Zero to 10,000, Part One

Time for a little personal story. This is how I built a bankroll online starting from zero investment.

Before 2009

In a future post I'll talk about my other history with games (including Magic: the Gathering) and how I got into poker both live and online. For now let's focus on the steps I took to get from zero bankroll to playing real money as a hobby and side income.

Years ago, I had a little exposure to online poker from reading various web sites. I found the Sklansky-Malmuth hand groups for Limit Hold'em and other strategies that I could use to have a starting point when I logged on for some play-money games.

By 2008 I had found the play-money chip tournaments on PokerStars, and daily freerolls to qualify for the weekly freerolls that paid real money. At first I usually played Hold'em (limit or no-limit), but I wanted to try all the games and I studied the rules including all games in HORSE (Limit Hold'em, Limit Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, Stud, Stud Eight-or-Better).

So I won a little money quite easily with my first ticket and first cash in Hold'em, and I played the lowest limit games available. I remember busting my first micro-bankroll at micro Limit Hold'em and 10-cent NLHE tournaments.

Then I won another ticket and another small prize (less than $2). I proceeded to double that money a few times in the micro stakes, including some no-limit, and tried a few games of HORSE and O8 (fixed limit).

These were all the non-freeroll tournament cashes I had in 2008:

Date/Game/Entry/Size/Rank/Prize

05 Sep 08	HORSE	HRFL		$3.30	312	52	$3.74
30 Aug 08	HORSE	HRFL		$3.30	376	26	$5.64
29 Aug 08	HORSE	HRFL		$3.30	192	4	$41
29 Aug 08	No Limit Hold'em	HENL		$4.40	180	6	$36
11 Aug 08	No Limit Hold'em	HENL		$2.20	1090	123	$3.70
31 May 08	No Limit Hold'em	HENL		$1.10	948	94	$1.80
31 May 08	No Limit Hold'em	HENL		$0.10	1344	147	$0.25
29 May 08	No Limit Hold'em	HENL		$0.10	1109	43	$0.49
25 May 08	No Limit Hold'em	HENL		$0.10	1295	41	$0.51
03 May 08	No Limit Hold'em	HENL		$0.10	360	31	$0.20

And statistics for the year:

Year/Prizes/ROI/Played/ITM

Year 2008

$94

104%

33

30%

Here is my earliest graph I could find tracking cash games:

The big drop in the graph was from losing at a loose game of $0.50/$1 Limit Hold'em.

At this time I was writing a blog and posting on a forum, and I received an offer of a free bankroll on a couple of other sites, so I created accounts on PartyPoker and Full Tilt Poker (FTP).

2009: Bonus Clearing and Promos

At the beginning of 2009, my PartyPoker account was accumulating a healthy balance and I had regular bonuses and promotions to add more money to it. I tried moving from full 10-player and 9-player tables to the 6-max tables for a few sessions, and lost most of those sessions. I continued to dabble in the lowest level of fixed-limit O8 on PartyPoker, and some micro O8 games on Full Tilt. With the help of the bonuses and promos I had managed to increase the bankrolls on those two sites and still had a small amount on PokerStars.

When I reached the mid point of 2009, I had earned a nice mid-year bonus on FTP and also had the brand new Rush Poker (with a new pool of PLO8) to grind on, with an additional promo for playing it.

After a month of grinding hard, I cleared the mid-year bonus and I had a healthy amount to play with.

This was when I gradually evolved from playing mostly NLHE to mostly O8 and PLO8 and a few other games.

Why did I switch from the most popular variant of poker to a variant with a much smaller pool of players?

First of all, I really enjoyed the game of O8 and learning nuances and quirks of strategy which were less explored than other forms of poker. Second, it seemed to me at the time, and others theorized the same, that I could easily build a bankroll and clear bonuses playing O8/PLO8 with much less variance and lower bankroll requirements than playing NLHE/PLO. Third, the results were great and I was winning at a higher rate in this game.

To be continued...

In the next chapter, I'll write about moving up stakes.