The Crazy Start to My Online Poker Career

I have been playing online poker for about ten years. Getting into online poker was not easy. When I was first interested in online poker, it was still in its infancy. There was still the fear of not getting paid if you won because the whole concept of winning money from the internet was so new. One night I was playing at Americas Cardroom and had the best run of my life playing $6/$12 fixed limit. I requested a $600 cash transfer withdrawal and the next day I had it. Once that happened, my confidence in getting paid by online poker rooms improved significantly.

I was approached about helping out with the Big Bet Poker launch. I accepted the offer and within a few weeks I hit their $25,000 bad beat jackpot. Bad beat jackpots were different back then. There was no additional rake taken to cover it. I beat quad 5's with a straight flush and my bankroll went from a few hundred dollars to $6500. At that point I was ready to move on to bigger and better things.

I moved on to helping out Absolute Poker right as they launched. I was able to grow my bankroll and decided to start playing for bonuses. Back in this time, poker bonuses would often pay back over 100% rakeback. Party Poker was one of these poker rooms that would offer five times raked hand bonuses. That meant for every five raked hands that I would get dealt in, I would clear $1 in bonus. Playing $1/2 fixed limit, the bonus was well over 100% rakeback.

While clearing those great Party Poker bonuses, I had my biggest tournament score ever. Even to this day I have not won this much in a tournament. Admittedly, I was not a very good No Limit Hold'em tournament player. Back then, nobody else was either. I ran incredible all the way through a $109 buy in tournament. I made the final table and ran over it. When we got down to three players I was the chip leader.

I was the big blind and got dealt Q4 offsuit. The other two players limped in and the flop came Q42 rainbow. The small blind shoved and I called. The button also called. The hands flipped over and I was against pocket aces and pocket kings. These monsters had slowplayed each other and let me in for a free flop. The board did not improve anyone and the next thing I knew I was the winner of a large multi-table tournament. My win was about $9000.

While the poker games are not as easy as they once were, players are winning bankroll changing, or even life changing money in tournaments. If you study, or even just run good, you could have a large tournament win that could forever change your poker bankroll or even your life.