Alright, so I started this blog because I want to document my journey (hopefully up) the various poker stakes. I play almost exclusively online and I have never played poker in a casino. Hopefully I can remedy that this summer with a trip to some live casinos. I initially thought of starting this blog because I've heard that creating a blog can create incentive for poker players to get better. I'll, hopefully, want to play my "A" game because people will be able to see my results often. My entire life I've always worked better under pressure, hopefully this blog will create the needed pressure for me to do well in poker. Although this will mainly be a poker blog, I'll update it from time to time with events that happen to me that I feel I need to share.
Okay, so I started playing poker during my sophomore year in college. It was the fall of 2004 and I had finished watching ESPN's coverage of Chris Moneymaker winning the Main Event in the World Series of Poker. I had torn my ACL playing basketball over the summer and had surgery sometime in the fall. Needless to say, I was pretty much immobile for the first few months after my surgery. I lived in an apartment off campus, and had no incentive to crutch around to classes in Houston's muggy humid weather. So I stayed at home and was pretty much a bum for most of the semester. After seeing Moneymaker walk away with 3 million dollars (right?), I got pretty interested in poker. I deposited about $80 on Pokerroom.com (this site sucks now), and sat on either a 2/4nl or 5/10nl cash table. Through dumb luck, I had no idea what I was doing back then, I ran that up to $1000. Obviously I thought I was a poker prodigy, so over the next week or so, I went back to playing those same stakes. I lost it all over the next 3 days and was pretty bummed at the thought of making a $1000, only to give it all back. However, I was hooked on poker. I decided to go buy Super System by Doyle Brunson, and learn about the game. I eventually redeposited $100 and started playing $5 SNGs. I eventually ran my bankroll up from there. There are times though, when I moved up in stakes, or when I switched sites where I would deposit money when my bankroll started to get low. I think I've probably deposited $400 lifetime on poker.
At first my bankroll grew from playing 1 table Sit N Goes. I started from the $5 tables and eventually moved up to $100. Although I didn't play too many of the $100s. However, later on, I made the switch over to Multi-Table tournaments after I realized what was needed to beat them. I've always dabbled a bit in cash games, however, I don't think that I was ever a winning player in cash games because I would give it all back whenever I tilted after a couple bad beats. So I put my time and effort into MTTs. I had started subscribing to a couple poker training websites. At first I subscribed to realpokertraining.com, and later on pokerxfactor.com. I had a friend who would also play poker, and he told me to check out cardrunners.com. I went there and watched the free video. We've all seen the ESPN clips where Daniel Negreanu can call out people's hole cards. I already thought that was the coolest thing ever. When I watched the free video on cardrunners.com, I was completely blown away. The lead instructor, Green Plastic, could call out people's hole cards in the vacuum of Internet poker! I thought this was completely nuts. You can't see the person, and the only things hinting at their possible hole cards are betting patterns, and the speed of how fast they click on their mouse! I instantly signed up, and I've started my road down cash games since. It also helps that I found out much later that good cash game players can make much more money than good tournament players, although they're not mutually exclusive.
I started off at .1/.25nl tables and had moderate success, however, I could never fully concentrate because grinding for cents sucks! However, as most cash game players, I got deep and started winning a couple MTTs. My bankroll then allowed me to play .5/1nl. About a month or two ago, I took down a 1000+ person tournament for my biggest score of just under 6k. That gave me the needed boost to my bankroll to start playing comfortably at 1/2nl. And that's where I am now.
