I am that guy.
I’ve been thinking alot recently about my younger poker days. I wasn’t one of those players who sat down and became instantly successful at high stakes. I have been playing for about 5 years now. I was looking at my old blog today which was when i first started taking poker seriously. I only managed to blog sporadically for about 2 months but its still funny to look at.
http://www.damnringer.blogspot.com/
When i started that blog, i had been playing poker for 4 years already. One year ago i was happy about a $1000 month. Now i feel like i could have had a better month if i make 10k a month. Its amazing. The question really lies in what happened in between then. Well lets go over what i did:
Well I came up with a plan about a year ago (in may 2007 to be exact, when was in between school and my job). I decided i’d start at the lowest level i could fathom playing. I started with a bankroll of $1000 and at $25nl. I said i was going to play a 30 buyin rule and go until i couldn’t go any further. I said I was only really going to play full ring and i was going to learn a game from the ground up. Honestly, 25nl and 50nl were the toughest stakes to conquer. Its tough to come home and try to play 1000 hands and shoot to make $50. It just doesn’t make you feel adequate. I grinded those stakes, truly grinded them for months. I moved up to 100nl with a win rate over 8bb/100 at 50nl. I then moved up to 200nl about 2 months later with a win rate of 7.5bb/100 at 100nl. Whoa, that was quick i thought. All of the sudden i was seriously motivated. I started killing the 200nl game. People started to take notice. I was getting people who wanted to know how the heck i was beat that game for over 6bb/100 and just started at it. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure and honestly i’m still not quite sure. I am now playing 2/4nl with my roll plenty ready for myself to take another step up using my 30 buyin rule. I’m stopping here though for the moment. 2/4nl was that point where i always thought ‘this is where the real poker starts’ but now i’m beating it for 4bb/100. Well to be completely honest with you, its been real poker the whole time.
Every donkey at one point after taking a bad beats says ‘I wouldn’t take nearly as many bad beats at a higher limit’. If you think, you can’t beat 50nl but can beat 600nl, you are goddamn delusional. The things i’ve taken from each step along the way help me understand everything about the point i’m at. It really is like each level has a skill you must master before you move up. For example, 25nl is all about pre-flop hand selection. 50nl is all about learning position. 100nl is all about learning when it is correct to set-mine and becoming capable of laying down AA postflop. 200nl is a place where value betting gets you to the promiseland. And i’m not necessarily a master of 400nl yet, but i think the answer to the next level is adaptation, restealing pre- and thinner value bets. As your edge becomes less significant, the things you must learn become far more precise. I’ve gone from learning that AJ isn’t a raise from utg to learning that its likely ‘andrew song’ is restealing my isolation bet against a weak fish from the CO, and shoving 99 because i know his range is wide enough that it warrants it. Wow, that’s a hell of a scope. If i could give a piece of advice to a player who was like me at one time, looking up to 400nl grinders and just imagining how it must feel to win and lose $1000 pots on a regular basis, it would be this. Start from the bottom. Start Humbly. You aren’t as good as you think you are. If you are as good as you think you are, it will show in one year.
I always thought I had what it took to make it to the top of online poker. Being a very solid Magic: the gathering player (yeah i just admitted it) in my younger years, i had alot of the concepts instilled in my brain. Anyways, now that i’m sitting where i really strived to be i almost forget what it is like to be a grinder at 25nl again. I am not the same player I was a year ago. I’m not even close.
Sitting on the brink of going pro, i gotta wonder what the next year holds for me in poker. I think the possibilities are endless. As I’ve mentioned before, my goal by the end of this year was to be beating 400nl. I never imagined i’d be beating 400nl and 600nl (over a super small sample size) by April of 2008. I am now setting my goals higher. I want to live off poker. I want to live the dream of being my own boss. I want to feel the struggles, the freedom and hopefully the ultimate victory of playing poker for a living. All that study, thinking and hard work has paid off. Its worth it. It really is.
Sorry if that sounded like a graduation speech but its kinda how i feel at the moment.
I really like ur analysis of the differences between levels from nl25 to nl400.
Good post.
Excellent post! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Your descriptions of the skill sets for each level was spot on. What era of MTG did you play in? I used to play back in the day as well, back in the Alliances/Mirage/Tempest era. Had a Mox Sapphire, Juzam Djinn, and a Library of Alexandria at one time…if only I would’ve kept them instead of selling them to get into paintball. Peace.
great post ringer. i’m where you were a year ago right now in cash games except 6m instead of FR. Goal is to be a 200nl reg in a year, i think i would be very happy if i could accomplish that.
Vizer-
I started playing during revised and legends. And stopped slightly after 5th edition came out. Yeah i sold my whole set on ebay a few years back for something like $600. I had a pretty comprehensive set too. Never had a mox tho! A silly pain-lands set tho.