I made +800 in my first month about 10 years ago using free $50 bankroll provided to me by the site simillar to CardsChat.
Played both online and live poker for 6 years since then, during these 6 years been moving up from NL10 to NL200 cash tables, playing 4-8tables at the same time, withdrawing bankroll and starting all over again from $1K bankroll at NL10 to 12-15K bankroll at NL200. Played 8 tables at lower limits and maximum 4 tables at NL200 tables. I spent several months each time, 4-8 months, then all over again and again. Best month I've ever had was +8K during 1 month, and that's because I've won 5K for the first place in MTT, sometimes had no profit at all during a month, only rakeback profit. Always played patiently and stepped down to another limit if bad beats started to hit me.
My older brother started playing poker because of me and he won more than 50K at PS and more than 20K at fulltilt. During his first several years. But he played only MTTs. He actually won $11K for the 1st place with $1 buy-in and won another $11K with $11 buy-in at the pokerstars.
I had a break from poker after those 6 years and playing it again, but mostly freerolls and withdraw any winnings to support my business ideas. Don't like the idea of playing like a maniak for 8+ hours per day 5+ days per week.
Even if you win money at poker you still lose. Why? You're empty. What you're doing by playing poker? What useful product do you create for the society when you're playing poker? Do you save lifes, do you create something? What are you doing? You're trying to rob the other robbers around you and explain things with some trashy mathematical theories, psychological tricks and such... In the reality, being objective, a poker player creates just one useful product - it's the rake for the business owners, so the poker reg is a mule, doesn;t matter if he's winning or losing. I have changed it in my life, I've invested time and money into CNC machines, learned CAD and CAM and I'm producing things that are useful for humans, playing online poker while doing business...
Most of the poker players are junkees, and I was part of this team... playing for serotonin and adrenalin, with money as a excuse and objectively wasting each others time for notthing useful. Being serious... PokerStars celebrated 200billion hands recently, converting it to human-hours I can only admit that they've erased thousands of human lives like if they have never existed... 87 million minutes is 100 years... 200 billion hands 2 minutes each... how many human\hours converted into average human lifes??? And these people could have learned/created something useful for the society, instead they're wasting their lifetime like some heroine drug users.
Right now I think that poker is only good if you a) have a goal for investing your winings b) your poker sessions are not your single source of income. SO if you're sitting at the table having 3 restaurants, couple of carwashes and dozen of houses and you're playing to win money for furniture factory you're planning to buy - then you're doing the right thing, cause you're having a stable source of income outside the poker table and you're playing to increase your income using poker table, this is smart...
