By xxrod17xx on September 5th, 2007 (more posts by author)

Hey guys, since this is my first blog we will have to start out with a little background information. I love poker, I have been playing it since the day Robert Varkoni won the WSOP and it was aired on ESPN. I saw a commercial for Partypoker.com and found my way to a number of play money sng's and I was hooked. I enjoyed the game a lot, but the whole play money thing got pretty boring. Fast forward to Spring Break '04, the poker boom is beginning, and I am playing varsity baseball for a small college in P.A. Every year all the college baseball teams across the country take spring break trips to warmer climates to start their season, mine was Florida. We got like $25 per day for food, but I didn't eat much on the trip because I was playing No Limit in the hotel room every night for the whole trip (this probably hurt me because I was a freshman and the senior captain ahead of me just got hurt so I needed all the energy that I could get). I lost every night because I didn't have a clue what I was doing. In comes my competitive nature and I find myself at Barnes and Noble buying Supersystem 2. This gave me an understanding of how to play my cards and somewhat how to bet my hands and stuff. I started beating my home games in college and in my hometown pretty badly.

Summer '04: I make my first deposit of many on FTP (before rakeback or I probably just didn't know what it was, such a bad beat!).

Spring '07: I decide to make my last deposit from my back to an online poker site ever. I deposited $100 on FTP, Subscribed to Live at the Bike, started reading 2+2 (or lurking). I medium stacked 10NL ($5 Buy-ins) for about a month until I reached a $200 bankroll. I quickly reached a $360 bankroll and then hit a rut. The rake, variance, emotions, poor play on my part, and many other factors started to catch up to me. I currently sit on a bankroll of $301. I now have a good friend who is willing to save me from the rake and back me in the 25NL games. I have to put up $15 he puts up $10 (we have all the rest worked out). So I technically now have 20 Buy-ins at 25NL. It will be a few days until I blog/play again since I will be moving to Atlantic City, NJ to become a poker dealer and to get my teaching certification.

Now, in the future this blog should consist of a little more than the average blog. I intend to blog on this mistakes and learning experiences that I will be having throughout my ups and downs. I am sure I will put in a few interesting hands from my dealing job and I also make videos of myself playing online so you will get those here also. I would like this to be a journal of all the mistakes a "new" player (I have so much to learn) will make throughout his growth both as a player and as a person. Poker molds people. It brings out the best and the most horrible traits right to the front so everyone especially yourself can see them. Poker is a game that has enabled me to see flaws in myself I would have never noticed before. I hope my blog will do the same for you.



[s] XXrod17XX[s]