Hello FTR members.

This is my first operation ever and I am a little excited. English is not my native language so, please forgive my mistakes, if any.

I used to play chess untill I moved to US for my PhD education on chemistry and learnt poker on TV, last year. Unfortunately, things didn't go well and I came back to Turkey this summer. I had great time with the students while I was a teaching assistant. People were always nice and respectful to each other. However, there are bad people everywhere. Before I moved to US, I didn't know that the city I used to live was the one with the 2nd highest crime rate in US. One day, I was having my dinner at home and suddenly someone shot at me. The bullet just went above my head. I was lucky I dodged the bullet... Yes! I can dodge bullets baby I am alive because, I will dodge more bullets, but this time on poker tables!

I don't know how the poker will go together with my PhD work. I will be synthesizing the derivatives of a lead compound that is known to be active on Prostate Cancer. It is a very difficult and time consuming job but hopefully, we will reach our goal. Since, my research is very time consuming, I will have little time to play poker but, I want to spare at least 1day/week for playing poker.

As a former chess player, I am used to thinking, making plans, and keeping my concentration at the table for hours. I haven't won a big MTT yet but I know these are the musts in order to win an MTT.

Goals:

My ultimate goal is to built a BR to play higher buy-in MTTs. I am not worried about how much I win, I just want to improve my game as much as possible. So, my goal is not to make the most money in short term but to play the best poker in the long run. I know in order to learn deep stack and post-flop plays I need to play cash games. I have been playing MTTS and SNGs on Stars but, I want to deposit 50 bucks on another site and start building it by exclusively playing cash games. I am not going to withdraw any money so, hopefully moving up won't be difficult.

I have already gained a lot from FTR. I don't think I will ever need another site to improve my game at any stage of my learning process.

MTT Books:

My posts will be mainly on MTTs and SNGs. I will pick up some critical points and try to analyze them. In order to make a deeper analysis, I need to read more and do some more range exercise. The only book I read so far is HOH volume II. I will order some more books on MTTs. I have HOH I in mind and there are also "drmcboy the great"'s suggestions:

- Winning Poker Tourneys 1 hand at a time
- Kill Everyone
- Every Hand Revealed
- TPFAP
- Full Tilt's tourney book (this would be higher but some of the chapters are not NLHE)
- HOH 3

more or less in order according to doc.

Bankroll Management:

I initially deposited $50 on Stars but had no idea about Bankroll Management by the time. I played some $10 SNGs including Gaunlet games. As a result my first deposit vanished Then, I decided to take a more serious approach and read about Bankroll Management. I shipped another $200 on July 2009 and started to play $1 SNGs. I was down to $175 at one point but then, I either broke the variance or improved my game a little bit and started to move up. My current BR is $767. I am even a ittle bit nitty now. I am not moving up unless I have like 60-70 BI's for SNG's and 100BI for MTTs.

That's all I want to say for now.

Good luck FTR!