Liqour In The Front
I’ve always loved playing poker. My father taught me how to play when I was still a little kid, simply because I pestered him so much about it. I would see him playing with his buddies in our basement gameroom and thought that it was just a cool thing. He taught me to shuffle and he taught me the most important rule about the game.
I even watch poker on TV. I watch the replays of past WSOP tournaments, I watch Learn From The Pros and anything else that I see coming on. I watch these guys play and think that being a professional player would be quite fun.
Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, my poker buddies are no longer able to play our weekly game. So I’ve had to turn to other sources to enjoy this pastime. I’ve been playing on FullTiltPoker.net.
I enjoy playing online almost as much in person. Actually being there, watching their faces and talking is better, but the online game has it’s points, too. You get to see alot of hands, you get to focus on betting strategies without other players’ actions distracting you and you can mute any of the more annoying/rude players.
So I want to play poker more and I think being a professional player would be cool. That brings the question, how do I do both?
I figured out a way to ease into it without breaking the rule I linked to above. Online they have both play money and real money games and tournaments. I don’t want to get into the real money until I’m sure that I can place in the money on a consistent basis. so I have started out in the play money tournaments.
I started out with $10,000 in play money. They have tournament buy-ins of 250, 2000 and 10000. I decided to start at the $250 level and I think that placing in the money in 10 percent of all tournaments and winning at least one is a reasonable goal to prove consistent play. So I started with enough money to play in 40 tourneys. That means I would have to place in the money in at least 4 tournaments while winning one of those. It’s important that both of those conditions are met, so just placing in the money 4 times isn’t enough, I’ve got to win one outright. At that point I can go up to the $2,000 dollar level and after that I can go to the $10,000 level. If I fail to achieve the consistent play necessary, I start over on that same level. Once I’ve finished the $10,000 level, I will start playing in the cheapest real money tourneys possible, I think there are ones for as little as a $2 buy-in. So then I will start doing the same progression through the real money system.
I started my play of the $250 tournaments about 5 days ago. I’m 13 tourneys into it and I’ve had a 5th, a 2nd and 1st place finish in them. I’m very excited about that and happy so far with my play. Even if I hit the 4 placings before the 40 tourneys are up, I’m gonna play out all 40 tournaments to make sure that I get all the experience I can before moving the stakes up.
I will keep you updated on my progress. And maybe someday you can watch me on TV, giving people advice on how to play.
Wish me luck.