Background- I am in my late 30s and I have played poker on/off for almost 20 years. Three major events have hindered my poker playing during this time. 1) I was a live limit holdem player during the poker boom of the the early 2000s. In the beginning, I was in my early 20s and would play 18-hour sessions to make $200. However, I worked my way up from 4/8 limit to 10/20 limit holdem and started making some pretty good money. I became a regular at the Grand Casino in Biloxi, and almost dropped out of college in the process. Poker was going really well, and I was not managing my time for school. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans for me. I played the very last hand dealt at the Grand before Hurricane Katrina wiped out the Gulf Coast and took down the casinos with her. The Grand was lifted on top of the nearby Holiday Inn. It was devastating. This caused me to give up poker and I used my bankroll to finish college. 2) After graduation, I started to play online with a $20 bankroll to see if I could transition into online poker while bartending full time. I read an article from Chris Ferguson about bankroll management and his attempt to turn $1 into $10,000. Since I was new to online poker, I decided to challenge myself in the same fashion. I started at 2nl and grinded my way up to 400nl. I was crushing it and moving up the stakes. I quit bartending and focused 100% on poker. I was studying poker every day and plugging leaks to make it to high stakes. Unfortunately, the government had other plans for me. It was devastating to see the FBI symbol on the Full Tilt website, and to have my funds held from me. I had just worked my way up to being a black card member and really started to make great money. Sadly, most of my roll was on Full Tilt so I was left with very little money. At this point, I decided to give up poker and to start looking for a full-time teaching job. I did not care for the live scene and online was now dead to me. I started a family and got a full-time job teaching history. 3) Life was good so I decided to make a small $200 deposit on a new online site called Lock Poker to see if I could grind it up in my free time. I did well and grinded it up from 10nl to playing 400nl. I was balancing work, family, and poker. This was working out to be a nice extra income. Unfortunately, greedy bitches at Lock had another plan for me. Cash outs started to slow down, and the value of Lock funds were quickly decreasing. The owners were pulling out player money and running low on funds. People were buying and selling Lock funds on the twoplustwo marketplace, so I started to get nervous. Luckily, I wised up before it was completely too late and ended up selling off about $15k for around 30 cents to the dollar before Lock completely shut down. This was it for me…I was done!! Hurricanes, the FBI, and Greedy Bitches finally broke me.

2020- I am married with 4 kids and I teach AP U.S. History. I started playing again once the Coronavirus hit and sent us teaching remotely. With all my extra free time, I started to watch a few poker videos on YouTube. The poker itch was coming back, and I watched a video by Johnathan Little where he interviewed a lawyer about the legality of poker in the U.S. The lawyer basically said that Global Poker was the most legal site with its sweepstakes model. I did a little bit of research and decided to make a $500 deposit to see how it would go. I started at 25nl and moved through 100nl quickly. Once I got to 200nl, I was struggling to understand many of the lines my opponents were taking. The game had changed a lot and my edge seemed small. At this point, I decided to create a RIO account to see what was going on. I started to understand why my opponents were choosing these random bet sizes. I had not done any solver work up to this point. I was wayyyyyy behind the curve, and it was time to work my way from the ground up. Currently I play 200nl and sit at good 500nl tables. I have adjusted to the games but still have a long way to go. I made a little over $30k playing roughly 15 hours a week since April. I am happy with my results and have improved tremendously.

This Journal- Back in the day, I blogged regularly on CardRunners as Needbankroll and found that very helpful during my progression from live to online. I plan to post here regularly to put some of my thoughts out there and to get feedback from the community. Connecting with other players is one of the best ways to truly improve my game. I am reading Acevedo’s Modern Poker Theory, watching videos on RIO, doing solver work with GTO+, and battling the bot on GTO Sensei to improve my overall play. I am almost done with Acevedo’s book so if you have a recommendation for my next book please let me know. I might open up an account with another site as well. I miss using a HUD and reviewing my hands/sessions. I might try Bovada? Global does not allow tracking software so there will not be any graphs etc… Let me know what you think!