I finally took my first shots at 25NL ($25 buy-in/No Limit) last night.
I had a few bad days over the last week that slowed me down, but I managed to hit a few milestones anyway. I went well over 10 times my starting deposit, without ever needing to re-deposit. I hit Silver Star VIP status on Poker Stars for the first time, giving me access to bonuses and special events. And while I technically haven’t hit this one yet, I’m about 250 hands short of playing my 100,000th cash game poker hand. I’ll hit that in my next session. If I’d realized how close I was to the 100k I would have played another 15 or 20 minutes to make it last night.
I started the $25 games playing 4 tables so I’d have a good amount of time to think about everything and really observe my opponents. I played a few hundred hands and won a few dollars. To my surprise, I quickly realized that many of the $25 tables are even looser than the $10 tables. It wasn’t long before I brought up a few more tables and was back to playing 10 at a time. I played for about an hour and came out a half buy-in ahead for the session. I decided to stop there and book a winner for the day, as I’d already played 4 or 5 hours for the day and I was getting burned out.
Since my normal raise is 4 times the big blind, and I tend to raise almost every hand I play, this was the first time I’ve played where all my initial bets were in whole dollars. That was both a little scary, and a little exhilerating. It was a really good feeling to think that now I’m playing for dollars, not cents. Now I’m getting into real money on the table. I’ve been waiting to hit that goal for a long time. With 10 tables going, I’ve got $250 in play at all times. That too was both scary and exhilerating.
My next step is to get myself set up on Full Tilt Poker and take advantage of their bonuses and rakeback. They give a 100% bonus up to $600 on your first deposit, plus it’s possible to get up to 27% rakeback through affiliates. So that’s my next target. Once I’ve got a few more sessions at 25NL under my belt and I’m feeling comfortable, I’m going to sign up and make the deposit there. That should provide me with a very nice record month, and I’ll be able to make my first cash out and actually get my first “paycheck” from all of this. That is going to be a huge confidence builder. I’m also looking forward to playing on a new site where the regulars don’t know me and I should be able to get away with a few more tricky plays until they figure me out.
It really is a good feeling to see this starting to pay off. It can be incredibly hard to stay patient and allow things to happen in their own time. That’s the way poker is though, you can’t force anything. The cards are gonna do what they’re gonna do. All a player can do is make the best choices possible and wait for the rest to work itself out.
All in all, I’m amazed by how far I’ve come, and by how much I am still learning. If I can manage to move up 2 or 3 levels in the next 100k hands, I’ll be in the $100 games, with $1000 in play at a time. That looks scary as hell right now…But then 60 or 70 thousand hands ago, the $25 games looked scary too.
A special thank you to everyone at the TwoPlusTwo forums. I couldn’t have done any of this without the knowledge and skill I’ve gained from all of you.
May the fish be with you…
July 8th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
how’s going? updates?