Posted Sun Aug 27, 2006 6:31 am GMT by iandrum
I woke up this morning and wanted to tell a story. It's a story of self-exploration, of following dreams and well... of poker.
Actually, that's a load of rubbish, it's just about me, building a bankroll and my position within the world of this fascinating game.
I started playing poker with friends, for pennies, and found some enjoyment in the game. If anything else, a night of poker with friends is lots of fun, and a lot cheaper than going out to a bar - heck, you can even win money! That doesn't happen when I go out.
At some point I decided to try my hand at online poker. I scored a promotional $50 at Party and started out on the $.02/.04 tables. I wouldn't have deposited any of my own money (I'm very staunchly anti-gambling... at least, not with my own money).
I've now built this $50 up to over $1000 - however only $100-150 of that is pure poker profit - the rest coming from bonuses and casino whoring. Ie the building of my bankroll is in no way related to my abilities.
In short, I think that I could be a very good poker player. If I read more, invested in poker tracker and studied and thought about my game, I could make a lot of money.
A word on money - it is my motivation to play. When I play with friends it's a bit of a laugh and about enjoying one anothers company. When I play online, I'm usually sitting on my own, bored out of my mind, mindlessly pressing "fold". My strategy at micro-stakes is to play as tight as I can, and hopefully the idiots will pay me off when I hit big. And so far it has worked.
The point is, I don't need the money, I only play for the satisfaction of having won it. Money won is twice as sweet as money earned and all that jazz. I feel I ought to withdraw some and buy myself something nice, but I don't like the fact that Neteller will take a 1.9% fee.
About now I feel I ought to mention that I haven't played poker in about two months. I used to play on my dad's computer, but he doesn't really approve, so I thought I'd better try on my own computer. Unfortunately, mine is rather pants, and in short I ran into problems getting things to run, coupled with the fact that my 45 days on Party's microtables was up and I didn't feel ready to move up to $25NL, and things ground to a halt.
I suppose I'm wondering where to go from here. Do I try to throw myself back into the game (which I still love, especially in person, it just seems quite dissatisfying online), study and improve my game and try and make a some pocket money on the side. If I could play profitably at $25NL and bonus whore I'd be quite happy. Somehow I know that I want to do this (especially to make some money to help me out as a poor student) but I'm not sure it feels quite right.
I know I don't want to quit the game. I'm just not sure if playing online is the way forward. I'm toying with the idea of learning limit (as a mathmatically minded guy, I feel I could excel at this), and possibly visiting casinos as ways for me to outlet my poker needs.
Any advice is appreciated, I'm sure lots of people have gone through similar issues in the past. If anything, the act of writing this all out might help me figure out what to do.
Thanks guys,
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Posted Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:54 am GMT by cayouche
Some people will prefer online, because of the amount of hands/hour played and because you can play 24/7, which is nice.
However for me, I prefer live play. Table talk (I talk alot, lol!!), tells, psychology, etc.
The key to make money in poker is simple, supposing that one knows how to play, therefore a decent player. Bankroll management. Play within your limits, play within your bankroll.
Now, the definition of playing within your bankroll may vary from person to person. But essentially, they all mean the same thing.
As I understand, you have a $1000 bankroll.
As a rule of thumb, you can sit at a table where you have say 25x the buy-in. You can sit at PL or NL25, but not quite ready for NL50. Here, 25x can be debatable. The trick is when you're losing your buy-in, it mustn't affect much your bankroll. Say you lose $25, you still have $975, it's no big deal.
As for casinos, it's kinda hard to have 25x the max buy-in usually. But I'll let you figure that one out.
If you don't need the money right now, save until you can pay for a trip somewhere, or even a car.
Good luck.
Posted Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:19 pm GMT by mindgame
Hold up! Wait a sec!
Yep...now back up to where you lost me.
You took $50 to $1000 and only $100 or $150 was profit. The rest "bonuses," "whoring," whatever. I'm once again feeling completely clueless. Didn't know there could be that kind of money in all that stuff, whatever it is. Obviously the problem with my account balance is that I've been using it to play poker.
Please explain what I'm supposed to be doing with it and how to go about making the poker profit a scant 20% of my total revenue stream.
Posted Sun Aug 27, 2006 3:16 pm GMT by iandrum
Ok, looking over my records, my bankroll is $1139, or which $900 came from casino bonuses, $90 from poker bonuses and $110 from actually playing poker.
So yeah... casino whoring can be quite profitable, although most of them are one time sign-up deals - once they're gone they're gone. Here's the post which got me started:
http://free.asshats.for.spammers.com
Basically the casino gives you money when you sign up, and you just have to play blackjack for hours and hours on end before you can cashout the bonus. Very good when you're bored or can't sleep, which happens to me frequently. I found it to be like poker, but without the thinking (since most of my poker is a big foldfest anyway).
The point is, my bankroll is in no way related to my poker abilities. If you're good at poker, I imagine it is much easier (and more satisfying) to make your money there (particularly if you chase poker bonuses)
Posted Sun Aug 27, 2006 3:43 pm GMT by xDiamond_CutteRx
If you don't use the "instant" Neteller features, they won't charge you anything at all.
Posted Sat Sep 02, 2006 3:51 am GMT by iandrum
There's a fee every time you change currency. My Neteller account is in dollars, my bank account in GBP.
Posted Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:58 am GMT by PokerBarney
I read a blog post somewhere about bonus whores, and how it can actually kill your poker skills. There were tales of a guy that did as you have done, and built his roll through whoring, not realising that he was actually a losing poker player since the bonuses made up for his losses.
If you're going to go on and play poker for the money, take it very slowly and careful. Keep solid analysis of your play, and make sure you're not blowing your hard whored bonus money 
Posted Sat Sep 02, 2006 1:53 pm GMT by wEbMaStEr
Wow I did not imagine when i opened this thread that i'd have so much to say in reply. First off tho...
PokerBarney: Sorry mate, but we have a rule here which means that you will need to remove the link from your signature. I know your page is innocent enough but we have had a lot of problems in the past with links in sigs to affiliate sites and just, well. dodgy sites in general, so we now have a one rule fits all policy of no url's in sigs. You will need to remove it. Sorry. You can however put your url in the webpage part of your profile. Thanks
Ok, on with the comments...
I can't see how bonus whoring could make you a worse player because your losses are covered by any bonus you make? Gotta be better to have the bonus there than to just lose money anyways?
iandrum Very interesting read, thanks. The good thing about online poker is that newer players can learn the game at relatively low limits. As opposed to the $1/$2NL or $2/$4 FL games in cardrooms. If you truly wish to play the game to beat the game and have fun also then why not do a mixture of both online and offline. As to your computer being ancient... It cannot possibly be worse than mine? Most poker software is quite small and use little resources, maybe you have too much other stuff on it that you're not aware of? Remove all the crap from it, format if need be and install a stable, reliable poker client. You should have no worries.
mindgame: It is very possible to make $1000 from poker room bonuses without ever being more than a break even player. There was an article around here somewhere that detailed specifics of which sites to play starting with a small bankroll and then moving up to other sites and getting the full bonus there. It's probably out of date by now. But it wouldn't be too hard to sit down with a poker site directory and plan how to go from one to another to take maximum value from the bonuses.
Tip: Cryptologic sites first, leaving the big sites like party, stars, ub, and full tilt to last when you can make the full bonus from them.
These days there are so many sites out there that you could probably make $5000 merely from bonuses over a period of a few months.
Hrmmm... You really got me thinking about this now.
http://free.asshats.for.spammers.com <-- like it! 
Posted Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:40 pm GMT by iandrum
Pokerbarney and webmaster:
Of course whoring could harm your poker play if it leads you to believe that you are better than you are. But I'm aware of this... I'm not just going to go jumping into $50NL just because I can afford it.
Actually, I've decided to have a crack at personal bankroll challenge, starting with just $10 and trying to build it up (through poker alone). Should be interesting, a bit of a challenge, but assuming I don't bust out very quickly I'll slowly but surely build it up.
Posted Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:42 am GMT by mindgame
WeB,
What do you mean by a cryptological site?
Posted Mon Sep 04, 2006 12:28 pm GMT by iandrum
Really? This is spam?
I thought spam was unsolicited?
So if someone asks a question and I respond, giving a link which which helps to answer them, that's unsolicited advertising?
Wow.
Posted Mon Sep 04, 2006 5:51 pm GMT by jonesyb
| iandrum wrote: |
Really? This is spam?
I thought spam was unsolicited?
So if someone asks a question and I respond, giving a link which which helps to answer them, that's unsolicited advertising?
Wow. |
If the said link contains things like affiliate links/banners/etc then yeah... It's not allowed.
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