I started playing poker in the fall/winter of 2003. Party was the site and SNGs was the game. I played pretty horrible and lost my $50 deposit in about 2 weeks. I redeposited a month later and this time it took 2 months to go broke so I didn't play anymore after that for a while. At the time, I was playing a couple times a week with some guys from work. It was usually a low buy-in SNG with usually about 6 of us putting up $5 each. In April of 2004 I bought Howard Lederer's poker DVD. The DVD was pretty basic but what I liked was the starting hand requirements sheet that came with it. It was much tighter that the approach I had used. Before this I was the old calling station and would play anything that was connectable. You know the 95 powerhouse hand! I would call down with top pair regardless of the obvious flush or weak kicker. Armed with my new starting requirements I decided to give online poker another try. So on April 19th, 2004 I started again and haven't stopped since. All through the spring and summer of 04, I played mainly $5+$1 Party SNGs. I know the $1 fee was stupid when I could of been playing the $10 for the same fee but this is just one of many mistakes I've made in my poker career and there is many more to come for sure. I basically played just above break even poker during this time. I would build my $50 up to over $100 and sometimes $200 but eventually I would play at higher buy-in or go over to limit poker and blow it back down to under $200. However, I was content with this because at the time I just enjoyed poker and it was a good value on my money for entertainment. It was cheaper than buying the latest video game or going to the weekly movie. Towards the end of the 2004 summer, Party came out with the $30 + $3 30 man multi-table SNGs. My brother was playing them and doing pretty well and thought I should give them a shot. But my bankroll was under $100 at the time so he tranfered me $100 to give it a try. Yep, I had under $200 and I was going to play $33 - 3 table SNGs. More brilliance on my part. Well as luck would have it I run my bankroll up to $776 in a week including paying back the $100 to my brother. The games were good as this was the lowest limit that Party offered in a 30 man tournament. I decided that I should start playing 2-3 of them at a time to really take advantage of these fish. It was then that I had my worst day ever and managed to lose $444 in one day. Over the next few weeks I managed to lose the rest of it. Broke again and time to start over again. It was then that I read Ed Miller's Small Stakes Holdem and a lightbulb came on. Up until then I had tried a little limit holdem with absolutely no success. I wouldn't do a Party reload because I knew I would lose more money than the bonus would be by the time I played enough raked hands. So I deposited another $50 and started playing .5/1 limit one table at a time. Over then next 2 months I read Miller's book cover to cover 3 times. I started to multi-table and soon was playing 3-4 tables and had my bankroll over $500 again. I moved up and played $1/2 and did good but quickly jumped to $2/4 when my bankroll hit $700. I played here for a good month and ran my bankroll up to $1700. It was awesome and I was pretty sure I was on my way to mastering this game and then you guessed it, I hit the downswing. Over then next 3 weeks, I managed to lose $1300. Part of it was a terrible swing of cards and luck but part of it was just plain poor play on my part. I was paying off too many guys on my 2nd best hands and not getting paid on my good hands. Frustrated with myself for not bailing on the 2/4 before I got this low, I learned a valuable lesson in my poker career in bankroll management. I vowed never again would I try to play over my bankroll and would move backwards in limits if my bankroll shrank to the level below again. So in December of 2004, I started back at .5/1 and took did well again. I started taking advantage of Party's reloads and by the start of 2005 I had a $600 bankroll again. I felt good about my poker again and set a goal to make $10,000 in 2005. For the 1st 3 months, I made just over $2400 just playing .5/1 and taking advantage of the Party reloads. I was well on my way. In April of 2005, I found bonus whoring and my bankroll took off. I was already a good low limit player and the bonuses just padded my bankroll. I bought dual monitors and started 6-8 tabling for bonuses. Through the end of July I had made over $17,000 for the year but the 6-8 tabling was wearing on me a bit. Towards the end of July, my brother was playing mainly MTTs on Bodog and doing ok and having alot of fun. So I gave it a shot. You can see a pattern here of my big brother getting me sidetracked alot, lol. I did too good again starting out and in under 20 low limit tournaments I managed to make just under $2,000. I won my first one, it was a small $5 buy-in that paid $262 to win. A week later, I won Bodog's 3K for a nice $750. Two days later I got second in Bodog's 6500 guaranteed for $1040. I loved playing the MTTs and wanted to play them the majority of the time. As usual, I jumped ship and pretty much just played MTTs for the first week or two in August with very little bonus whoring during this time. After 2 weeks, I just wasn't making any money. I was making a few final tables but no top 2 or 3's for the bigger money. Over the course of 2005 my family had become used to the extra cash that poker was bringing in so I felt I needed some steady income to go with the MTTs. So I made myself go back to bonus whoring and focus on making money again. I ended up making just over $1000 for the month, my worst month since February but still decent money. I decided that with the start of September, I would use limit my MTT time and budget for it. I would use 10% of my winnings from the previous money to play MTTs. I decided it would be easier if I mainly stuck to one site to I deposited my $100 in Bodog at the end of August since I liked their tournaments and I didn't play anything else there. I managed to place 11th in the 7500 guaranteed with was good and bad. It was my highest place in this tournament for some reason but I was too close to the big money to be happy. I played in the Calender freeroll and ended up winning it for $100. Not great money but it made me feel better about my game. I've signed up for NSXT2 real poker training course and it has helped me with some of my aggression issues but I have a long way to go. Eventually, I want to get to a place where I can play MTTs 50-75% of the time. I'm hoping that this blog will keep me focused on that and it should be a good place to see my past mistakes and gauge my progress in the future. I will try to update this daily or every few days on how my poker went that day and just some general poker ramblings.

Source: Titans01's Daily Poker