Breaking even

The last few days have been pretty much break even for me. No big wins but no big losses either. Just played for an hour and won 1 whole dollar. I think I'll buy a mars bar.

I was just talking to a mate of mine who I used to work with. He is a compulsive gambler and plays live tournaments with reasonable success. He was telling me about the number of times he has busted his roll online because he has to play the biggest stakes he can afford and would rather go busto or robusto. He's had a few decent wins online but has never cashed out and always ends up throwing it away.

I started off in poker playing mtt's and would deposit small amounts and bust fairly quickly. My wife bought me a beginner type poker book which taught a super tight passive strategy for fixed limit and I was away. I started with a $200 deposit on pokerroom, cleared a $100 sign up bonus and had a 300bb bankroll for .50/1. I discovered bonuswhores.com and took full advantage of all the decent sign up bonuses I could find. I built my bankroll up a litttle bit at a time.

Anyway. the point I was trying to make is that I used to get really pissed off at a $10 loss at .50/1 even when I had a decent bankroll. It wasn't about the amount of money involved and I was never really interested in getting super rich quickly (you fucking liar), at least not playing high stakes poker. I used to take a fair amount of pleasure out of watching my bankroll grow month by month even though I could afford to deposit a lot more money and play higher stakes.

When I finally decided I wanted to play for a living I started moving up the limits. I didn't play outwith my bankroll and still spent most of my poker time bonuswhoring. I took me a long time before I became frustrated playing micro stakes with a substantial roll because I ground it up from nothing.

I was trying to explain all of this to my mate but he doesn't quite get it. He informed me that he wouldn't waste his time playing "shitty penny games".

At this point I reminded him that I'm the one who is now playing poker for a living and he's stuck in a shitty job throwing away a couple of hundred quid of his wages every week trying for the big score.