It's not like riding a bike....

Hello all my FTR friends. After a break of several years, I have started playing again.

For those that do not know (or have forgotten) me...

I was never even close to a great player, but when I needed to work from home my family lived on my poker winnings for a couple years grinding. I started at the micro stakes and moved slowly up to $100NL. I took shots at higher stakes, but never really had the skill to be a winning player there.

I plan on NEVER living on poker again, way way to stressful for me. Thats the main reason I stopped playing. When your playing to pay your bills and have a brutal month, it's very very stressful. *cough* Unless your smart enough to play in bankroll, and have several months income available to cover bad times. *cough* I've played a few hours every once in a while, but it just wasn't fun anymore.

It's been long enough. The wounds have healed, and the idea of having a hobby that makes money instead of costing money is nice. Looking back on my poker past with a couple years of perspective it's easy to see what my biggest mistake was.

Bankroll management.

Pride/Greed made me want to move up and take the risk. I thought it was OK because I wasn't leaving myself short for the level I normally played at. I forgot to take into account the fact that poker was supposed to pay my bills...

For example - I'd have a $12,000 bankroll and would take a shot at at $200NL. Everything looks very reasonable, anyone would say it's time to try higher stakes.... I'd take a shot, but really didn't have the skill to win at $200NL, so I'd make a couple bad plays, get hit with a bad beat or two, and lose lose 3K and have $9,000 left. My bankroll was in great shape right?

The problem was that I was trying to pay my bills with my poker money. And to make things even worse I always counted the money I needed to pay bills with as part of my bankroll until I actually made a withdraw. So I might have $12,000 in my bankroll, but I needed to pull out $3000 at the end of the month to cover bills. When the end of the month arrived I had actually lost 50% of my "bankroll". $3000 to bills and $3000 to $200NL.

Suddenly I'm looking at my bankroll that I thought could cover 4 break even months thinking "If I break even this month, I cant pay for groceries next month - unless I withdraw my entire bankroll!!!!"


This time I'm going to stick with proper bankroll management. I will only move up when (a) my bankroll can support it and (b) I have at least 50k profitable hands in at the previous level. The exception to this will be before $10NL. I will move up to $10NL as soon as I have the bankroll for it, even if I do not have a enough hands played.

Just to make things nice and ironic, I'm going to try to start with my leftover FTP balance. It's only ~$10, so I'm going to be playing .02NL... without the bankroll I just said I would stick to

Edit: Umm, wow, I just realized it's been about 4 years...