Making the Leap
I have been getting a lot of Private Messages on here lately all asking the same type of questions: “How long have you been playing?” “What limits did you play at in the past?” and “When/How did you move up to the 50-100 NL Game?”
I would like to answer those questions in this article, because I want to help those who feel they have the ability to play higher levels, and to thereby make more money from poker.
I want to start by saying that I didn’t make a sudden “leap” in the poker world. It was a long road filled with hard work and a combination of seeing thousands upon thousands of hands, continuing to get better through reading books (Approx. 15 of the most popular ones on the market), watching every televised poker show (WSOP, WPT, Poker Superstars, even Celebrity Poker), and discussing hands and situations with other players. The one thing that always kept me going was I always believed I was a winning player, and that No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em is a game that can be beaten.
I have been playing now for a little over two years, probably just like 80% of the p5 community. Moneymaker. Rounders. Millions. We all got into the game for the same reason, most at the same time. When I first played, my freshman year of college, I played the smallest games possible, probably making $100 in the four months between the beginning of second semester and Summer. When I came home for that Summer, I began playing on UB. My brother and I shared an account, and our initial $25 deposit was grinded into approx. $400 by the end of Summer strictly on $5 and eventually $10 SnGs. It wasn’t much, but even then I believed some players had an advantage over other players. I wanted to do whatever I could to get that advantage.
During that Summer, I ran well enough in a $20 re-buy tournament to win a free $500 entry into a Krazy Kanuck tournament on UB. While I barely missed cashing, the buy-in was equal to about a month of full-time work at my job, and I saw the future in poker. Also, early in my career I had played in two tournaments with a bunch of lawyers from my hometown. The first time I played, I put up the $60 buy-in (which was about my total profit from poker at the time) and out of approx. 45 players, reached the final table, finishing 6th. It was good for $200. The next time the tournament rolled around, I took down 3rd, good for approx. $450. While I was very inexperienced and tight, I learned as much as I could from the experiences and had confidence in playing large tournaments. I was not much of an overall player, but was competent enough to play good cards well, which made me believe I was still a winning player.
After that Summer, I had about $1000 saved to my name from work and poker. Having few financial responsibilities, I lived off that money for the first semester of my sophomore year of college. I continued to learn about the game, and played in every home game I could find on our campus. I continued to play sporadically online, but I was still trying to become a consistent winner. I grinded it out for the whole semester, and my savings lasted until the end of the semester. I remember getting a call from my bank that they were shutting down my account after withdrawing all the funds and not replenishing any more. Then a funny thing happened shortly after.
With the few dollars I had in my UB account, I managed to win a Tournament Entry Chip on UB worth $109. With some luck and some cards, I managed to make the final table in my first tournament with a $100 buy-in. I took 7th for about $400, and had some success in SNGs to win another $350 more. At that point, There was no doubt in my mind that I could make more playing poker than working part-time. I always firmly believed I could win.
After a Christmas break that ate up a lot of money, thanks in no part to an unsuccessful trip to Atlantic City’s Taj Mahal, I went back to my second semester with about $200 to my name, and no bank account to turn to. I literally carried around every dollar I had into the home games I would play around campus, with $5 and $10 buy-ins. Occasionally, I would play in cash games with a $40 buy-in, and miraculously, continued to win enough money to live off. I paid for every meal, and learned the art of bankroll management.
I continued to hover around a bankroll of a hundred dollars or two for a couple of months. I lived a normal college life, and it cost a lot to live as I liked. When my friends and I started playing poker, one famously stated that he was going to “round for rent” — or make enough money playing cards to pay for his monthly rent. He was a losing player, however, the proclamation always stuck in my mind though, as it was positive thinking like this that is necessary for poker players. I then caught my first break in April of last year, when I cashed out $1200 after a 3-day run on UB that started with a $5 transfer that was down to exactly 89 cents. I turned the .89 into 5.25, played a heads up match, and won. Then I kept playing heads up, and kept winning. I quickly raised my stakes – to $10, then $20, and eventually trying my luck at $50 heads up matches. I hadn’t played much online all semester, starting with transfers of $6 or $10 dollars and impossibly playing above my head when I would run it up a little. However, it all paid off with the $1200 boom, which gave me enough money in just enough time to try the next big step — not working all Summer.
Summer jobs to a majority of college kids are about the only time they have all year to make enough money to the point that they can stash some of it for the upcoming year. I had to make about $225 a week to equal my income from my previous summer’s job working on the state road. I took my chance at heads up and 6-man sngs, usually all with $30 buy-ins (or less if I was running bad). I went broke a few times a week, always starting with transfers of $25 from my brother, and occasionally taking chances in high buy-in MTTs. I had a nice run early in my Summer job, cashing out $500 a week into my experiment. However, this was the last profit I saw for over a month. I continued to get transfers from my brother, and continued to go broke. It was only a few months ago I was playing .01-.02 cash games and $1 SNGs. I was in a bind, but still believed I had the ability to make money. After all, what did the best players in the world have that I didn’t? I had access to all the same things they did, could read all the same books. I remained determined, and it finally paid off.
After a drought of about a month of no cashing, I hopped on an account with my buddy, who had about $200 on his UB account. I took over the money, and eventually had a run where I won $1800 in a week. Then $600. Then $900. All by playing the same games I always had – $10 through $50 SNGs and the occasional MTT (which I never had notable success). At the least, I had proven that I could at least do better than a Summer job in my hometown, but the money I was making was still not substantial enough to do much with. But I continued to believe, and continued to play.
At the beginning of this school year, I still played about 20-25 hous of poker a week. I was cashing out $200 about twice a week by continuing to beat SNGs. Then I took 2nd in a MTT for $1100, and 3rd in another for $900. My cash-out frequency continued to grow, as did the price of the cash out. I moved up to $100 heads up matches and 6-man SNGS. Soon I had about $2k saved, then $5k. That is when it all began.
It started in early December. I had just deposited and lost all of the maximum $750 that UB allows deposited in a day. Just like always, I believed I could win, and came back the next day with a $300 deposit. I quickly took it up to $600, then played a $200 heads up match. I won that match and the next six in a row, and suddenly had over $2k in my UB account. I was still excited when I woke up the next day and saw someone sitting in a heads up 1k room. The $200 I played for the day before marked the most I had ever played before, and what I did could be viewed as stupidity, or just straight gambling, but I figured I was free-rolling from my rush from the day before. I entered the $1k room, and after grinding my opponent down, won the biggest game of my life. Still feeling good, I won the re-match, and was on my way.
Christmas break soon followed, with a month off of classes. I took the 4k into 10, then 15, then 20. I started playing cash games, first 2-4 and 3-6, then 5-10 and 10-25. I continued to read books. Sklansky’s Theory on Hold ‘Em and the Harrington on Hold ‘Em series. I also joined and watched the videos on CardRunners.com, getting top advice from top players. A big day for me was when I had approx. $30k in my account and took 5 of it into a 25-50 against Green Plastic of CardRunners. After we played a few hands we raced for all of the chips with my A-Q vs his 9-9. When an ace hit the flop, I felt fortunate but confident at the higher levels. I continued at 25-50, playing aggressive yet usually having the best of it when the really big pots came up. And I eventually took my chance at the highest No Limit games on UB, the 50-100 cash game. I have had success with my style of play there as well.
Eventually I had my account up to $100,000 by Super Bowl Sunday, a hell of a two-month run. The day after the Super Bowl, I won a $10k trip to Aruba.. Two days later I won a $200 buy-in MTT for $19k.
I was discouraged many times along the way. My parents scolded me nearly daily last Summer for not having a “real” job. My friends said I was crazy. But through it all, I always believed in myself, and encourage you all to do the same. If you think you can, go for it.
