I'd like to apply for the scholarship.
Some background on me. I first started playing poker just over two years ago.It all started as a result of reading a computer magazine here in the uk called Micro Mart.Some of the writers and forum moderators were play money poker players and the fact was mentioned several times in the magazine and on the forum.
The impetus to take up poker was that my wife had to go into hospital for 3 weeks due to complications before the birth of our son and for a week after he was born.This left me with plenty of time at night after coming home from visiting to fill in , so I downloaded Full tilt and headed to table 409 (? i think, its been so long since I went back) which was a pot limit play money table.Other members from the forum that were there were MM_BJM , MM_daver and footnote75.The observant will notice that thats what the MM in my username traces back to MicroMart.
The first night I reloaded the play money 3 times and then I managed to grow my play money up to about 300,000. I had sussed the game and could beat the opposition and apart from the chat and cameraderie , I wanted to challenge myself with some stronger opposition. Then I found the freerolls and started to take part in them.Failing dismally , I kept plugging away until I got further and further into them.Eventually, I started to cash in them and was learning all the time.I found a real sense of achievement the first time I Final tabled and eventually I got to the stage where I was disappointed if I didnt cash regularly and I was starting to win some.

When my Mother in law found out that I had taken up Poker she had visions of me gambling away all my money and ruining my sons future and she asked me to promise not to put any of my money onto a Poker site. I agreed mainly because I had no intention of playing for cash at that time, and was enjoying playing for play money.

I opened an account on Pokerstars as I'd seen a freeroll in one of the magazines advertised so i entered that. Came nowhere and the size of the field scared me being up against 10000+ others.I carried on playing the other freerolls that I had been playing and unfortunately (?) missed the free 5$ that pokerstars put in my account as it came when I was in a busy week at work. Cursed my bad luck and swore that i must check my emails more often. About a month later I got another email from pokerstars inviting me into 2 tournaments over a weekend with each one having quite a large field.I took part in the saturday one and after an initial loss of half my chips by trying to be a bit too aggressive knuckled down and eventually made the final table with the smallest stack. All the final table experience I had gained in the other freerolls helped me and eventually was headsup going for the win. Pushed all in with AKs and lost to AQo when he hit his queen.It was something like 86$ for second place and was followed up the following day with a 27th place for another couple of dollars.

Also last summer , Inside Poker magazine was running a series of freerolls and buy ins on William Hill with the top 40 point scorers getting into a tournament for a carribean poker cruise with tournament buyins. I entered them and I think it was the 4th out of 10 , was an omaha freeroll. I'd never played it before and was googling the rules just before it started and was chatting about strategy to use with footnote75 before it started. I'm not sure whether it was beginners luck , but I was a massive chip leader for most of the tournament finally making some questionable plays( in hindsight ) to finish 4th and a $100 prize which was then biggest payout . I still like playing omaha and there was a nice freeroll on Pacific that I was entering last autumn which was responsible for the $19 that I built up on that site , Winning one of them. I carried on playing in the Poker gods series and even entering buy in tournaments for the first time and eventually managed to finish in the top 40 and enter the mini tournament going for the cruise as first prize. Got knocked out by the guy who finished second after he rivered me and he went on to agree a chop so that they both went on the cruise. I think I read that the winner actually went on to finish in the top 10 of the main event on the cruise for a nice payday.
Whilst I had originally started playing the freerolls for a bit of a challenge and was a relaxing way of playing poker, It started to get a bit frustrating playing for hours and winning very little, and I wanted to take the next step.
I found a site giving free poker stakes and decided to sign up in order to try playing different cash games with the "free" money before committing any of my freeroll winnings.

My dilemma was that I didn't know which way to go . All my experience was with freerolls and therefore by definition MTTs. I'd read that tournaments could be quite hard on the bankroll and I had my promise not to put my money onto a poker site as a hindrance.I'd taken a long time to build up a bankroll on freerolls and didn't want to lose it learning how to play cash games.

I used the free poker money to enter a variety of games , some MTT's , SNG's and tried playing some ring games. On the site I was on the SNG's only paid the top 2 and I din't manage to cash in them. I cashed in a MTT and doubled the 2$ buyin but generally was losing on the rest of the ones I entered. I didnt fair much better on the ring games . I even tried playing some cash omaha and had a disastrous time at it.

Anyway , most of the free money disappeared and i was down to 10$ left so decided I needed to learn a lot and improve my poker a lot before i was going to risk my bankroll. I read about stoxpoker , cardrunnersand other poker sites in the poker mags I was reading. Visiting them I found that some of them had free poker videos with commentary on why individual plays were being made. This was a revelation to me and i started to search the net to try and find as many free instructional videos as i could.
Then on a fatefull day back in November googling for poker videos I discovered FTR. I introduced myslf with the following post
Name: keith
Age: 41
What do you play? mainly Holdem freerolls and tried some micro cash games and some omaha freerolls
At what stakes do you play? cash 0.02-0.05$ but mainly freerolls

How long have you been playing? 2 years
Where do you mostly play? William Hill,Pacific poker, Full Tilt,PokerStars,VC Poker,pitbull,, red kings

Why did you come to FTR? found the videos and decided to look into them more. Most ofthe videos that i have seen seem to be aimed higher up the stakes levels rather than at the bottom micro micro levels for people trying to get the bankroll off the ground.

Do you have any goals (and how can we help)? Mother in law made me promise not to put any personal money into poker. Upside is , I'm not going to go broke chasing losses , downside is having to grind out the freerolls trying to build a bankroll.Now looking to start playing real money but need to decide which way to go , cash , sngs or MTT tourneys
I was amazed at all the strategy posts in the digest and and in the strategy section . I'd been to other forums in the past such as 2+2 but it seemed a massive site and couldnt really work out where to get started. Here at FTR it was a simple deicsion and immersed myself in absorbing as much information out of all the posts. Pokerstars then did there promotion with freerolls in the run up to xmas for new depositors. Talked it over with a friend (footnote75) who I've talked poker with ever since I started way back at full tilt. and we both decided to deposit so that we could take part in this promotion. Except I had my promise to think about so I cashed out the deposit from William Hill and generally spent December reading the posts and articles on FTR and taking part in the pokerstars freerolls.Mixed in with this I was starting to play some 2NL . I found that I could do OK at despite having got my bankroll up to 150$ with the frerolls , I decided that 2NL was the place for me to learn to play ring games rather than the 5NL that I was theoretically rolled for. It was a safety first approach so that I could gain experience.

After about 500 hands I was up about 5$ and found Robb's first 5000 hands post . THis was designed to work at 10NL which I wasn't rolled for so I decided to make a compromise and move up to 5NL and try to follow his guide.I kept persevering trying to make it work at 5NL but seem to run into bad beats and my big hands never got paid off.And followingthe quide I didnt seem to play that many hands as there were so many callers/raisers at 5NL so that it was usually 3 or 4 seeing the flop rather than 2 or 3 .


I'd taken part in all of the group sweat sessions and was bowled over by listening to Spenda talking poker theory. Erpel had been taking part as well and I can't quite remember how we started except that I remember we were chatting on skype and I said that I'd just lost another buy in and we sort of started a sweat session.
This was the turn around in my fortunes. He was able to spot where I was going wrong and listening to him talk about what my bet sizing should be in various situations completely opened my eyes to where i had been going wrong.I'd already realised that playing following Robbs guide was too restrictive at 5NL so I had loosened up my starting hands.But the experience I gained at playing his tight starting range will become more important , hopefully, as i move up through the levels.
In that first sweat session with Erpel I made about 6 buyins which completely amazed me. The following night I watched him play 4 tables of 10NL and we discussed his play. Actually he discussed it and I asked questions lol .
I voluntered to be the subject of the third group sweat session and would like to thank the people who turned up to give me advice.Erpel and I then did another session and invited Slevin to take part. He didn't have a mic but he was able to type and could hear what we were saying. During this session Erpel and I both took it in turns to play .This was where I finished at roughly +75$ on the graph above.
The following night was a real roller coaster , I started off by gaining 3 Buyins and hitting the peak on the graph and then it all stated going wrong. Whatever I did seemed to go wrong and I finished up losing 4 buyins before i closed it down.
For the last week I seem to have been treading water until I had an AHA moment yesterday . I had been trying to work out what I was doing differently for the last week compared with what I had been doing before hand.It all came down to table selection. Before I had been choosing table on table looseness whereas lately I had beeen looking for tables with plenty of money on them. With the looser players the strategy I had learnt at FTR so far was sufficient to beat them. By choosing the tables with more money on them I was effectively picking tables with better players on them who were buying in deep and knew what they were doing.
As I gain experience and knowledge , I hope that I will be able to beat the better players at this level as well, rather than marginally losing against them. I went back to my previous strategy last night and started to see a slow improvemnet in my non showdown winnings whereas they had decreased under my previous strategy , and I eneded up over a buyin as I was starting to target the fish again. I was also playing a slightly safer game and turning down some of the preflop coin flip situations that I had been getting into.
WHatever happens , I know now that I'm a much better poker player than I was three months ago. I also know that I have barely scratched the surface of what there is still to learn to progresss through the limits. Each stage is a new challenge , but ultimatelyI know that bankroll management will mean that I'll never putting money into poker. My poker interests will all come out of my bankroll. If I have to drop down I will. I have the patience from my freeroll days , but also the determination never to go back to frerolling because I've blown my bankroll. I'll still be trying to learn as much as I can away from the tables so that I can apply it on the tables. Hopefully , once I feel that my bankroll is likely to be able to sustain a membership ,I'll be looking to possibly take out a subscription for Grinder school. I enetered my first FTR freeroll last month and luckily won it after airles had to leave , but that 50$ is now earmarked for the lite version of Holdem manager once my poker tacker and holdem manager free trials expire. This was an immense achievemnet for me simply because it was against players that I know are vastly superior to me and I did get lucky with some of my cards.Thanks for reading this , my poker will be on hold for the next two weeks due to work commitments ,but I want to use the little time i do get studying my own game and articles. Hopefully , If you consider me for the scholarship it will start in April when I will hopefully be able to make the most of the opportunity that Slevin has generously provided for us to take part in.