[jbones]

I thought about putting this in the Online Poker section but decided against it- this seems like the most appropriate spot.

I haven't seen any threads like this here on CT, so let's get one rolling:

Describe your poker career, in whatever terms you feel most appropriate. I'd prefer that this thread not turn into comparing net gain from poker, but if that's the only way you can describe yourself, have at it.


I started playing poker freshman year of college 2 years ago (had played a few times since then but only because my friends were doing it, didn't even know hand rankings for sure so I don't count that) and knew right away I wanted to get serious about the game.

We played nightly $5 sng's in my dorm with 6-12 people with a horrible structure and dice chips, probably like most other people started. During the day between classes we started playing heads up freezeouts, and I really loved those and still play heads up tourneys more than anything else.

A friend of mine was also pretty serious about getting good, and we both deposited online. I put $50 on stars and started playing $5 HU sng's. I remember getting to somewhere between 100 and 150 pretty quickly before I moved up too fast and went broke. I waited a while, and instead of depositing again signed up with Royal Vegas Poker because they gave you $10 for free, and I played with that for a looong time, starting with $1 and $2 sng's. Eventually I moved up and went busto, again.

We kept playing live, and getting at least a little better. Then my buddies and I took our first trip to the casino- Turning Stone in upstate NY. I played the $100 max 1/2 NL with the serious friend, and realized that I love live cash games especially. Unfortunately I lost all my profits plus the money I brought at blackjack. I didn't even know optimal strategy, and was being an idiot.

We went back to school and played our regular nightly tournaments, and started occasionally going to bigger tourneys when we heard about them. The first one we played got broken up with like an $800 prize pool, and the second one I finished 2nd, my biggest score at the time.

I deposited again on Stars after that, and shortstacked 25NL. No idea what made me decide to do that, but it worked out great. I was cashing out a hundred bucks a week which at the time felt f'in awesome. This was towards the end of my 2nd year of college, and I didn't play at all during the summer.

I started up again this fall buying in full at 25NL, and was doing fine. I moved up to 50NL, which I'm definitely a winning player at, but went bustooo because I shouldn't have moved up until I made more (or just put more back on stars- I moved up with only 150 in my acct.) That's me today. I host a .25/.50 game, and play heads up tournaments whenever someone asks, but that's unfortunately it for now.

I've never had PokerTracker, which probably a lot of you find hilarious, but I also very rarely play more than 2 tables and like to think about my decisions and honestly I do just fine taking notes on players myself. I guess I'm stuck with this idea that relying on PT will detrimentally affect my live game, which is probably retarded, but I really don't see it helping.

NL hold em definitely isn't my favorite game, but I play it because it's what people want to play. I'd love to host a stud game but don't see that happening in the near future. I'll probably play online again but definitely not until I'm sure it's not going to stress me out at all. Maybe this means buckling down and getting PT, and it definitely means not playing without an adequate roll.