Quote from novel20:
Theactionkid, would you mind sharing your story when you played poker as a profession? And just curious, what made you stop playing? It would be great supplemental income when you trade in the day, and play some poker at night, isn't it?
Heh, for one it was not supplemental income, it was primary income. It all started 3 years ago on
www.partypoker.com when I was 18 years old depositing $50 one day when I was bored and busting it right away. I told myself that I would never play again but 2 or 3 days later when my friend canceled on me I was stuck home again with no plans and nothing to do, so I said I will try putting another $50 on and if I lose then I am done for good.
After that second $50 deposit I never looked back. I started out playing .10-.25 NL blinds which is a max $25 buy in table. I grinded up my $50 to $200 or so and was done for day 1. Next day I continued making money and was slowly progressing up in the table levels as well. To cut a long story short after 1 week I had the account up to over $2200. At this point I realized that you can make some serious money playing online poker and continued playing the cash games and sweating "watching" other games such as pot limit omaha, limit hold'em, 1 table tournaments called "sit-n-gos" , and multi table tournaments. At the time I was very infatuated with multi table tournaments because I've always been a money-man, and well the payouts in those were the greatest, however one day on party poker i met someone who lived fairly close to me (maybe 20 minutes away) and we started talking - this was none other than Rearden Metal! He was at this time also playing poker professionally and taught me a very effective system on how to play sit-n-gos that I began using and making sick money for a 18/19 year old kid these days. I do not have the records in front of me, but in my first year I made 6 figures+ playing online poker and at this point was playing entirely tournaments - both sit n gos and multi table tournaments. I helped propel the bankroll by winning a super tuesday event on party poker for $33,000 one night and winning a couple other $109 and $55 multis for $12,000 and $5500 respectively.
I felt like I was in heaven, I had more money than I knew what to do with, paid off my car, my college tuition (25k a year), and lived what i consider "comfortably" for a few years. The problem was that people noticed that these sit n gos were filled with fish, except for the select few top notch players here and there, and players from other sites like pokerstars that came over the play the $215 sit n gos because they were so juicy and lucrative, I knew this day would come, but did not think it would come as soon as it did. All in I stopped playing because the games got bad and were not the "honey-hole" that they used to be. Before it was me at the table playing against maybe 1 ok player and 8 other donkeys, later it was 6 or 7 good players, and only 2-3 fish. The fish to pro ratio decreased for the simple reason that the bad players went bust, and after re-depositing so many times and going broke over and over again finally decided to call it quits, while the good players got better....so essentially at some point in the future you will be playing against all people that know what they are doing and no fish, which is no good, at least not for me because at this point you do not have an edge, and in poker it is all about knowing the odds and having an edge. I still dabble a bit on party poker today but now it is more of a hobby that pays a little passive income and definately not what it used to be. Before I played religiously and treated it as a job, and took poker very seriously, now it is more of something to do to pass the time and have fun.
I hope that this post has helped you out a little in your request, if you would like to know anything else feel free to PM me.
-TheActionKid
