In the beginning

"Mr Cea said...
How much did u start with and what site? what level?"

Maybe it's time to revisit how I started. Step one - I clicked on my very first post for a bit of a refresh as to how my blog started. Step 2 - realise i've omitted a bit. Step 3 - write this post

I actually originally started with a $50 deposit on Party Poker in about May 2007. I think I had just downloaded a basic starting hand table for fixed limit full ring poker so thought i'd give it a go at the 0.05/0.10 tables.

I didn't really know anything about bonuses etc although I had found a bonus code for party, and then managed to input it incorrectly and missed out on the bonus.

With just that basic poker knowledge I was able to make a pretty steady profit, albeit relatively small in $ terms due to the small stakes. At this point I decided to buy Phil Helmuth's book and read that before realising it wasn't that helpful to the games I was playing. I also watched Annie Duke's DVD which was something about the basics of online play. I think it briefly covered both limit and no limit and had some decent common sense.

Something along the lines of my reading lead me to 2p2 and the realisation that a) I should be using some kind of poker tracking software (both for my own game and analysing others) and b) I was nuts to be playing without any sort of bonus or rakeback (i'd now finally learnt about rake and what it was).

At that point I had moved up to 0.1/0.2 and the occaional 0.25/0.50 fixed limit on Party but realised I couldn't get a deal there as I already had an account. So in July 2007 I decided to take up the fulltilt rakeback offer and $600 sign up bonus through RakeTheRake. I decided I could afford a $600 (although probably closer to $900 Australian) commitment, and with any luck i'd be able to withdraw it back so that I was only playing with profit.

I also purchased pokertracker and learnt how to use and interpret the information it provided as well as how to set up a HUD. I'm still using PT2 and gametime+ as a HUD - although i'm sure i'd be better off with a more comprehensive HUD. If Holdem manager didn't crash on my Vista64 install suspect i'd be using that now.

I believe the smallest tables at the time on Fulltilt were .25/.50 so I started there and at the same time read a heap on playing 6max rather than fullring - starting with 2p2 and then also getting stox's book when that came out.

I fairly quickly switched over to playing purely 6max as I found fullring a little boring. Interestingly enough though i'm fairly conservative by nature so fullring probably suits my personality better, but now that i've found how to play a decent 6max game I can't see myself ever going back. Supershort though is a bit of a struggle for me, so I just don't play it.

I gradually added tables so that eventually I was playing 6 tables of .25/50 or .50/1 6max fixed limit. My initial results weren't even that good and I was barely profiting even with rakeback. But since I was playing a few tables at a high rake game, I was clearing the bonus pretty quick and even occasionally had shots at the $1/2 tables just to clear it even quicker. As another side note, I usually only play four tables maximum now and even that was a bit of a struggle yesterday. Since i'm much more picky on table selection its often difficult to get a lot of tables running so i'm a bit out of practice.

After that bonus cleared, I found i'd only marginally improved my bankroll, but my play had improved significantly. I then went on the search for other bonuses elsewhere such as a stack of them through Poker Source which gave me a much bigger kick start to the bankroll with well over 100% rakeback.

Hmm and that's a very long winded answer to a pretty short and simple question.