Turning $1 into $1,000 playing poker online - update #10

January 11th, 2008 by Kenric

It’s been 3 months since my last update and this will probably be the last update on my turning $1 into $1,000 poker challenge. Why have I decided to call it quits on this? Well I am spreading myself way too thin online now. My last update was on September 2nd, right about the time when I began to create my e-business site. This drastically cut into my poker playing time. I began to play poker leisurely as a break from the other stuff. I can definitely say that if you don’t take playing poker seriously, you will not make money. Playing for fun is not the same as trying to make money.

On September 2nd I played 31,403 hands. As of today I have about 39,000 hands. So in the past 3 months I’ve only played 7,500 hands. Compare this to me playing 20,000 hands in the first month.

So here is my final graph. This graph shows only the cash games. I had switched over to sit-n-go tables back in July. So although the graph that I almost cleared $500 twice, I actually hit the $800 mark once. When I had hit $800, I was very close to my $1,000 goal and a few bad hands quickly dropped me down to under $700. From there it went downhill as I was playing for fun as a break from other stuff.

The last run from $300 to $500 was over Christmas break where it seemed like there were alot of horrible players online during the holidays.

To break down how I played. I was playing at NL $25 (.10/.25) for the last 10,000 hands. Below are the graphs of the lower levels. You can clearly see that I was successful at the lower level and I feel confident in saying that I can beat the .02/.05 and .05/.10 levels. Playing at the .10/.25 level my graph pretty much went sideways and I was not progressing.

Many people don’t realize that poker has very distinct levels. You may be very good at one level and move up to a level where the big blind is just $0.15 more and the game completely changes. Each level requires a different style of play and almost completely changing your lines and thinking.

I still love playing poker and will continue to keep playing and learning. However, I just have too much on my plate to devote the attention and time it needs to become a good player.