August 2005: Started playing
online poker. Had no clue. Spewed money terribly. Found Cardschat and lurked for 3 months without joining.
November 2005: Joined Cardschat. Found out about PokerTracker,
poker books, etc. Became a faithful daily reader of the CC forum and all it's helpful info. Started to figure out that Texas Hold'em was harder than I thought.
December 2005: After analyzing my poker play with PokerTracker, I began playing Limit holdem cash games and NL SNG's exclusively. Adopted a very tight playing style as I was still learning the game. Limit games helped keep my mistakes from costing so much. Kept reading poker books and improved my PokerTracker self-analysis.
Mid-2006: Started playing more No-limit cash games. Also, started playing more Cardchat events. Still a very tight player, but my thinking started to open up to include better handreading skills. More poker books and PT.
November 2006: Started
my poker blog. Allows me report my progress, my view,
poker news I think is interesting, and even non-poker stuff. Helps track my thoughts and allows me to see where I've been.
About Jan 2007: With more knowledge came more aggression. Actually too much aggression and I started spewing money again. Couldn't figure out why. My aggression was uncontrolled. Moved back to mostly playing SNG's. Still read poker books.
Around June 2007: Figured out that I had a problem with "tilt" control. I began to control it slightly but still had problems in spurts.
September 2007: Read the book "
Why You Lose at Poker". Found a few leaks in my game. Felt a rush of improvement, but knew there was more to come.
March-April 2008: Read the book "
The Poker Mindset". The book helped me put a near end to my "tilt" problems and helped me put poker into perspective as a game where my success should be measured in "the long term". I still get uppity about 5% of the time, but I can't help being "human".
August 2008: Moved up to 50NL cash games and had my best monthly result ever. Finally became a winning poker player. Felt I really had advanced in my poker learning.
Sept-Oct 2008: Had a bad 2-month run. Reality set in and I realized I have much, much more learning and grinding to do. Dropped back down to 25NL.
Today: Still reading, grinding, and learning. I have sweat sessions with folks or sometimes we just study books and stats together. I have 65 poker books and am on my 15th book.
Gosh, that's it I think. I still have a ways to go to get as good at poker as I want to be, but I think I'm pretty decent now. My road has been a bit longer than some of the younger folks on Cardschat, but I put a lot of value in my amount of experience (both in poker and in life) that the younger folks don't have.
