It has been a good month;
this is more of a brag update then a real post :S

Thanks to the videos I saw on leggo going much better than before

I kind of just crushed nl5


I'm with 240$ on stars; going to take a day off to find leaks and use the 10$ I need to grind left to focus on those improvements.

If i'm able to keep this winrate I should be at the small stakes in no time.

Outside the tables things couldn't be going better though I'll need to take some time fixing some issues that I am having with my inscription for this year in college(university);
After this is done I'll defo take some time to finish up the timeline from when I cashed in on stars till now; hope you enjoy the read then.

I need to exercise more though!
This weekend I won't play much but next week is going to be a marathon of watching vids reading articles to crush nl10 asap.

I made up my mind that this time before I move up I need a bit more studying so I avoid the breakeven/losing start I had on both nl2 and nl5; it took me less hands in nl5 to get hang of it and hopefully in nl10 it will take even less.

I do have some huge leaks still like keep tabbing to HEM to see how am I doing in the session; and I could be more organized with note taking and I need to get a couple of notebooks to take down notes of videos and stuff and to compile what I already have because all my poker notes are split across small papers and uni notebooks :S

I've been reading more hands on forums but not posting yet :S so far I've been trying to avoid marginal situations but to be a winner as I go higher I need to become better playing marginal hands and I'll try to post more hands; I think I just keep giving excuses to don't show up my fuckups in public but still as part of a learning process it's something I need to do.

Hope at this rhythm I'll be playing nl200 b4 Xmas eheh who knows!
well I believe I am in a good route to become the real Portuguese poker prodigy!!
gl at the tables
All the best;
Angh

This is my nl2 graph; as you can see there is a clear evolution from the first 23k hands to the second 23k hands :P on a later post I'll explain what and why I change! I really believe it would be a really intresting read for people who are starting out playing the micros!



Kind of the same thing once I moved up to nl5 the first 1.7k hands were just garbage IMO then I had a bad run losing 3BI's I really had to sharpen up my game because I had only one BI left for the limit and would have to go down after! Around the 4.6k I also lost 2 BI's kind of bad variance but overall I was (am) playing good enough to beat the limit and move up!
there are some bad plays still! it's part of a learning process and I'm working hard to improve! but no tilt whatsoever so far; I am doing my best to not chase losses and don't go crazy vs fishy villains when I have bad beats; or don't get out of line vs very aggro fish's which is the thing I found more annoying so far :S



I just wanted to get this done so people would have a more clear idea of where I started and where I am now that I am start to writing this down!
Although I intend to keep telling the story of what happened before I got here I think it's more interesting that way!
And once I get to the point where I am I'll try to keep weekly updates

This can be the story of the real PPP(I really hope so)

Long story short; motivated by the "girah" story I decided to comeback to Poker! I did a test at a site that gave me a free 50$ starting bankroll!

I busted half of it just doing silly silly stuff like registering for like 5 1$SnG's that I didn't even play or unregister played on some tournaments etc..

All I know was that I kept saying I'll play my first 25$ for fun and then I'll go and study and read something up and start to play seriously.

So after busting not 25$ but around 32$ I found this amazing (I thought so) articles on Short stack strategy and I gave it a try; though I made the mistake of playing this in shallow tables! Didn't knew more at the time!
I kept bouncing my BR up and down in the 20's$; at a point I decided to cash in 10$ just to be entitled to ********!
I was playing 4tables of FRnl2(shallow) and 2more tables of tournaments either a 1$sng the daily rebuys of 1$ 0.1$ or freerolls.
After this I almost went bust one night and stopped playing for a while I think I saw all the videos of the Full tilt Poker Academy in that night.

The day after I manage to climb up from like 5$ to 21$ and I was really happy; than I ran hotter than hell!

I somewhat manage to win the 0.10 rebuy (without addons or rebuys) for 224$! it helps when you're dealt pocket cowboys 2 times and flop quads!!!!
here are some ss's of that:



Pretty happy with it on the next day I even won a 3FPP 180 Sng turbo that would give a seat to the 2.2$ Main event qualifier!! seriously all I was thinking was "Vegas and winning the fucking WSOP"!
I busted pretty quick in that tourney though!

But my luck was about to change for better though I didn't realize it at first! I found one of my old friends on msn(this friend whom I call AF1 and his brother whom I call AF2)!
Well this particular friend and his brother were playing poker for a living for 3years now and I had lost his cell number; so I was really happy to meet him and ask him for his number again and see if I could have some advice!

When I went to meet them I was really proud of myself thinking I was such a good player; I had just turned 0 in 250$ in a couple of weeks I was ready to take on the world; oh god how fool I was.
Well as I said later on I learned more in a couple of hours talking with them than in a month reading stuff online!
they told me all this stuff about Big stack strategy; auto-re buys; hold'em manager; poker books, videos training sites; leggopoker (EHEH); table selection I was baffled!
I don't know yet if I have already realized how much luck I had!
Though I can't say it was all luck cause I was thinking on asking some common friends for AF1's number so.

Anyway I came home I decided I'm going to learn BSS read the 2 books they lent me(Professional no limit hold'em and Harrington on online cash games); I took 150$ out of FTP(I tried to at least) to purchase Hold'em manager and subscribe to leggopoker and still have a decent BR to start with!

Then black Wednesday came and all the $ I had on FTP vanished; the $ I had already withdraw never landed on my bank account :S

That's when I made a decision I am very proud of! As soon as I got paid from my job I'm going to buy Hold'em manager and put 50$ on pokerstars and chase the dream!

In the little gap between black friday and me getting paid I crumbled across sauce's blog( i didn't had a clue at this point who sauce aejones ashman isildur jungleman durr were); and it somewhat inspired me specially the part where he loses is first roll and then ends up winning a tournament I could someone relate to it.

This was during the time of my exams so I was playing more to bust some steam though intending to make some bucks; I wanted to take it more serious as soon as I was done with my exams.

I was getting ready to start climbing this time it wouldn't be on a freeroll it would be my own $! Money that I had to work hard to get and I wouldn't have to spend it on other stuff; so if I was going to do this!
I was going to do this fucking right!

I learned about and how to play poker back in 2007 (I was 19); my brothers taught me at home a circle of my friends were all start playing and we did some home games kind of once a week where we played Limit Hold'em.

Looking back I recall myself as being simply a HUGE FISH; at the time I didn't thought of it like that, because I thought I was good, well I think most people always do(think their good).
I didn't know anything about pot odds; ranges; EV, etc...still I was able to win some bucks(euros in this case) I believe it was a mix of luck and already playing people; calling more those who were more likely to bluff; folding to those who looked more nitty but I believe this was just common sense.

At this time I had everything going for me; I was on the first year of medschool in Lisbon; I had a wonderful girlfriend(at least I thought so at the time); and I saw poker more as a hobby then away of making money.

Still I ventured online; I had a small bankroll on Bwin due to sports bets(mostly football/soccer) and I gave it a shot on the 1$ SnG's.
Back then what I did was pretty simple though fishy I thought it was a great strategy and was really proud of it; I basically tried to see many flops when the blinds were small and simply survive, they would simply take care of each other all I had to do was see cheap flops and play fit or fold.

After some time doing this I realized I was making about 1$/hour and I just gave up; mainly because with studies; travel time going back home and gf I didn't have much time for poker and well for just 1$/hour I could simply get a "real" job(now I know poker is also a real job).

Note that at this point I hadn't read a single line about strategy for poker I didn't know what tight/loose aggressive/passive meant etc.

So I gave poker a long 4year rest; that's when I heard the story of the Portuguese poker prodigy(though now I know it was fake I didn't when first I heard of it); I'm Portuguese as well so it definitively rang a bell. It wasn't much for his story but due to the fact that he claimed that when he started he was making 1$/hour(so I was told); and I thought what the hell?! I was making that and I didn't know shit about poker if I study and put a real effort into it I might as well be able become a millionaire in 1/2years.

And so in late May of 2011 my journey from Deuce to Ace began.