The End of Online Poker

Well, it is for me anyway.

After 15 months of winning more and more money and thinking it would never end, my fortune took a turn for the worse back in June, and since then I have managed to lose all of my winnings.

Having said that, I'm still a winner! I should explain...

It all started in March 2005 when Jonny came back from a trip to Las Vegas and introduced me to the fad of online poker. Being a sensible fellow, I decided I wouldn't ever put any real money in, but I did enjoy learning the game on the 'play money' tables.

Within a couple of weeks I had turned 1000 valueless chips into 60000, and it occurred to me that maybe I should just stick £10 on to see if I could do the same with real money. Again, being Mr Sensible, I set myself two very strict rules:

1) I would play on the very low stake tables, and never allow myself to up the stakes, under any circumstances.

2) If I lost that money, I would never put any more on, under any circumstances.

For the first couple of months, I came close to losing that money on a few occasions, but always managed to claw it back. Gradually I realised that I needed to be more patient and give up on more hands, and it was then that the bank balance started rising.

By the end of my first full year on the poker tables, I had turned $19.23 into $922.

However, in doing so, I had broken my first rule. You see once I had a few hundred dollars in the bank I gradually upped the stakes, and by the end of the year I was playing on three tables at once: one 50c/$1 limit table, and two no-limit tables, each with a buy-in of $25.

At this point I cashed out $700 to take with me to Egypt at Easter. Had I not done so I wouldn't have been able to afford the two extra day-dives and night-dive, so you could say that if it weren't for poker, I would still never have seen a turtle, stingray or octopus!

Anyway, when I got back from Egypt I turned that remaining $222 dollars into about $450 before the start of the decline.

All of a sudden, I kept losing. In the space of four weeks, that $450 had fallen to $70. I then had another four weeks of ups and downs, and at one point I'd managed to recover to my post-Egypt total of $220 odd dollars, but then I lost over $100 in a single session one night (including $45 on one hand), and before I knew it I was down to below $20.

At this point, I remembered my broken first rule and considered that my greed had been my downfall, but rather than returning to the penny tables I decided to keep going for it on no-limit, in the hope of winning back some big pots. Eventually I went out with the following hand:



My A 10 straight was the best possible hand after the turn (i.e., the fourth community card), so I went all-in and was laughing when someone called me, only for him to beat me on the 'river' by hitting a full-house.

Gutted.

Still, I will always remember the satisfaction that is gained from flopping the nuts...

The nuts in this instance, being an ace high flush. Unfortunately, he folded. Notice the 10 J of spades on the other table?

That went on to give me my fourth royal flush - the best hand in poker. I think that's pretty good going in 18 months. I once hit it on the flop, which is apparently a 1 in 650,000 chance. Anyway again, he folded so I didn't win much with it, and I think I ended up about $20 down on that session (it was one of my last).

I still don't really understand how I managed to win money consistently for fifteen months, and then lose pretty much constantly for the last two or three. I can only think that it was for one these reasons:

1) I was incredibly lucky for fifteen months
2) I was very unlucky for the last two or three months
3) Everyone else started getting better at poker

Actually, I think it might have been a little bit of all three. Perhaps I should consider myself fortunate that I caught onto the poker thing early, and managed to win a lot of money from people who were just discovering the fad and still learning how to play. It seems that all the people who were rubbish have finally given up on it, and only the good players are left. For this reason, I am actually going to keep to my second rule, and never put any real money on again.

Still, the whole experience has left me $680.77 better off, and even though it's gutting that I lost $450 at the end, I will always be up on the deal.

It does, however, mean that I am currently between addictions. Any suggestions?