Courtney G. is back with the second part of her story! The girl has vowed never to work 9-5 again, and she will blog about her poker progress right here.
In my first post, I explained why I set myself the goal of avoiding 9-5 work. I quit my full-time job, found a part-time job (to devote time to a website), and planned to play poker for 25-30 hours every week.
Courtney G becomes a poker pro
For the first 8 months of the year, I played mostly cash games with some MTTs here and there. I had some problems. I was moving much lower EV and performing poorly overall, but my biggest problem was the volume of the game hours. I was not good at multi-table games and could not bring myself to play the required number of hours. It took me several months to play 50,000 hands, which is absolutely unacceptable.
It was difficult for me to understand what my problem was. It was necessary to play 5 hours a day, but it rarely worked out. I felt like my cash games were dragging on and just didn't want to play.
When August 2010 came around, I made only a small amount of money in a year playing both for money and in tournaments. Apparently my bank account was much smaller during that period. I had to change something, so I decided to play tournaments full time.
Courtney decides to go to tournaments
Moving to tournaments was a great option for me. But not because I made more money from this. In fact, in the first 3 months I lost money playing a full-time poker tournament. But the idea was great, because I really wanted to play poker again. Time passed quickly when I participated in tournaments, and I was able to easily gain 6-10 hours a day. Finally, the required poker volume was reached, but the lack of income at first made things very difficult for me. Between August and the end of October, I lost almost 300 average buy-ins, which amounted to almost $ 9,000 and a very large chunk of my bankroll.
I played behind the roll and therefore was not in immediate danger, but tension did arise. At the bank, I only had the funds for a few months of expenses and living, and the likelihood that I would have to return to work if poker did not start to generate income grew.
October win
I was lucky at the end of October. I won ~ $ 3.5K playing $ 26 FO on Full Tilt, and about a week later I finished 2nd in Double Deuce for $ 21K. Instantly the load was lifted from my shoulders. I am very lucky to have such a huge result and it definitely came at the right time.
Since then, I have had a few more decent glasses, and financially, I am firmly on my feet. I still work part time at FTR and try to play poker 4 days a week. My goal for this year is 4000 MTT. I am now behind the pace because I am taking a vacation to get out of town. But I should be able to do this as long as I develop throughout the year.
Develop, develop and develop again
I'm not a poker superstar and my game takes a lot of work, so this blog is unlikely to be filled with helpful strategies or tips anytime soon. However, wait for publications on topics:
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discipline;
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bankroll management;
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cash management;
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fight dispersion.
These things, which are often overlooked, are very important when it comes to the game of poker for life.
I can't say anything about the Big Game until it goes live (we're not sure when exactly this will happen - late May or June). Thanks to Rajko and brnandtrn for their support. Even if only a couple of people find what I'm writing here interesting, that's a reason to continue!