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Introducing "Skinwalker" |
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Hello everyone,
My name is Andy, and I can be found playing as “Skinwalker” on Poker Stars.
Sean has graciously allowed me the opportunity to become one of his initial “students”, and the purpose of this article is to introduce myself, explain my reasons for playing, and outline what I am hoping to achieve by following the advice and strategies he gives on this site.
Until Christmas of last year I had never played a single hand of poker. This might not be unusual if you are say 16 years old, but at the age of 48 you might be forgiven for wondering if I had spent my entire life in a monastery. The simple truth is I had never been exposed to the game. I cannot recall a single friend or acquaintance from my youth who ever played, and my wife, who I would describe as a “natural” card player, had played the game on and off since childhood, but had always assumed that it would hold no interest for me.
At Christmas time my wife, noticing that I was spending an increasing amount of time watching (but not understanding) TV poker, had one of our children give me a hand-held Texas Hold Em’ computer game as a present. My wife explained the rules to me, and at that moment pokers equivalent of Pandoras box had been opened. After thrashing my computer opponents relentlessly I decided it was time to unleash my superior skills on an unsuspecting poker world.. Within two weeks of opening my Christmas present I had made my first $50 deposit at UB, and within two hours had promptly lost it playing 0.50/1 limit. I redeposited, and lost it again… and again. Now, $300 may not be much to some, but in our household, that’s two weeks groceries, and clearly something had to be done to halt this “insanity”. Purely by chance I stumbled upon a poker book at our local bookstore. I read it - quickly, and returned to the tables. I lost again. More slowly perhaps, but a loss just the same. I re-read the book, returned to the tables.,and, - lost. This time however it took a week. By this time my wife was also playing online, and between our regular discussions and further reading of any poker material I could lay my hands on, we began to win.
By May of this year our combined bankroll was $1500. We had recovered our initial losses, were showing a profit, and had both now moved up to playing 1/2. And then the crash came. I moved up to 2/4 and and we both discovered for the first time the true meaning of both poker variance, and in my case playing above your level. Today, my bankroll is exactly $200. I have learned the hard way that poker success cannot be bought, it has to be earned the hard way, through practice and continuous study and learning. There is clearly no substitute for experience.
My reasons for continuing to play are the same now as they were a few months ago. Firstly I love it. Secondly, I still genuinely believe it represents an opportunity, a possibilty, of a secondary source of income for my family. With that in mind now would be a good time to thank my wife for her patience, understanding, and support as I have pursued this “quest”
I switched to playing NL STT’s and MTT’s about 4 weeks ago. I came across the pocketfives site while browsing the web in work, and it was there that I saw the postings of one “Gidders”. I read his articles, enjoyed them, and pm’d him to tell him so. To my surprise he replied almost immediately, and gave me his MSN address telling me to message him if I needed any help and advice at any time. Believe me when I say that I have sought, and been given, that advice without question on many occasions. With Sean what you see is what you get. A guy who is genuinely interested in seeing other people succeed in the way that he has, and someone who is incredibly generous with his time. I know that my game has already improved under his guidance. My ITM in s&g’s is currently over 40% but there is still a long way to go, and heck of a lot to be learned until I can declare myself to be a winning player.
So the plan is this. I am going to start with $100 playing $5 s&g’s. If get to $220 I shall switch to the $10, at $440 the $20’s. I shall reassess at that point the level at which I shall play the $30’s. If at anytime my B/R drops below the stated level for each s&g, then I will drop down in limit. e.g. if I hit $220 and start playing the $10’s and my B/R drops below $200 then it’s back to 5’s and so on.
I shall be posting my progress after every 100 tourney’s. I work full time, and the maximum amount of time I have per week is probably 20 hours, so it’s going to take a little while even if I multi-table 3 at a time which is about the max my monitor can take with overlap.
If you see me at the tables be sure and say hello and mention gidders.com – I’m not a great chatter online though, take me all my time to follow the play LOL! If you need any to contact me for any reason then please just pm Skinwalker at pocketfives.com and I promise I’ll get back to you a.s.a.p. |
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Students 
