The following was imported from Xanga originally posted on December 3, 2007:

This is my official Poker Journal. I have recently decided to venture into the world online poker. I have always heard of many success stories of many young college kids hitting it big online and changing their lives forever. But I always had doubts of those stories being true, but in the past week I had just discovered that one guy that I went to high school with turned out to be ONE of those kids who manage to turn online poker into a ludicris money making machine. As of now, I don't intend on making a rediculous amount of money right away. The guy that I went to high school with is known as cts on Cardrunners.com and he has a personal blog just like this documenting his poker experiences. What really made me want to start online poker is because he started out in the exact same position as I was. I was introduced to poker back in junior year of high school and felt like I was somewhat good and continued play house cash games with some close friend up until now. But playing poker has never really cross my mind as something that can bring in a continuous flow of money...as for me anyways. After reading some of cts's blogs, it really taught me a lot of ins and outs of the game such as managing bankrolls, knowing that swings are inevitable in gambling and how to get over such down swings. I also found a forum called 2+2. This forum is full of online poker players that gather and analyze all aspects of the game. Some, if not most of the guys on their seemed to have had a degree of success online. As of now, my goal is to become a student of the game and absorb as much information about how the mechanics/pychology of poker really works. I understand this might consume a large part of my life from now on. Knowing that it will consume a lot of my time, I want to train myself to have self control...so who knows, if this poker thing doesn't work out, I could at least gained valuable life experiences.


My First Experience of online poker with REAL money:
After reading cts's blog, all I did was think about what I can do to get as successful as he have in the past 2 yrs he has been playing. So, the only thing I could do yesterday was sign onto Full Tilt Poker and deposited $45 (I ended up shelling out $55 because I was a newb cuz ePassport charges you 5 dollars everytime you deposite money, and I had to do it twice cuz I didnt know FTP required a 45 minimum deposit)

Anyways, I read a lil bit of bankroll management stuff and decided to start at the .25/.50 blinds limit poker. I had intended on doing Pot limit but I was being a newb and accidentally stumbled into the limit poker, where you can only bet in increments of .25 at a time. I enter my first room and bought in 15 dollars since no one really had their full bank roll in there cuz the blinds were so small, it was not needed. I played for about and hr and I ended up breaking even overall. A lil frustration started to build, and I decided to add another table so I can increase my chance of winning by playing more hands. After half and hr of doing this, I noticed my winnings went into the green for a few dollars. So I decided to add a 3rd table. After playing for another hr, I started breaking even again and even lost a lil. At this point, frustration really set in and I decided to move up into the .50/1 limit poker to see if I can get away from breaking even. (This was a really stupid idea, since I just read about not moving up in blinds unless I had built a steady bankroll to support the swings in the game) I went into the room, and my luck did not get any better and I really started to push hard. I ended up losing like $10 and decided to quit playing for a few hrs.

After a few hrs of rest I decide to come back give it a shot. I took a look at my bankroll and got upset about losing $10 earlier in the day, so I decided to stick with .50/1 limit poker to try and win my money back. I play for a good hr and through out that hr I ened up being in the green as much as $15. Then as time went on, my winning started to go down and I was breaking even again. Then frustration really set in again after losing all of my hard earned winnings. I started to push on hands that did not needed to be persued and ended up loseing another $10 or so. So at this point I was really angry and decided that I didn't like limit poker at all cuz I couldn't win a lot on the hands that I had the nuts in. With that in my mind I decided to take what was left of my bank roll into the .25/.50 Pot Limit rooms. I got in their, sat out one hand to wait for the blinds to get to me. I was delt poket JJs on my first hand...which really made me happy so I decided to push with it and raised the blinds. I think 2 guys ended up calling me and the flop has some cards that were all below a J. I decied to raise like $5 and one folded and the guy on the left of me called and raised. This somewhat scared me but I thought he had hit the top pair on the flop which was not enough to beat me. The turn came and it was a Q, this somewhat scared me again but The chances of his having a Q in his hands were low and I decided to 5 dollars or so again. He called an the river turned out to be a insignificant card(that I thought!) I decided to check on the river cuz at this point I just didn't know what to do and all money was down to $6. The guy ended up putting me all in....I looked at my JJs and thought the only card he could really beat me with was the Q pair. I also thought the way he was being aggressive on the flop, he might have only hit the flop. So I called.....he ended up catch a FLUSH on the river, which came as a total surprised to me b/c I didnt even notice there were 3 spades on the board. His poket cards were some rags, 53 or something like that. I really couldn't belive he called my raise before the flop with a 53 of spades. I felt I just got robbed of my money immediately after that hand. But in the end I have to blame myself for moving up the blinds too quick without having much of a bankroll. Having a bankroll protects you from things such as this,
because having people luck out with rags is just a part of poker. Having a strong bank roll will help you take these hit a lot better....unlike me, where I just busted out. I feel like my poker game in general is not bad at all, I just need to work on my reaction time and be more observative of the cards that I delt on the board. I am gonna be able to get some money by the end of this week, so hopefully I will do a lot better then.

But until then, I am just gonna practice my game with play money and work on my reaction time to the game. I had a lot of success with play money today after I got myself into my "A" game. It took 1 reload of my chips but I did manage to turn my play money bank roll into 10K plus by starting with 2K in about 2hrs of playing. Even though I wished this was real money, I knew deep down that doing this will help me perfect my game and find my A game everytime that I play.

I downloaded a program called Pokertracker, I will post some of my stats next post when I start playing with real money at the end of this week. Anyways, wish me luck!