ok ill write it after i finish the dym game im in atm... and doh after i write my story i will post some general tips for dym in your thread... and not the standard play tight tips.
Ok well my poker life started at school when i was about 16 i think (now 19)... my friends used to play poker a bit at school but i didnt have a clue how to play and so didnt want to put any money on a game i would surely lose at. Feeling a bit left out because i couldn't play i decided to try and learn the rules. I played for free on another poker site, just for play chips... 9 player sngs... at first i still didnt have a clue and kept reloading my play chips (i had no real interest in the game at this point because i didnt understand it). Then i realised that if i sat tight for the first few blind levels about half the field was gone and so i could 'cash' quite consistently in them... obviously i know now thats just because it was play chips and some most people shove every hand lol... but i didnt know that at the time. So i started building a play chip roll and found i wasnt too bad at the game. This got me an invite to a home poker game so i could finally play with my friends... i played like a rock and i thought i played quite well... my other poker playing friends thought i was ok and encouraged me to join sky poker. So i deposit £5 on sky poker in May last year, i play a variety of 30p games. I lose a couple of quid trying out a roulette system on sky vegas... bet 1p on black, if that loses double it etc... i knew that it couldn't work because otherwise casinos wouldn't run roulette but i didnt understand why not so i wanted to know why not... it only works if you have an infinite amount of money btw so dont bother trying it as when a long streak of reds come you lose it all. I read a bit of poker strategy online and think hmm... heads up... i assumed most people would not bother trying to learn a strategy at 30p stakes and so i thought if i had a strategy then surely i could crush the heads up games... errrm no i was still terrible at poker at this point and didnt even realise! So with about £2 of my £5 i went to bed considering never playing poker again... and then i realised... hmmm i was able to win the 30p double your money games for a tiny profit (remember when i played for free and just sat tight for first few blind levels... same strategy worked in dym)... so the next time i played i just played dym. I started winning and was in profit... i moved up to 60p dym and carried on winning, then moved up to £1.15, then £2.25 and finally £3.30. I play 2 tables at a time and am now able to consistently make enough per month to fund my expenses and to bank some extra etc... I am currently trying to become a winning cash game player (playing at 4NL) and break into the 5.50 dym...
although i could not live on the money i make from poker, this is all relative because for me i make enough to cover my expenses etc as a student (such as drinking money) and i am constantly increasing my profitability so my aim is to have the potential to make 10k a year so that if i cannot find a job i at least have some source of income.
Blackfish - Why dont u take a punt at NL 30? - 1 Buy in? 30 quid, a half decent night out. stay in one night instead of goin out.
See how it goes....
U end up 3/4 buy ins up, ur laughing, u lose 1 buy in, its not the end of the world. I cant imagine Dan, Will, James lolufold, etc etc etc started at 2p/4p and within a few years are playing NL500. - 30 quid aint life changing money! Back urself to go for it.
Oh btw, I was at uni when I first started playing properly, I studied at Sheffield whilst living at home in Doncaster, only a 30 min drive, so I didnt have to pay for digs as such. Well I did, but not the krazy amounts they expect students to pay now, just a few quid a week to mi mam n dad...
This allowed my student loan to go further, n my break through came when I trusted my poker ability enough to deposit a significant amount onto another site....
Theres nothing better in poker, in my opinon, that people showing faith in you, but more importantly, having belief in your own ability. Ill maintain this thought till the day I stop playing, poker is played in the head, on sooooo many different levels. - So if ur head is sorted, its in the right place, ur thinking clearly, and u believe in urself, u WILL win!
Go for it bud - PS thanx for the reply on the sng thread, gna come play u this week
Blackfish - Why dont u take a punt at NL 30? - 1 Buy in? 30 quid, a half decent night out. stay in one night instead of goin out. See how it goes.... U end up 3/4 buy ins up, ur laughing, u lose 1 buy in, its not the end of the world. I cant imagine Dan, Will, James lolufold, etc etc etc started at 2p/4p and within a few years are playing NL500. - 30 quid aint life changing money! Back urself to go for it. I wud, especially as ur a winning player. DOHH Posted by DOHHHHHHH
hmmm uve tempted me to do this... maybe not NL30 but just to take shots at say NL10 or 20. ive won almost 10 buy ins since starting cash this week so thats given me some confidence... i guess my problems are that i am ridiculously tight with money (losing anything over £5 depresses me) and that i lack self-confidence in my ability. thanks for the advice m8... what did you study btw? you consider yourself a pro now? yea it would be good to play you... drop me a PM when you want to play and im sure we will be able to get on the same table.
Nooooowhere near a pro!!! Just finished uni, Still living at home, so getting away with murder really, kinda looking for a job but kinda not, If ya no wat I mean, wud need to be a cracking offer to get me excited about it, as Im winning quite abit on here, enough to pay big bed n board to the folks, but nowhere near enough to move out n get things going properly.
Did PE and Youth sport at Sheff Hallam.
Gunna be playing all sorts of sngs this week, so no need for PM, bound to run into u.
If It was possible on here, Id give ya 30 quid for a shot at the cash tables, n take half ya winnings, If ur crushing the DYMS, then ull cruise thru the cash games, theyr both all about discipline at low levels.
Easy money, u wont regret it, n stop bin so tight!!!! lol
um i started playing in 2004 i think. I use to deposit £10 or £20 every so often on other sites and play $5 or $10 sngs. Sometimes i'd run it up to a £100 or so but i would always end up losing it all. I tried reading books but could never really apply any of it to my game and was always pretty terrible. Everytime i thought i had it figured out i would end up losing it all again, i used to think that it must be rigged in some way like all the other donks so kinda gave up for a while.
I happened to stumble across Law School Dropout's poker blog at some point and found it amazing how much money someone could actually make playing online poker so i decided to really give it a go. He mentioned 2p2 so i went there and found out as much as i could. Watched the videos that people would post on there and they helped me more than any books ever had. Started reading strategy, posting hands etc..
i Managed to fluke 2nd place in a freeroll for £800 and used that money to start playing cash. I started at 100nl and by the end of the month i was playing 2/4 with about £4k in my account. I obviously thought i was the greatest. I remember being at £4.9k thinking i would stop playing for the night once i got to £5k. By the time i went to sleep i had about £2k left and had moved upto 5/10 on monkey tilt. Had about 3 hours sleep, got up and lost the rest still tilted. Decided not to play poker for a while.
About 3 months later i deposit £20 on Betfair. Play some 50nl obviously. Run it up to £200 by the end of the day so next day decide to play 100nl, then onto 200nl, i think by the end of the month i had about £1.5k, then the next month i made another £5k, then another £11k the month after that. Decide to go pro. By this point i was playing 5/10 and 10/20. I think at the peak i had something like $38k in my account. I thought i was the greatest.
I clearly wasnt good enough to be playing 10/20 though and it eventually caught up with me. I remember i had been playing all night and had been down about $5k and had just pulled it back to even, it was about 6am, the table broke so it was just HU, i thought the other guy was a bad reg, so i stuck around, his stats were 40/20 or something like that. He wasnt bad. I proceed to lose about $14k and want to die. I never learn from my mistakes so the next day i tilt off another $8k or so playing 5/10. I tilt withdraw the rest of my roll and take some time off.
I think i only deposited £200 on Sky to see what it was like. Had one losing day in my first month so decided to stick around. I started to follow proper bankroll management and have done alright since. I hit a major downswing last year so switched to HU elsewhere but came back to Sky near the end of the year to play 6max after i realised i hate HU. I decided to play 50nl again to get the confidence back and to make sure i could still win at something. I also wanted to work on putting in more hours and treating it more like a job. Before the end of last year i use to put in maybe 1 or 2 hours a day tops unless i was tilted, now i try to play 6-8 hours(If you see me playing terrible its usually in the 8th hour or so when im tired and not concentrating, i still need to work on that.) I actually enjoy the stress-free nature of 10tabling 50nl-200nl now rather than playing higher limits, means i dont have to focus as much. The games are a lot tougher now anyway. 2/4 games 2 years ago are probably equivalant to .5/1 games today.
i would say for anyone who thinks they want to do it for a living. You need to log a lot of hours and make sure youre a consistent winner. You may think youve run bad, but theres gonna be days/weeks/months where you run worse than you ever thought possible. Have at least 50 buyins for what you play. I would focus on cash over stts/mtts, although there are plenty of stt pros. Always be looking to improve, the games are always changing and people are getting a lot better so you need to stay ahead of the curve. Find players better than you that you can discuss hands with and who can help you fix your leaks. If youre just making enough money to get by its probably not worth it. It gets pretty boring playing every day.
This was a post I made on Total Player thread a while ago when some players were arguing about high stakes players being selected...
"Being a player who started at the very bottom of the cash stakes around 2.5 years ago I can relate to some of these posts which show a certain disappointment from the lower stakes players. About 2.5 years ago I began my poker journey which consisted of 5c-10c (the equivalent of 2p-4p nowadays) 6max holdem cash on another site which I wont mention due to advertising issues. At these stakes it is fair to say the poker is a lower standard of play than say £2.5/5 NLHE 6max but now and again a player(s) will dominate these stakes, the luckiest players at this standard?"
To evaluate upon this, I started at the very bottom of the poker food chain I was a uni student and had spent my student loan for the month and had about £50 left before my overdraft maxed out! Those were the days :-D
Around 2.5 - 3 years ago I applied to every place in town to get a job but as you can imagine all the other uni students had taken all the jobs and I was left with no real options. I decided to put £10 (back then equivalent to $20) into a poker site not this one where I played 5c-10c, I had played poker with friends before and new the basics etc was already good at trapping players and made the most unreal laydowns for a beginner. More because I didn't understand hand ranges etc and just thought everyone must have aces. But it worked and a month later I had spun it up into (£500) $1000. I was absolutely chuffed and thought to myself how easy is this.
A month later I did the same again making around $1000 it was getting me by and I had almost spent the other money I earnt. I saw an advertisement for sponsorship with a site called DTD run by a chap called Paul Jackson, you had to have a trial run with a guy called Jeff Burke for a week and if you were good enough they sponsored you with a £2000 bankroll but you had to play 4 tables at least 6 hours a day 5 days a week. You would keep all profits and they would keep all rakeback. Each week I would have a session with Jeff where he would go through hands and give me pointers, now Jeff was a very old school player he would tell you thinks like fold 7s UTG in a 6max cash game etc, tight is right obviously this wasn't too bad for a beginner and some of the things he taught me I have totally altered and developed into my own playing style. I did this for around 2 months before leaving the sponsorship scheme having fallen behind in class and my friends never seeing me I had to knock it on the head.
Paul always told me I was always welcome back infact we are friends to this very day (although the scheme stopped a long time ago). I made a small profit in the 2 months around £1600 which I was chuffed with and now had my own mini roll to go alone and play what times suited me.
Of course over 2.5 years you learn alot I've played alot of hands in this short space of time, read books, gone through mistakes I made each session and I also have a really good memory. I can remember hands from 2.5 years ago like it was yesterday with shocking accuracy. I have a weird brain I tell my friends, where I can remember pictures really well like visual things but if you tell me something I am prone to forgetting it in 5 minutes. I like to think I'm good at problem solving and my maths was always strong as I have an A-level in that which all has helped my online game.
I was doing good online and had about a £12k bankroll after about 3 months after I quit the DTD scheme. I decided in a summer break I had try out a new poker club in Swindon which is called KC's poker club a friend had told me about it, and I guess I sort of wanted to show people what I can do.
I went down the poker club and there were all these older guys big, loud, intimidating I was pretty nervous. I bought in for the £30 freezeout which had about 35 runners. I ended up winning and made some crazy bluffs all throughout I guess I've never been afraid to make a big play if I think I'm right even at the risk of being stupid. I made some huge bluff with pocket 4's where a guy ended up belittling me saying something like "Your gonna lose all your money playing like that son" I just kept quiet. Another guy interrupted and said "No this guy is the kiddy, you dont wanna mess with him Rich!". I just laughed wasn't sure if they were caning me or what. I guess I've always had a fearless nature from the start really I'm pretty sure its a good attribute but you have to know how to tame it which can take a while.
At this club I have met some great friends and also lost one great friend. There was a chinese guy called Jon Chan (No not the one off the TV) but he was chinese, a 68 year old guy who would peform 'tai chi' when he walked into the poker room, one of the most bubbliest and funniest men I have ever met in my life, me and Jon became good friends he used to call me his boy "Mai boi" I was like his adopted son. We used to play cash and became such good friends its a friendly club but he would always say "Half - half?" in the smaller pots and would try and split the pot with me lol. He would always tell me stories in his strong chinese accent at the table and we would laugh and joke together for hours, he was a great player and he taught me how to get value from big hands just by watching him play. He would always say "Mai boi go college, poker no good!" I would say but Jon I win alot online he always would say each day "You got one hundred thousand yet?" followed by his little giggle. Jon made people realise that life was worth living and he would never be unhappy his sheer presence could light up any room. And he is a friend I sorely miss, it is coming up to his 2 year anniversary since he passed away and I would hope that Jon would be proud of me for succeeding in poker and not too disappointed that I quit uni. Here is a small link for you guys to see of him the article is around 2 years old but there is a picture of him. His favourite quotes were "You always smiling" to me and " Hello my darling" To the biggest meanest guys at the poker club. RIP Jon x
With online poker my good spell continued and I ended up making a lot more money online per month, I started missing uni classes though and this was not going down well with my parents, friends or lecturers. I eventually ended up missing my exams due to late night poker grinding which to be honest is silly. Anyone reading this get your degree always have a back up plan. Today I have played games as big as $100/200 and regularly play $5-10 $10-20 on another site other than Sky where I am a big winner. Recommendations to anyone who thinks poker is easy to make a living its really not. I think you either have it or you don't.
But saying that even to this day, I actively look to improve my game watching coaching videos, reading poker forums, analysing my own hands. I started playing the live circuit in 2009 and out of 15 comps I entered I cashed in 7, my biggest cash being £53k in a live comp. I have a knack for building huge chip stacks or usually busting early. After speaking to Tikay, I think I've know adapted that and can change gears and play solid poker too.
The game is going to get harder throughout as the years go by and I wouldn't recommend anyone to try and start a career in poker. It is the hardest way to make an easy living trust me on that one :-)
GL To all and I hope this wasnt too long and boring!
Ps - if the link doesn't work by clicking on it just copy and paste it into the browser if you want to read the article and see a picture of Jon and his daughter. One of the finest men I have ever had the pleasure of meeting he was truly a Legend.
Nooooowhere near a pro!!! Just finished uni, Still living at home, so getting away with murder really, kinda looking for a job but kinda not, If ya no wat I mean, wud need to be a cracking offer to get me excited about it, as Im winning quite abit on here, enough to pay big bed n board to the folks, but nowhere near enough to move out n get things going properly. Posted by DOHHHHHHH
SNAP!!! I haven't even dared signing on the dole yet for fear of having to get a rubbish job instead of getting by on poker winnings...
Comments
So i deposit £5 on sky poker in May last year, i play a variety of 30p games. I lose a couple of quid trying out a roulette system on sky vegas... bet 1p on black, if that loses double it etc... i knew that it couldn't work because otherwise casinos wouldn't run roulette but i didnt understand why not so i wanted to know why not... it only works if you have an infinite amount of money btw so dont bother trying it as when a long streak of reds come you lose it all. I read a bit of poker strategy online and think hmm... heads up... i assumed most people would not bother trying to learn a strategy at 30p stakes and so i thought if i had a strategy then surely i could crush the heads up games... errrm no i was still terrible at poker at this point and didnt even realise! So with about £2 of my £5 i went to bed considering never playing poker again... and then i realised... hmmm i was able to win the 30p double your money games for a tiny profit (remember when i played for free and just sat tight for first few blind levels... same strategy worked in dym)... so the next time i played i just played dym.
I started winning and was in profit... i moved up to 60p dym and carried on winning, then moved up to £1.15, then £2.25 and finally £3.30. I play 2 tables at a time and am now able to consistently make enough per month to fund my expenses and to bank some extra etc...
I am currently trying to become a winning cash game player (playing at 4NL) and break into the 5.50 dym...
although i could not live on the money i make from poker, this is all relative because for me i make enough to cover my expenses etc as a student (such as drinking money) and i am constantly increasing my profitability so my aim is to have the potential to make 10k a year so that if i cannot find a job i at least have some source of income.
x
See how it goes....
U end up 3/4 buy ins up, ur laughing, u lose 1 buy in, its not the end of the world. I cant imagine Dan, Will, James lolufold, etc etc etc started at 2p/4p and within a few years are playing NL500. - 30 quid aint life changing money! Back urself to go for it.
I wud, especially as ur a winning player.
DOHH
Oh btw, I was at uni when I first started playing properly, I studied at Sheffield whilst living at home in Doncaster, only a 30 min drive, so I didnt have to pay for digs as such. Well I did, but not the krazy amounts they expect students to pay now, just a few quid a week to mi mam n dad...
This allowed my student loan to go further, n my break through came when I trusted my poker ability enough to deposit a significant amount onto another site....
Theres nothing better in poker, in my opinon, that people showing faith in you, but more importantly, having belief in your own ability. Ill maintain this thought till the day I stop playing, poker is played in the head, on sooooo many different levels. - So if ur head is sorted, its in the right place, ur thinking clearly, and u believe in urself, u WILL win!
Go for it bud - PS thanx for the reply on the sng thread, gna come play u this week
DOHH
Nooooowhere near a pro!!! Just finished uni, Still living at home, so getting away with murder really, kinda looking for a job but kinda not, If ya no wat I mean, wud need to be a cracking offer to get me excited about it, as Im winning quite abit on here, enough to pay big bed n board to the folks, but nowhere near enough to move out n get things going properly.
Did PE and Youth sport at Sheff Hallam.
Gunna be playing all sorts of sngs this week, so no need for PM, bound to run into u.
If It was possible on here, Id give ya 30 quid for a shot at the cash tables, n take half ya winnings, If ur crushing the DYMS, then ull cruise thru the cash games, theyr both all about discipline at low levels.
Easy money, u wont regret it, n stop bin so tight!!!! lol
DOHH
I happened to stumble across Law School Dropout's poker blog at some point and found it amazing how much money someone could actually make playing online poker so i decided to really give it a go. He mentioned 2p2 so i went there and found out as much as i could. Watched the videos that people would post on there and they helped me more than any books ever had. Started reading strategy, posting hands etc..
i Managed to fluke 2nd place in a freeroll for £800 and used that money to start playing cash. I started at 100nl and by the end of the month i was playing 2/4 with about £4k in my account. I obviously thought i was the greatest. I remember being at £4.9k thinking i would stop playing for the night once i got to £5k. By the time i went to sleep i had about £2k left and had moved upto 5/10 on monkey tilt. Had about 3 hours sleep, got up and lost the rest still tilted. Decided not to play poker for a while.
About 3 months later i deposit £20 on Betfair. Play some 50nl obviously. Run it up to £200 by the end of the day so next day decide to play 100nl, then onto 200nl, i think by the end of the month i had about £1.5k, then the next month i made another £5k, then another £11k the month after that. Decide to go pro. By this point i was playing 5/10 and 10/20. I think at the peak i had something like $38k in my account. I thought i was the greatest.
I clearly wasnt good enough to be playing 10/20 though and it eventually caught up with me. I remember i had been playing all night and had been down about $5k and had just pulled it back to even, it was about 6am, the table broke so it was just HU, i thought the other guy was a bad reg, so i stuck around, his stats were 40/20 or something like that. He wasnt bad. I proceed to lose about $14k and want to die. I never learn from my mistakes so the next day i tilt off another $8k or so playing 5/10. I tilt withdraw the rest of my roll and take some time off.
I think i only deposited £200 on Sky to see what it was like. Had one losing day in my first month so decided to stick around. I started to follow proper bankroll management and have done alright since. I hit a major downswing last year so switched to HU elsewhere but came back to Sky near the end of the year to play 6max after i realised i hate HU. I decided to play 50nl again to get the confidence back and to make sure i could still win at something. I also wanted to work on putting in more hours and treating it more like a job. Before the end of last year i use to put in maybe 1 or 2 hours a day tops unless i was tilted, now i try to play 6-8 hours(If you see me playing terrible its usually in the 8th hour or so when im tired and not concentrating, i still need to work on that.) I actually enjoy the stress-free nature of 10tabling 50nl-200nl now rather than playing higher limits, means i dont have to focus as much. The games are a lot tougher now anyway. 2/4 games 2 years ago are probably equivalant to .5/1 games today.
i would say for anyone who thinks they want to do it for a living. You need to log a lot of hours and make sure youre a consistent winner. You may think youve run bad, but theres gonna be days/weeks/months where you run worse than you ever thought possible. Have at least 50 buyins for what you play. I would focus on cash over stts/mtts, although there are plenty of stt pros. Always be looking to improve, the games are always changing and people are getting a lot better so you need to stay ahead of the curve. Find players better than you that you can discuss hands with and who can help you fix your leaks. If youre just making enough money to get by its probably not worth it. It gets pretty boring playing every day.
probably the longest thing ive ever wrote.
best read i have had in this forum in a long time,
excellent post james !