I started playing seven-card stud in the 90’s I was not any good. I played as often as I could. I loved playing but it was not important enough to me and I was married with small kids and simply did it for leisure I hoped to win but did nothing to help me win.
In 2001, I discovered online poker and played play money on Poker Room and Poker Stars I ran up a he play money bankroll. I did eventually buy in. On poker stars, I won about $2500 playing primarily $2 & $5 tournaments. I had one big score of $900 when I finished second in a tournament and then I promptly cashed out $600. I won a tournament on Ultimate Bet $6 buy in and cashed for $1200 I cashed out $1000 of that. I played on Full Tilt and did well in MTT’s on that site. My Achilles heel was cash games, I so wanted to be good at those but I simply was not for way to long. By the time I figured out cash games it was Black Friday, I had a friend help me cash out $400 of my $500 on Full Tilt just before Black Friday.
I was getting divorced and needed something to do on weekends so I took the $400 and went to play live cash games. If I lost it I was done. The first session I played like a total nit but managed to win $100 I felt confident. Soon I ran that to $1500 (where I kept my cash roll) Over the next 9 months or so I won about $5000 but I needed the money do I used all my winnings for life. Eventually life hit me and I needed my bankroll for real life. I fell away from poker. Then New Year’s Eve 2017, my girlfriend wanted to hit the local casino. I will not play slots so I was just watching her play. She said go play something and eventually I went into the poker room, bought in for $140 (all I had on me) played for 3 hours and left with $623 I was once again hooked.
I started going to the casino on Fridays and Sundays and was winning at most of the time. I also punted off many chips. In Sept of 2018, I decided I have to figure this out, other people were consistently winning money and I am smart as they are. I joined Crush Live Poker and began to watch videos, on that site Jonathon Little made a monthly video about tournaments, I always liked tournaments and when he had a sale on his site Pokercoaching.com I switched to that site. I bought is book Mastering Small Stakes Holdem and began to relearn how to play poker (and this time learn it correctly). Within 5 months, I won a small tournament at my local casino, and then I won it again. I won a satellite into $360 buy in and finished 11th for $1500. If the truth be told I really didn’t play all that well once we got to about 20 players. I did not have the tools to adjust my play to different styles or stack size and the money meant too much to me.
In the summer of 2018, I went to Vegas. I played The Big 50. I lasted an hour and a half; looking back I was a mix of too excited and too nervous. I played a few other tournaments without success, and then on back-to-back days I made deep runs in a series at the Golden Nugget, went out 32 and 43 in tournaments that had fields of 700 to 800 players. I made a few mistakes at the wrong time and was not able to run any deeper than the last 4 tables.
I spent the next few months playing live on weekends wining some and losing some, in 2018 I had a net profit of $3500 from live play. I felt that I wasn’t really getting the reps in live playing 1 or 2 times a week, so I bought into an unregulated site called Ignition, I put online a whole $25 and played $1 27 man SNGs. I had success, then $5 and then $10 ones. I played $5 and $10 MTTs as well. I have been able to cash consistently and even a couple deep runs in MTT’s. Now is the time to take this to the next level. Time to play bigger and play smarter.
