A lesson hard learned.

How you going guys, i'm new to this forum, good to be here.

I'd like to share the high's and lows of my poker life, as they might help you see some flaws in your own. Alot of my problems concern bankroll management, and a lot of problems with patience!

Well, here goes. Before i was 18 (I'm Australian and 18 is the legal gambling age), I started playing home game poker with some college buddies, $20 buy in 10c 20c blinds. I dominated these games, taking $800+ of my buddies in a few months (we played most days). I started to think I must be a natural born poker God. On my 18th birthday I went to the casino, playing $2/$3 NLHE (the smallest game available), this had a flat buy-in of $100. Playing for 10 hours that night, i won $1000. From this moment, I was entirely hooked to poker. My studies started to fail and I dropped out of college soon after. I'd quickly blown all the money I made at the casino by playing too long sessions, getting tired, and donking away the money i'd made.

So, I got a job at a fast food store doing over-night shifts (terrible work, terrible pay), and every time of the week it was time for my pay-check i was straight down to the casino playing poker with it. This was a horrible idea. I'd inevitably blow my pay-check because i was impatient, bluffed too much etc. etc. Then out of the blue, I had two fantastic weeks, starting on the $2/$3, then moving up to the $5/$5 (500 buy-in). In this two weeks I was exceptionally lucky, I'd turned my $300 pay check into about 6k. I decided to quit my job, I thought, hey i don't need a regular income, I run like God. I was playing poker every night, except Sunday's, from 5pm to 5am - sometimes playing 24 hour sessions on Friday's or Saturday's. I lived this way for about 2 to 3 months, my bankroll varying slightly, until one week I had a 7k profit session (on a $500 max table over 24 hours). I was overjoyed at this huge result, and my roll was now up to 12k. I decided to fly to Melbourne for the Aussie Millions (not to play, but for the cash games, and seeing the pro's). This was exciting, the first time i'd travelled interstate - and I'd done it on a whim, me and a buddy from the casino decided to fly out about 8 hours before the plane was due to take off!

In Melbourne they had a 2/5 game (NLHE) which i played. I did okay at first, but I was playing far too long sessions, regularly over 20 hours, my sleeping pattern was completely destroyed, I wouldn't know if it was day or night until I went out to smoke. This had a terrible impact on my game. I would open limp/fold MOST hands, have next to no reads on my opponents, and happily call down with mid-pair simply thinking they might be bluffing. The first half of the session I would be playing great, in the profit. I just didn't know how to get up and walk away.

I blew my entire 12k bankroll in 10 days of constant poker. This is heartbreaking stuff. On the up-side I played with Phil Laak (The Unabomber) for a couple of hours while he was waiting for a seat to open on a higher stakes table (this is something i'll never forget).

I had about $100 left. I deposited this into FTP and grew it up to $1500 in the space of a week. And then I would go and buy in to a $200 tourney, and bust out before the money, this would set me on tilt, so i'd buy into another one. WAY outside my bankroll. In this manner I blew the rest of it. I've managed to find $40 lying around my room that i've deposited on stars, and I've been looking for microstakes grinding advice and stumbled across this forum while waiting for the money to be transfered into my account. I'm so determined now to adopt a disciplined approach and grind this $40 into a workable bankroll again.

I hope that something might be learned from aspiring pro's out there, about the lengths i've gone to, and how it's cost me so much. I know i've learned a lot from my experiences, and the high's have been dizzyingly high, and the lows have been very low. In these last 6 months i've experienced so much, I was living off my poker winnings for about 4 months, travelled interstate purely for poker, and played with one of my poker idols. This is something i'll never forget. And now i've got to start all over again, from scratch.