From play money to Team PokerRoom.com

af dudeseeg. I have been playing poker since I was a wee lad. I have always enjoyed the home game, first with my older brother, and his gambling buddies, then later, with my own buddies. Poker is a great social activity, with just enough competitiveness involved to soak up some testosterone. When I moved to California in 1999, I left my poker buddies behind in Florida so that my family could follow my wife's job from Disney east to Disney west. I had spent the previous five years working freelance, as a video technician, and though there is no shortage of work available in that field in LA, I was short on contacts, which are needed to find the work. My son was born with medical issues, so rather than look for work, I stayed home during his convalescence. Ultimately, I found some work, and my son became well enough to enter preschool.
Preschool is very expensive, especially in California, but I believe a child needs the social stimulus, so we made it work, although I was relatively under-employed at the time.

Discovering online poker for play money
Just after Christmas, 2001, I discovered the concept of online poker. I searched the internet for a place to play, and found plenty of options for the PC, but only one that offered a Java-based applet that was playable on my beloved Mac. So, enter PokerRoom.com into my life. I was a poker veteran, but had only played Hold'em once in my life, and it had cost me $200. I began playing Hold'em at a play money table, and within 20 minutes, I had doubled my stack. Now, play money poker is nothing like real money poker - you get a lot of players pushing in on every other hand, just for fun. I was playing to win, but many of the other players were playing just for thrills, so based on my growing stack, and my general poker aptitude, I went digging for my credit card.

First deposit tripled
In those days, you could actually fund your online gaming with a Master Card, so I ponied up $200 to get me started. I began at the low limit tables, but just the fact that it was real money made it an entirely different game. Opponents could and would still behave erratically, making bad bluffs at odd times, or gambling their entire stack preflop, but now it meant real money for me. When my wife came home from work that day, I confessed that I charged $200 to the credit card to play poker online. She flashed me a look of horror that could have made Universal Studios consider a new franchise. I followed up with the good news: I had turned the $200 into $600, and all was good.

Gaining strategic thinking
If you're learning to play poker, and simply need time at a table to gain experience, then play money is the place to be. You can get familiar with the rhythms of the game and the tendencies of your opponents. I was fortunate to have years of poker experience growing up, so Hold'em came to me relatively quickly. I made the jump to low stakes, real money, to continue getting table experience while something real was at stake, which fueled my competitive drive. At that time, I began reading books on poker, and Texas Hold'em in particular.
I synthesized the book knowledge with the table experience, and slowly began making money at the tables. Making the money was never much trouble; the trouble was in holding onto the money. So many times, I won several hundred dollars at one table, just to move to higher stakes and give it all back.

Improving the game
For three years, this was my pattern. I managed to take several thousand dollars out of my PokerRoom.com account, but for every $1000 check I sent to myself, there were four or five thousand dollars that I redistributed to other players, while trying to take my game to a higher limit table before I was ready. Whenever my bankroll got low, I would retrench at the lower limit tables, and work my way back up. I kept trying to improve my game, while raising the stakes I was playing for. That is a process that is ongoing. I still have never sat down at a limit table beyond $10-20. I do enjoy playing the no limit tables, but they can be cruel at times. My bankroll goes up, and it goes down, but I'm still playing off that initial $200 and my wife's expression has improved markedly. She even listens to my bad beat stories now without begging me to quit playing.

Pokah staff note: dudeseeg earned himself a spot in the edition of Team PokerRoom.com that played the Grand Finals of the European Poker Tour in Monte Carlo in March, 2005. He played himself all the way to the final table, where he ended up in 5th place - walking away with a whopping €118,000, equivalent to $156,000!