It is never easy to make money playing poker, I have lost count of how many times I was re-stacked by
pokerstars in the early days with Play Money chips, they used to give you 2,000 chips to play in the play money rooms and if you lost it all, they would give you a re-stack any time you wanted for the same 2,000.
Eventually after reading books on Poker and watching hundreds of Youtube Videos I started to understand the differences when it came to playing Holdem, I gave myself one very simple rule which was "If you didn't have to pay, You don't have to Play" Meaning that if I had not put in a Blind then there was no reason I had to play that hand with rubbish, and I started to get more selective in which hands I played.
I then started to win more Play money games, and from 2,000 chips built a Bankroll of over 600,000 chips, all the while I was winning cash in free-rolls and had around $30 in winnings when I decided to use that money to buy into cash tournaments starting with 10 Cent Tournaments and so on.
I have to admit that was over 20 Years ago and even now my Bankroll is only around $580 Dollars, but you have to understand I quit playing On-line and started playing Live games in Pubs and Clubs to get real experience playing Poker. I did pretty good at Live games and even started playing some Tournaments in Casino's.
I only returned to On-line Poker when the Covid Pandemic started to lock down Pubs, Clubs and
casinos. My Bankroll with Pokerstars was about $200, so I challenged myself to double my Bankroll before the end of the year, which I did quite easily. But to be honest I would have to make that kind of money every week to come close to giving myself a living from the game.
Making money from anything is always going to be hard work, I know from being self employed for over 15 Years that you have to work at it and doing a 9 till 5 job is easy compared to the number of hours I worked when I had my own business, many days I worked from Mid-day until 3.00 am and some times longer, depending on what jobs I had to do, the only time I took time off was when my car broke down and I was waiting on garages to make repairs,It was never fun.
Poker was always fun but I didn't want it to be my only source of income because it would stop being fun and become a Job which I didn't want or need, I had enough on my plate keeping my business profitable.
When the fun Stops, STOP!
I think it's much harder to keep the winnings and not lose them on higher stakes.
