Background: I'm 33, married, been playing online for 2 years, just learned how to play poker about 2 1/2 years ago. Poker is a profitable hobby but I am an engineer in my regular job, currently finishing up my PhD full-time.
Poker History to Date: Started as a clueless noob at Pokerroom $0.5/1 LHE. Gravitated over to Party and eventually dabbled in NL$25 games. First year was nothing to write home about, ups and downs, lack of patience, moving up limits way too fast and wanting to gamble, etc. Instead of grinding away to improve my game I wanted to be playing the highest limits as soon as possible. I started to get more serious last spring or so and despite some wild swings, managed showing regular profits. Then my "big break" was winning an 1176-person $30+3 multi on Party. It confirmed to me that I know I can play pretty well when focused, and cutting out the slop was in order.
Since then I've kept decent records (bankroll-wise, at least). Total winnings last year, despite the setbacks from moving up too fast, managed $11k, but $7k of that was one tourney win. I tended to play in spurts due to my school work, getting away for up to a month or two, and then playing regularly every night of the week in long stretches.
This year, I cashed out all but $300 to start the year and was going to focus on grinding my way up from scratch, using bonus whoring as a tool. I built that up to over $5k by the end of Feb having a feast at the NL$25 6-max at Party, eventually playing up to the NL$100s, and whoring a total of $1700 in two months (including Empire rake back). I got in trouble in March because I planned on cashing out and taking a break to focus on research, I ended up goofing away $2k playing above my bankroll at some wild NL$2/4 games at Bodog. I didn't play online for a month after that. But, one week's trip to New Orleans and I made that back at the Harrah's NL$5/5 game. April was insane - picked up $2655 with a 2/590 MTT finish, and sort of played above my roll, but only risking up to $1k I decided (sort of freerolling some of my tourney winnings). All told, April became a +$11k month as I got fat at Bodog NL$2/4 and NL$5/10. I withdrew most of that for some fun stuff (laptop setup, rented beach house for a week this summer, etc.), and added another $2k in winnings in May. As of the start of June, I'm up $17.4k on the year, but only $5k still playing on. I moved back down to mostly playing NL$0.5/1 and NL$1/2 -- trying to whore along as much as feasible, but playing a variety of sites looking for juicy games. I have a tough 3-4 months ahead for finishing up degree and just want to play safe now and keep getting better so when I have more time, I can be ready for higher stakes.
Bankroll Guidelines: I now am sticking to the following guidelines for online play:
NL/PL (Holdem) -- 2500+ big blinds
NL/PL (Omaha) -- 5000+ big blinds
Limit -- 500+ big bets
Tourneys (SNG or MTT) -- 50+ buy-ins
Okay, that's your intro.Statistics: Posted by kidluckee — Sat Jun 04, 2005 8:45 am
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