How I got into Poker - Part Two

Merry Christmas everyone. It seems to me that every year goes faster and faster as I get older, I remember when I was younger time seemed to go so slowly, but now the years whizz past faster than Usain Bolt on steroids. Today is also my birthday so I guess this should call for a double celebration. I've had many people wish me happy birthday and it got me thinking, what's so happy about seeing yourself getting older and older and your life ebbing away before your eyes? Goddamnit I wanna be 16 again, life was so much easier and less complicated then, I just worked weekends and earned enough money to buy all the drugs, alcohol and cigerettes I needed to have a good time. Those were the days...

Anyway back to my riveting story of how I got into the wonderful world of Texas Hold 'Em. To be honest I've already told the story of how I got into poker, this part just explains how I got to where I am today.

I joined Full Tilt in April 2007 and mainly played the micro stakes SNGs. As with my previous experience at PKR I had good days and bad days, my tournament play was getting better but I still had to deposit $50 to $100 a month onto my poker account to keep playing. Again I started to blame the poker site for all my bad beats, I created the 'Big Stack Theory' that stated that poker sites generally favoured the big stacks over small stacks in tournaments in order to get them finished quicker. This way they could fit more tournaments per day and make more money. Of course now I realise that this is nonsense but back then I thought I was the new Doyle Brunsen, destined to blaze a trail so bright that it would turn poker history on its head. This outlook was significantly boosted after I won a 600+ person Multi Table Tournament, it was only a one dollar buy-in but I won $180 which meant I wouldn't have to deposit for a few months. This was in late Summer of 2007 and I have never since had to deposit any extra money to fund my online poker playing (I only mention that as my Mum might read this and I think she's convinced that I waste all my money on online poker, its actually spent on alcohol, drugs and loose women, I tend to waste the rest).

With this misguided belief in my own abilities I gradually whittled away my bankroll on low stakes SNGs to just under $50, and was starting to question exactly how good a poker player I really was. This is really where Broker comes in.

Broker is a good friend of mine who has been playing poker for quite a few years, but had only been taking it seriously for the last couple of years or so. Throughout my first 18 months of playing poker he had been a constant mine of information and advice. He must have bought every book going on poker theory and read it inside out and upside down. Most of what little I knew about poker, and probably most of what I know now, was due to discussions that Broker and I had. He would have these eureka moments and excitedly tell me he had discovered the importance of position, the magic of check raising, or the sheer genius of the continuation bet. Anyway he had joined a poker website called Stoxpoker, and on this website were instructional videos on how to play. He recommended that I watch a series of video's by a guy called Ed Miller, also known as the Noted Poker Authority, called 'Poker Made Simple'. These videos showed how to make money at micro-stakes 6max tables (six seater cash poker tables). I changed my game from playing tournament poker to cash poker and quite literally overnight I became a winning poker player, within two months I had a bankroll of $300 and I was flying. The advice was simple, to make money at low stakes poker you simply adopt a tight aggressive strategy (also known as tag). You only raise with premium hands in early position, and gradually loosen up as you reach the button. You isolate limpers when you think your hand is better pre-flop by raising, and if they call, simply outplay them on the flop. Set-mining (trying to hit three of a kind with a medium/low pocket pair) became a significant weapon in my arsenal and I was really starting to learn how to get the most money from my big hands and lose the least from my losing hands.

At last my vast potential as a world class poker player was beginning to take off, my only limit was my own laziness (possibly the only thing vaster than my poker talent), and, a la Del Boy, this time next year I'd be a millionaire. Well, at least a few grand better off surely...