Courtney Gee is back with Part 2 of her introduction! Courtney has vowed to never work a 9-5 job again and she'll be blogging her poker progress right here.
Read on as Courtney brings us up to speed on how she did at the tables in 2010.
In my first post, I explained why I made it a goal to avoid working a 9 to 5 job. I quit my full-time job, got a part-time job writing for a website, and planned to play 25-30 hours of poker every week.
I had been mostly a tournament player but I decided that I would try to earn my income through 6-max cash games.
In this post, I'll give a quick summary of my 2010.
I played mainly cash games the first 8 months of the year with some MTTs here and there. I had trouble, though. I ran well below EV and was running bad in general, but my biggest problem was volume. I was bad at multi-tabling and I also could not bring myself to play the necessary hours. It took me a few months to play 50k hands, which is absolutely unacceptable.
I couldn't understand what my problem was. I was supposed to play 5 hours per day but that was rarely happening. I felt like my cash game sessions dragged on and I just never wanted to play.
By the time August 2010 came around, I was up only a marginal amount for the year playing both cash and tournaments. Obviously my bank account was much lower at this point. I had to change something, so I decided to play tournaments full-time instead.
Making the switch to tournaments was very good for me. Not because I made more money doing it, though. In fact, all I did was lose money for the first 3 months of full-time tournament poker.
It was a great idea because I actually WANTED to play poker again. Time flew by for me when I was playing tournaments and I was able to string together 6-10 hour playing days with ease.
I was finally getting in the necessary poker volume, but the lack of income was very frustrating at first. Between August and late October I lost almost 300 average tournament buy-ins, which amounted to almost $9k and a very large portion of my bankroll.
I was playing over-rolled and therefore not in immediate danger, but it was very stressful. I only had a few more months of living expenses in the bank, and the prospect of having to go back to work if poker didn't turn around was looming very large.
I got a lucky break at the end of October. I won ~$3.5k playing a $26 FO on Full Tilt, and then a week or so later I placed 2nd in the Double Deuce for $21k. Instantly the weight was lifted off my shoulders. I felt very lucky to have such a huge score and it definitely came at the right time.
Since then I have had a couple more decent scores and I am comfortable financially. I'm still working part-time for FTR and I try to play poker 4 days per week. My goal for the year is 4,000 MTTs. I'm behind pace right now because I keep taking time off to go out of town, but I should be able to make it as long as I grind consistently for the rest of the year.
Thanks for reading these boring introductory posts :) I hope my future entries will be much more interesting!
I will update on a regular basis with my progress and share my experience as I try to avoid going back to 9 to 5.
I'm no poker superstar and my game needs a lot of work, so you shouldn't expect enlightening strategy or tips in this blog. You should, however, expect posts regarding discipline, bankroll management, money management, and dealing with variance – things that are often overlooked but very important when it comes to playing poker for a living.
If you have ever considered quitting your job in favor of poker, hopefully I can give you some valuable insight!
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