You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
Sky Poker forums will be temporarily unavailable from 11pm Wednesday July 25th.
Sky Poker Forums is upgrading its look! Stay tuned for the big reveal!
Anyone play online poker for a living, or to earn a living....
If so how did you start, how long did it take u to build up, what did u deposit to start and how many hours a day you play and at what level, cash tourny....
Regards
Pete
Regards
Pete
Comments
I`m sure I read somewhere JAMES has only been playing 2.5 years. Thats incredible seeing as how successful he is.
Come on pro`s, give us an insight of how you started to where you are now and how you did it and all that.
After all, we, the community have to vote on a total player sooner or later ;;;---)))
Data entry is the place to be.
Pete
Im definately not a pro, but i can give you my poker story.
I started playing poker 3 years ago on christmas day! Scrabble was getting tedious and the alcohol was flowing and my old man pipes up saying 'why dont we play poker!'
Me, my mum, girlfriend and nan had never played cards before, let alone poker!
We agreed and he got the match sticks out, and began to teach us!
4 hours later, my nans purse was full of matchsticks! She cleaned up! So anyway, i was hooked. The next day, i was at a friends house and decided to share my wicked new discovery, and then they were hooked. For around 3 months i just played home games, and then realised i was doing ok, ans saw an advertisement for an online poker site.
So i set an account up, and started playing £5 sit and goes. (think i deposited £10) spun that up to about £100 and thort i was phuil ivey! (obv dint know who he was at that time)
Then inevitably went bust!
After repeating this busto thing around 10 times, i decided i wanted to get serious, so just typed in google 'poker strategy tips' and wow, i couldnt believe all the info!
As i was a student at the time, i had alot of time on my hands, and just started to learn, and after reading for 3 hours, id play for an hour and try to put into practise what id learned!
Then i heard about poker books! I bough, super system 1 & 2 & hellmuths play poker with the pro's thingy.
So here i was with my TAG style, making notes on people callling them 'elephants' 'mouse' 'lion' that sort of stuff!
If remember right i deposited 100 quid of my student loan, and lost it, then £200 and went on a hot streak! I still wasnt using good BRM, but i won a couple of £20 tournies for like £500 and that gave me about a 1k roll.
This is when i began to play on sky poker, and just put in loads of hours, gaining experience, and the roll began to grow. I steered away from sit and goes for a while, and just played 100nl cash.
This is when i started to gain a few moves to my game and really started taking it seriously. Uni got booted, and i was playing full time everyday!
BR was now around 3k i fink, but i was still tilting badly, and not realising about variance and the 'swings'
I bought a few more books, a sklansky tourny one, which i would recommend to everyone! I guess the point im making is im always learning and studying and wanting to improve. I think that will to win and succeed is what you need as a player.
Then in 2009 after playing for two years i had a healthy bankroll to play most limits up to 500nl. Then the vegas sats were in full swing and decided to take a shot at the vegas lite package, and won the seat! This was a huge moment for me, as a poker enthusiast, to go to vegas was the dream!
Anyway, went to vegas and cashed in the event. 41st out of 3000 fink it was, and it was for just under $12,000.
This gave me the belief that i can play with the best of them and hold my own. I played with JC tran, jason mercier, rolande de wolfe, raymand rahme, and a few others. It was a sureal experience, and one i will remember for a very long time.
The sky team were terific, and i learnt alot from TK in particular, about how to conduct yourself at a poker table.
So anyway, its the start of 2010, ive been chosen for total player which im soooo excited about, and starts tomorrow! Im in the middle of a downswing, (you know the type, in ahead 80% fav blah de blah, but i understand this comes with the territory and you have to deal with it!
I still have a job, but i do take my poker very seriously, and one day hope to be a 'pro' or take down a big score!
Im hoping 2010 will be the year! Hope i havent bored you too much with this, but just thort id share with you my journey!
Will be good to hear others stories on their poker life!
Dan
Great post Dan, good luck for 2010.
Hope people can add there own stories
thanks dan
Like my job and it pays me well ( lucky me!!!!). Enjoy poker for what it is and that's just a bit of fun. To try and make a living would make it far too serious for me ( not that I'm having a go at those who do).
I've won a few 'biggish' tourneys in my time ( on and off two years) the biggest being £2000 which paid for a nice holiday for the family. That'll do me.....dont want to lose much,don't expect to win much.
I don't profess to be a good player but sometimes I get ' in the zone' as I am sure we all do!!!!!!!!
think theirs a book in it lol,
gl in tp
of your poker life..dantb10
I only play for fun and if I do have a nice cash in a MTT then another bill has been paid.
or end with "and it was all a dream!"
Tell it blackfish, also, look at my new thread about sng's m8, as a winning player at these games, wud appreciate ur input.
DOHH
So i deposit £5 on sky poker in May last year, i play a variety of 30p games. I lose a couple of quid trying out a roulette system on sky vegas... bet 1p on black, if that loses double it etc... i knew that it couldn't work because otherwise casinos wouldn't run roulette but i didnt understand why not so i wanted to know why not... it only works if you have an infinite amount of money btw so dont bother trying it as when a long streak of reds come you lose it all. I read a bit of poker strategy online and think hmm... heads up... i assumed most people would not bother trying to learn a strategy at 30p stakes and so i thought if i had a strategy then surely i could crush the heads up games... errrm no i was still terrible at poker at this point and didnt even realise! So with about £2 of my £5 i went to bed considering never playing poker again... and then i realised... hmmm i was able to win the 30p double your money games for a tiny profit (remember when i played for free and just sat tight for first few blind levels... same strategy worked in dym)... so the next time i played i just played dym.
I started winning and was in profit... i moved up to 60p dym and carried on winning, then moved up to £1.15, then £2.25 and finally £3.30. I play 2 tables at a time and am now able to consistently make enough per month to fund my expenses and to bank some extra etc...
I am currently trying to become a winning cash game player (playing at 4NL) and break into the 5.50 dym...
although i could not live on the money i make from poker, this is all relative because for me i make enough to cover my expenses etc as a student (such as drinking money) and i am constantly increasing my profitability so my aim is to have the potential to make 10k a year so that if i cannot find a job i at least have some source of income.
x
See how it goes....
U end up 3/4 buy ins up, ur laughing, u lose 1 buy in, its not the end of the world. I cant imagine Dan, Will, James lolufold, etc etc etc started at 2p/4p and within a few years are playing NL500. - 30 quid aint life changing money! Back urself to go for it.
I wud, especially as ur a winning player.
DOHH
Oh btw, I was at uni when I first started playing properly, I studied at Sheffield whilst living at home in Doncaster, only a 30 min drive, so I didnt have to pay for digs as such. Well I did, but not the krazy amounts they expect students to pay now, just a few quid a week to mi mam n dad...
This allowed my student loan to go further, n my break through came when I trusted my poker ability enough to deposit a significant amount onto another site....
Theres nothing better in poker, in my opinon, that people showing faith in you, but more importantly, having belief in your own ability. Ill maintain this thought till the day I stop playing, poker is played in the head, on sooooo many different levels. - So if ur head is sorted, its in the right place, ur thinking clearly, and u believe in urself, u WILL win!
Go for it bud - PS thanx for the reply on the sng thread, gna come play u this week
DOHH
Nooooowhere near a pro!!! Just finished uni, Still living at home, so getting away with murder really, kinda looking for a job but kinda not, If ya no wat I mean, wud need to be a cracking offer to get me excited about it, as Im winning quite abit on here, enough to pay big bed n board to the folks, but nowhere near enough to move out n get things going properly.
Did PE and Youth sport at Sheff Hallam.
Gunna be playing all sorts of sngs this week, so no need for PM, bound to run into u.
If It was possible on here, Id give ya 30 quid for a shot at the cash tables, n take half ya winnings, If ur crushing the DYMS, then ull cruise thru the cash games, theyr both all about discipline at low levels.
Easy money, u wont regret it, n stop bin so tight!!!! lol
DOHH
I happened to stumble across Law School Dropout's poker blog at some point and found it amazing how much money someone could actually make playing online poker so i decided to really give it a go. He mentioned 2p2 so i went there and found out as much as i could. Watched the videos that people would post on there and they helped me more than any books ever had. Started reading strategy, posting hands etc..
i Managed to fluke 2nd place in a freeroll for £800 and used that money to start playing cash. I started at 100nl and by the end of the month i was playing 2/4 with about £4k in my account. I obviously thought i was the greatest. I remember being at £4.9k thinking i would stop playing for the night once i got to £5k. By the time i went to sleep i had about £2k left and had moved upto 5/10 on monkey tilt. Had about 3 hours sleep, got up and lost the rest still tilted. Decided not to play poker for a while.
About 3 months later i deposit £20 on Betfair. Play some 50nl obviously. Run it up to £200 by the end of the day so next day decide to play 100nl, then onto 200nl, i think by the end of the month i had about £1.5k, then the next month i made another £5k, then another £11k the month after that. Decide to go pro. By this point i was playing 5/10 and 10/20. I think at the peak i had something like $38k in my account. I thought i was the greatest.
I clearly wasnt good enough to be playing 10/20 though and it eventually caught up with me. I remember i had been playing all night and had been down about $5k and had just pulled it back to even, it was about 6am, the table broke so it was just HU, i thought the other guy was a bad reg, so i stuck around, his stats were 40/20 or something like that. He wasnt bad. I proceed to lose about $14k and want to die. I never learn from my mistakes so the next day i tilt off another $8k or so playing 5/10. I tilt withdraw the rest of my roll and take some time off.
I think i only deposited £200 on Sky to see what it was like. Had one losing day in my first month so decided to stick around. I started to follow proper bankroll management and have done alright since. I hit a major downswing last year so switched to HU elsewhere but came back to Sky near the end of the year to play 6max after i realised i hate HU. I decided to play 50nl again to get the confidence back and to make sure i could still win at something. I also wanted to work on putting in more hours and treating it more like a job. Before the end of last year i use to put in maybe 1 or 2 hours a day tops unless i was tilted, now i try to play 6-8 hours(If you see me playing terrible its usually in the 8th hour or so when im tired and not concentrating, i still need to work on that.) I actually enjoy the stress-free nature of 10tabling 50nl-200nl now rather than playing higher limits, means i dont have to focus as much. The games are a lot tougher now anyway. 2/4 games 2 years ago are probably equivalant to .5/1 games today.
i would say for anyone who thinks they want to do it for a living. You need to log a lot of hours and make sure youre a consistent winner. You may think youve run bad, but theres gonna be days/weeks/months where you run worse than you ever thought possible. Have at least 50 buyins for what you play. I would focus on cash over stts/mtts, although there are plenty of stt pros. Always be looking to improve, the games are always changing and people are getting a lot better so you need to stay ahead of the curve. Find players better than you that you can discuss hands with and who can help you fix your leaks. If youre just making enough money to get by its probably not worth it. It gets pretty boring playing every day.
probably the longest thing ive ever wrote.