How much will you lose before you start winning? - share your stories

I'm a micro-stake recreational fish, playing for several years. I play about 10-15 hours a week.

I started with $280. At first, stars started offering double or nothing SNG, and I played $1 DoN SNG for a while, making it up to $500. After that, I switched to PLO8 cash table, and since then, it was up and down between $500 - $1300.

I think I lost half of my BR about 3 times. I found it out recently, that I was justifying myself saying "I am investing to learn the game, and I am following a healthy BRM.". Only in the last couple of months, I think I'm making a progress in both BR and understanding my game.

Well, I learned (or heard them long before, but did not actually learn) two things:
1. BRM is for winning player. There is no BRM when you're keep losing.
2. If you don't fix your most obvious issue and see improvements in the next sessions, you're not learning your game.

I'm semi pro atm, never deposited a cent of my own money because I simply can't. Busted few no deposit bonuses here and there, than freerolled my way to a decent bankroll, ran very well and crushed micro in no time. at the moment I'm playing 200nl for a living as my only source of income.

The news article title is

How much should you expect to lose before you start winning at poker?

The subject of this thread is "How much will you lose before you start winning?"

I did not expect to lose anything.
My free 50$ was on Full Tilt, and there is some of it still left, though I rarely play there.
My initial deposit on PokerStars has tripled -- but more as a result of successful staking of others than my winnings -- although I'm a winning player there as well.

I have also deposited on other sites and lost.
Overall, I'm down somewhat.

My main purpose at this point is to learn the game -- though it is taking longer than I thought it would. The math and strategy part is easy -- the psychological part is hard.

In our articles and videos we talk a lot about knowing the tendencies of other players.
We need to know ourselves too, and I think that I need to improve in that area more than any other.

--VS

Haven't deposited but got lucky tbh and I've won so much playing freerolls and nl5 even given my weak skill level, it's embarrassing.

I walked the freeroll road, so I didn't expect to either win or lose anything. In fact I thought I'd play a few games for a laugh and give it up.

So who's laughing now eh? Oh...wait...

When I started out, I used to play blackjack, roulette and craps alongside with poker as well as sports betting, all with the same bankroll. Since it was all gambling to me, it didn't really matter. I believe I was down $150-200 at one point, but I think not much more than $50 of that was because of poker. At least not until I started grinding DoNs for my entire bankroll, which quickly put me down to around -$200 again.

Then I got a lucky 2nd place finish in a $4,000 guaranteed MTT for $554.80, which motivated me to take the game seriously, albeit still with terrible BRM. In the long run, though, I didn't deposit more than I withdrew, so I guess I was technically still winning, even though I needed to reload often.

After I finally forced myself to take BRM seriously in late 2012, I never needed to make another deposit ever again, except for when I started a roll at another poker room, but even that has been withdrawn by now.

started playing with the pokerstrategy starting capital, i had it completely clear in my mind that i wanted to take it seriously and never deposit anything out of my own.
think i ran average in the beginning, had a few bumps but it worked. i posted a lot in hand eval under the good old veriz which was probably the key point in improving my game at first

so, "how much should you expect to lose"? i don't know, depends on your determination and will to learn, probably about $100 most if you run really bad and aren't a good learner?

about year 2008. I occasionally started deposit 10$ in ps, I believe in that year in summed up it could be 120$ in total, obviously at first I had one goal, fast easy money, after year later discovering pokerstrategy free bankroll I started to take poker little bit serious, after that I started to separate my funds, regular income and funds from poker to another account, I that way I managed, if I could, put some money from poker account to my "real life money account", If I go busto, I just figure out how to start playing again, first there was freerolls, vip tournaments etc. later on I got staked.

keep working on this system till then, and It works very well, at least I don't risk with any financial different in regular day life.

I deposit less than $100 to different sites which I all lost before I found PokerStrategy. Then I ofc got that starting capital which I also mostly loss. Then I won $50 to my TaF account from a competition we had in FI community and moved it to Titan Poker. Then I luckboxed something like 2k from tournaments. But since that I have not made deposits.

I started to play around 1999-2000, found a poker room while surfing the net and got some free money when i registred there, from there i used this money and played alot of freerolls to build the bankroll, was learning the game this way, never loss that free money and around 10 years ago i moved from Sweden and started to play for living,, so i do think its possible to start without loseing ,, but probably harder today since the game changed and everyone is better then few years back,,

I was not that smart as you majority of guys are. I over- paid to learn poker However succesfully won all those K's back once I started studying and playing instead of spewing and tilting..

i have lost more than 25k usd in stars and fulltilt during 2006-2011,

i have stop playing online and play on Live homegames,
reading online,

if i ever start deposit again,
i would deposit 2k usd and also 2k usd on coaching.

So far I probably lost roughly about $3K (I actually have no idea) depositing from $10-$50 a month playing recreationally.

I started with a couple of free bankrolls (2 were $50, and then a lot of $10 I can't really remember), and then moved to stars and bwin.

I found pokerstrategy early on (like 4 years ago) and started playing micro SNGs. I can't count the times I've quit for a month or two then come back, try reading strategies installing software and so on.

Looking back I'd always just get overexcited while reading strategies, quitting halfway through articles or videos to go and start playing, using strategies and HUDs without even understanding them (oh dear).

Even when running good I'd play NL5 go up like 10 or 20 BI, and then just go on tilt next week and blow it all or take half of my money from the site to buy something or stuff like that, or I'd play MTTs or SNGs too big for my bankroll (like way too big)

At the moment I'm abit more serious about my bankroll managment as I have to pay the bills myself now (figures, eh) so I didn't need to deposit for about 2 months now. I currently play NL5 cash games and manage to bring in about $100 on a good month. Not much, but it's enough to let me focus on learning to grind and learning strategies.

So long story short to become a winning player at NL5 I needed about 3 years and more than $2k

When I first saw miniFTOPS series in 2010 I made first deposit of 200$ for it, busted on first 20$ tournament but on second 30$ tournament finished 54/17K people for 640$ then moved to cash NL200 where I guess I was lucky enough not to bust, instead actualy made profit without any knowledge about bankroll management
So that 200$ deposit is only I ever made and I withdraw a five figure sum by now, and answer to first post would be, yes I think that begining luck had a big motivation since my loosing prior to winning was just 20$ from that first tournament.

My Friend and favourite coach TwiN staked me by 500$, i never lost this 500$ and i play with started money over 2 years.

Lost my initial 50$ from PS in some cash games and mtt. Have deposit bit of own money which I lost as well. This accounts into 100$ or bit less. Then got another 50$ from PS and went completely into sng games. From there I have got pretty nice bankroll for high stake sng and quite bit in different investments.

I think micro games in sng are still pretty soft and very beatable with ABC play. Though 7/15$ games are probably somewhat tougher with more professional players from cheaper countries.

I lost about 40-50$'s
than I made 30$ deposit and from those 30$ deposit I won 3700$ in sngs/mtts.

I lost 300 USD after 50 k hands, playing NL2 Zoom 6-Max at Pokerstars.
I think that everybody play very well and destroy me and me ilusion.

Congratulations to all winners, it is the only thing I can say. Sorry.

Great for you, you are a winner.

Originally posted by Sergio3316
I lost 300 USD after 50 k hands, playing NL2 Zoom 6-Max at Pokerstars.
I think that everybody play very well and destroy me and me ilusion.

Congratulations to all winners, it is the only thing I can say. Sorry.

Then you should or improving your game study threads like https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=352417&page=1 and https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=334218&page=1. Posting hands on our Hand discussions for No Limit could help as well, because then you will get feedback on the hands you have played.

Another option would be to choose to play on the regular cash game tables, because they are softer then the ZOOM tables.

If that doesn’t work you can also considering playing another game formats like SNG’s or MTT’s.
Off course if you would consider this you can always ask for more information about these formats.

Hopefully it helps a little bit and I wish you good luck to improve your game that you will be a winning player in the future

Cheers,
SDK1987

I personally have never been a loosing player. I started poker with play money while learning the basics. Then I deposited something like 10 € or so, played micro stakes and built a BR of about 400 € (as far as I remember, it´s long time ago). I didn´t win because I was good, I won because Villains were even worse. Of course I studied and read books but back in 2008 it didn´t take much to be a winning player, the tables were full of recreational players with no clue.

When I restarted poker a year ago, the idea was to play tourneys just for fun. I deposited 20 € or so and started playing 10ct-SnGs and DONs, I didn´t expect to be winning player because poker has changed a lot and I restarted after 7 or 8 years of absence from the tables. But it turned out that my memories were enough to beat those super low stakes and that I indeed was winning. I made my way up to a BR of about 220 €, playing 1 and 2 € SnGs now, studying regularly, hope to make it to the 5€ stakes soon.