another 2BB/100 or so to my winrate. Though I am confident that I am a long term winner at $100NL, I do recognize that I have leaks in my game. I am too aggressive or too passive in certain spots. Also, at times, I let tilt take the better of me. To improve myself, I'm constantly watching videos on Stoxpoker and 2+2. I don't however post many hands for discussion because a lot of the time, I can quickly recognize mistakes that I made. Perhaps this in itself is a leak, that I am too confident in my poker knowledge to seek advice.Moving on, what's my plan for the next year or two? Well, I'm certain that I won't be turning pro. I'm quite happy in my job right now and I would really like to keep poker as a (profitable) hobby. I would want to move to $200NL at some point. However, I do realize that given the leaks that I currently acknowledge in my game, I'm not so certain that I could beat $200NL for a better hourly winrate than $100NL. So I'm going to be working on improving my fundamentals so that I can move up a level or two. If by the end of next year or early 2010, I'm comfortably 15-tabling $400NL, I'd be ecstatic.I'm realistic about my abilities and I know that I must make serious improvements or probably even overhaul my game in order to be a reg at $1000NL or higher. Perhaps that is the next stage of my poker career.Wish me luck!Thank you for reading.Cliff Notes:- Started playing poker in college LDO!- Deposited money online, ran it up and bustoed a few times.- Read HOH but not groundbreaking- Donked into MTT scores and played minbet- Thought that I was the man and bought cheap beers for friends cos I was the man- Walked around with several thousand in my shoes.- Got Bill Fristed- Went breakeven for 150K hands while being a set miner- Watched videos....profit (only at $100NL)- Wish me luck! Link to post Share on other sites
therescav 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 And here I was thinking you simply posted funny hands. Good to hear of your success and GL for the future Link to post Share on other sites
Vtlaxer09 4 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 nice read. congrats...you said you took down a 100$ mtt with 300 people for 750$??? That should have been 7500.. typo? Link to post Share on other sites
vervius 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Good luck!Do work! Link to post Share on other sites
gatortom64 1 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 I actually read and comprehended it all!! Good read. Congrats and here is to continued success!! Link to post Share on other sites
AcesUp46 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Author Share Posted October 30, 2008 nice read. congrats...you said you took down a 100$ mtt with 300 people for 750$??? That should have been 7500.. typo?Sorry, I meant to type $10 MTT. Link to post Share on other sites
SGFULTON83 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Nice read and keep it up man! Also, Kathy Leibert is a beautiful woman. Link to post Share on other sites
AcesUp46 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Author Share Posted October 30, 2008 I actually read and comprehended it all!! Good read. Congrats and here is to continued success!!Thanks Gator. Took me like 1.5hrs to type it all out...quite relaxing and reflective really.Wish you success too. Link to post Share on other sites
AcesUp46 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Author Share Posted October 30, 2008 And here I was thinking you simply posted funny hands. Good to hear of your success and GL for the futureHaha...back when I was active on FCP during college days, I posted a lot of other crap too. A lot of Kathy Liebert stuff and rail calls and MTT barrages too.Thanks and good luck to you too! Link to post Share on other sites
zander24 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Nice post. Good to see you doing well. I did the same thing with the continuous $50 deposits Link to post Share on other sites
AcesUp46 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Author Share Posted October 30, 2008 Nice read and keep it up man! Also, Kathy Leibert is a beautiful woman. She really is. And she seems like a nice person too. During the 2006 WSOP, she made quite a deep run and when she was walking out of the Amazon Room during a break, one random fan shouted out from about 20ft away "how's things going Kathy?". She actually took the time to turn around and respond in a friendly manner "doing fine here...mostly hanging around...". This said fan did the same thing to other players and most of them just ignored him, at best, they gave him a wave or a "what's up" chin Link to post Share on other sites
JaNnN 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Thanks for posting this. Really enjoyed the read.Jan Link to post Share on other sites
JoeyFinngars 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Well written and a great read!Keep up the good work... Link to post Share on other sites
qyayqi 11 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 good to see you back around, sir. Link to post Share on other sites
Canadianpoker83 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Very good read. Link to post Share on other sites
Sheiky 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 I refuse to read anything you post before you change that damn avatar, but that's a pretty awesome graph. Link to post Share on other sites
Gallo 1 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 So you're from Chicago, huh? Link to post Share on other sites
AcesUp46 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Author Share Posted October 30, 2008 So you're from Chicago, huh?Was only there for college. Link to post Share on other sites
Whatever 1 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Nice story. The graph is almost epic with the huge breakeven stretch and then blastoff. Link to post Share on other sites
AcesUp46 0 Posted October 30, 2008 Author Share Posted October 30, 2008 Nice story. The graph is almost epic with the huge breakeven stretch and then blastoff.Heh...that 175K breakeven stretch is quite brutal. I'm actually quite proud that I didn't go on monkey tilt during that time and donk off my entire bankroll. But then again, throughout that whole stretch, I did have about 5K in my Stars account, so even that $1K downswing at about hand 90,000 didn't affect me too badly.Come to think of it, thank goodness for online poker. If I were a live pro and play poker for 8 hours a day and get 30 hands per hour, a 175K breakeven stretch at live poker would mean playing everyday for 2 years without winning a single cent. Link to post Share on other sites
Jam-Fly 8 Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Come to think of it, thank goodness for online poker. If I were a live pro and play poker for 8 hours a day and get 30 hands per hour, a 175K breakeven stretch at live poker would mean playing everyday for 2 years without winning a single cent.lol, jesus, yeah that would be brutalwell done and nice story Link to post Share on other sites
WhatArunAA 0 Posted October 31, 2008 Share Posted October 31, 2008 Very good read.. how you started is pretty much exactly the same as me. Link to post Share on other sites
AcesUp46 0 Posted October 31, 2008 Author Share Posted October 31, 2008 Very good read.. how you started is pretty much exactly the same as me.Can you teach me how to be good in donkaments and make big scores?? Link to post Share on other sites
Merby 3 Posted October 31, 2008 Share Posted October 31, 2008 That was an excellent read. Thanks for sharing and good luck in the future. Link to post Share on other sites
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