Hand me a chip and a seat

I was definitely an online poker degen. I admit it. Having to make the transition from live poker (where I'm a pretty regular winner at NL50 and NL100) to online, I crashed and burned several times. I've donked off my bankroll maybe 10 times now. In my opinion, there are several crucial differences between live and online play.

1) The body language. Call it tells, call it reads, but everyone gives off something as they play. How they put their chips in, how long they took to study their cards, whether they're looking at you intently to see if you'll just raise or call, etc. Live poker provides an abundance of information to make your decisions to the point where you can play your opponent and not even your cards. Raise them when you feel they're weak. Online, there are far fewer "tells". (Sure, you can argue timing tells, but everyone will admit that there's less to work with). Therefore, online, you can only play solid fundamental poker to be a winning player.

2) Bankroll management. Being a live player, I'd usually bring 2 or 3 buyins to a table game and leave if I lost it all. Online, if you're playing a stake with 2 or 3 buyins, you're going broke in no time. The variance is much higher (arguably because there's more unknowns).

3) Multitabling. For experienced online 9-max grinders, getting into hands out of position and with marginal hands spells death. In live, position matters just as much, but playing marginal hands can be hugely profitable.

So, being brilliant me, I start playing online poker with at a 4 BI stake, trying to run bluffs and representing hands without having an image, and playing marginal hands and being dominated preflop by the multi-tablers. Easy to say, I lost my first 200 very quickly. Rinse, repeat, being a marginal losing player.

Four days ago, an experienced poker player (and the admin of the school's poker club) set me up with a few starters and rules. Holdem Manager, $20, and multitabling 9-max at ONLY .01/.02 tables on pokerstars.

Cool. Easy. Penny poker.

Except I'd be making more money at ANY job. So after slowly grinding up to $33 at an painful pace, I decide that I'll take a shot at NL25. Cmon, they're not that tough. 20 hands later and a bad beat later, I'm sitting and staring at an empty bankroll yet again.

So now, my personal goal is to start fresh again from $20 and move up the stakes, addressing all the differences I mentioned earlier between live and online. 20 BI before moving up to the higher stake. Dropping when I have less than 20 BI's at my current stake. Playing better hands preflop. Playing in position. Multitabling.

We'll see how it goes! Here's the chart so far, after 4 days...



At around 5k hands, I tried taking my 10-tabling to 18-tabling. Bad leap-- I suddenly found myself with no time to make decisions and couldn't keep track of what was happening with what. Lost like 7 BI's. At the latest stretch, I've been finding myself with QQ vs KK/AA and AK vs KK/AA all-in preflop a lot. Another problem is fishies calling 3-bets with low pocket pair (anywhere between a .20-.30 preflop at a .01/.02 table) and hitting their set and stacking me. x(

I'm about 12 BI away from moving up to NL5! I'm hoping to hit it by the 26th (with no poker on Christmas, obviously). And happy holidays everyone!

Oh and PS: If anyone ever wants to give advice or discuss how I played, any leaks, etc, I'm more than happy to listen and chat.

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