Where to start?!?!?!

I have been playing online poker for four years, about like most post-moneymaker online players. At the very beginning, I played freeroll tournaments just for the excitement it gave me. Nothing like outlasting 3000 other players to win a tournament. After a few months, it kind of lost its luster and I began to watch tournaments or players playing for real money.



I made my first deposit $25 in Novenber of 2003, and I played on that for probably 2-3 weeks. Finally losing it all in a $5.50 Sit-n-Go at Bugsy's Club. However, our group of poker buddies played a couple of home-game tournaments and I won the second event, netting me a little over $500.



I took that $500 and deposited half at Bugsys and the other half at UltimateBet, and I have never really looked back since. Some of my buddies were interested in playing online and some gave it try while most decided they weren't good enough to play or didn't really want to waste the time. My biggest problem from this point through late 2006 was I was never able to build a bankroll because I always withdrew my winnings by transferring money to other players for cash or withdrawing portions of big scores I would make in tournaments.


That problem was quickly resolved with the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in October of 2006 and the closing of several e-wallet sites that made depositing to online poker sites fairly simple. Since my ability to deposit was pretty much taken away, I now had to cut off my friends from money transfers I would make to them.


For me, this happened to be a great thing for my online bankroll as it would normally fluctuate betweeen $500 and $2500 and never really get any bigger. With my average usually around $1500, I was limited to what size game I could play comfortably without worrying about going busto. This is what most every good poker player adheres to, not playing over your head or your bankroll. I will explain this in greater detail in another post.

Now my bankroll has grown to over $7000 in about 10 months time, but it has twice been as big as $8700 within the last couple of months. Losing is normal part of playing poker, even the best are going to have stretches where nothing goes right. But just like investing, good players in the long-term are going make money. As the size of the game gets bigger, so does the quality of players. That means there will be fewer and fewer winners as we go up the ladder of stakes. I'm sure there will be a point where I will reach my ceiling of profitable play. But hopefully I can make 4-5 more levels before I reach that point.

I will be back with more information and hopefully some poker hand discussions very soon!

My player ID's at each site are:

Birdiemachine-FullTilt
Birdymachine-UltimateBet
Birdymachine-PokerStars

Good luck at the tables!