when i 1st started online poker, to even win was impossible, seems so rigged.
after i learnt that there are people making money online and was introduced to pokerstrategy, i still couldn't beat nl2, and i'm someone who don't really tilt!
took me some time to actually figure things out, mostly through playing.
what im trying to say is to start off from ground zero is not easy, you may want to aim abit lower.
$97 to $1000 in like 3 weeks. I play go big or go home. Lost $400 pretty quick, now I'm at $800 about to start week 4.
Joined a site, no deposit. Allowed to play freerolls with the usual 10,000 entries, earning 15c for 260th place. 
After 4 weeks I tried to enter a freeroll that needed 100 raked hands and it let me in with no rakes! 180 seats finished 2nd for $700 and was absolutely clueless. Lol. 6 months later I won it for $1000, but had loads of FTs for $50 top 10. All in all it took me about 6 months from zero to $2000+.
For a challenge bet I withdrew it all and started with zero - $1000 again. Made it again in about 9 months. I've done that 4 times now. The last time I had 69c left after withdrawing though, so I cheated a bit.
So I've still never deposited but I keep only $200 on. It keeps my feet on the ground and stops me taking 'shots'.
gotta say that this thread is simply Inspiring!
I play poker since I was little, my grandfather taught me when I was 8 years old. That was 25 years ago..
I believe that I am reasonably good player, I win most of my live weekly friends tournies. But I only recently began to play for cash (thx pokerstrategy.com!).
While things going pretty well, my problem is that I do have a good job, wife and 2 kids soon 
♠_love:. I am darn tired when I finally have my spare time. And I know that I am playing silly when I am half sleepy.
Last 4 weeks or so I decided that this is my only chance for the next few years to check my skills (on the web at least) and I manage to earn 5-10$ every day for ~1 hour.
So regarding the OP, 1000$ = ~200 hours = ~200 days give or take, hopefully for me.
I do think that those with extra free time can do it around 3 months, and even 1 month if its what you do in life. Given that you know how to play and lady lucky doesn't ignoring you completely (god know she has her days, at least once a month. pms sux! ♠_ugly: )
Good Luck!
ps: dunno how meaningfull is my post, tried my best before sleep for my first post 
Haha bradomurder! Sorry, but I mean mininum is $300 a MONTH!!! Can you believe that??? So it's about $75 a week.
A recently graduated engineer will make $1000 a month. An office assistant will make some $400 a month, and so it goes. Terrible!
I'm from Malaysia, our salary rate for private sector has gone down since few years back thanks to our government. Newly graduated engineer starting at RM1600 approxs $US400 permonth.
That why i play poker to earn some extra income
Originally posted by Justin37
Haha bradomurder! Sorry, but I mean mininum is $300 a MONTH!!! Can you believe that??? So it's about $75 a week.
A recently graduated engineer will make $1000 a month. An office assistant will make some $400 a month, and so it goes. Terrible!
I'm from Malaysia, our salary rate for private sector has gone down since few years back thanks to our government. Newly graduated engineer starting at RM1600 approxs $US400 permonth.
That why i play poker to earn some extra income
Quite right justin... earning money in poker is a bit more valuable in 3rd than in 1st world countries. I mean... If you allow yourself to get some $2000 a month in countries like ours, you can start thinking of becoming professional and making a living from it. In Europe, $2000 wouldn't be that much... I think. It seems, you know? There is a relative value implied.
You have to work your ass off in an office for $400 a month... what if you could earn $2000 at home... having fun all the time? At least that's how I feel about poker... it's fun for me, even when I'm not going too well.
Money should never be the ultimate goal. There are probably several way easier ways to make xk$ a month than poker. What should be fun is doing ur best to improve, exploring ways to better ur game, figuring out ways to outplay those u've noticed are better than u, bringing ur game to a higher level day after day... if u don't find all of that fun ur probably not going to make it in poker.
Money is a side product of quality studying. Very simple and very true fact for poker. The reason why more people aren't making loads of money or why the game is still as profitable as it is? People simply can't be bothered to invest the kind of time and effort it takes to become good enough to win loads of money. No matter who u are, there's always room for improvement in ur A game. The difference between those winning a lot and the rest is, that those winning a lot put time and effort improving further. Others just stay in place and run in their little hamster wheels. Money is utterly irrelevant. Quality of the game is the nuts.
Got into poker about a year ago first - with beginners luck and stonecold pokahhface demolished my first time at a live home cashgame 
Then the goal was to start playin' online never ever depositing a single cent on my own. Got my free $50 from PS - blew it all, bankroll management lesson learned free of charge for life, thank you PS
Then started playin' a ton of freerolls and SnG's with pennies made from MTTs
Took about 3-4 months to grind those pennies into about $40 ("grinding" back then meant about 2-3 freerolls a day - so basically zero volume )
Cashed out and made my first deposit with that on Everest, grinded it up to $90
trying FL and NL SSS to bonuswhore my roll up a bit, but SSS was a disaster
Next step was depositing $85 on FT and start taking things seriously playing CG BSS
From $85 to $1000 in 2 months (NL2-NL10) and then lost half of it moving up (NL25) accompanied by a sexy downswing
Here in Estonia, average hourly "winrate" behind a deskjob is between $3-5/hour and I'm the kind of guy who does superbly good in things he loves and super poorly on things I don't give a shit about ... like slavin' away my life at a crappy meaningless slavejob
So I'm super motivated and enjoy poker a lot and even if I can't/won't become uber1337 at poker ... well any moron can earn $10/hour with poker at least
i has taken me 5 weeks to win $2000 playing nl20 and freerolls in under 20,000 hands........yes im pretty sick lol
i have been playing poker for about 3 years winning a bit then losing it, i put it down to bad variance as i thought i was a good player
since putting a lot of time in studying poker reading fourums and actually putting my ego to one side and reading stratagy and looking at vidios it didnt take me to long to realise i was a complete donk retard fish
my poker is now on the way up i still have so much more to learn but im enjoying learning
still working on it ♦ it's been 9 months now. But i only played poker 3-4 of them.
I cant say how much I have won all together with bonuses etc but it is close to 2k if not over that now.
This second run from 25 cents to over $700 has taken since October of 09 with at least 2 full months
of no playing so I would say at a casual pace you can hit 1k within 6 months easy. I do not play hours
and hours a day either. I would say I average 2-3 hours of play time a day and 1 -2 hours of study time
mixed up throughout breaks in the day. The earlier few months are the slowest but once you get up
to the $3 and higher you can start to see $150-$200 a week 12 tabling SNGs.
Originally posted by NightFrostaSS
Won't be fun forever.
+1
If u go on the "pro" mode and makin money while relaxin at home,sooner or later Mr.Pain will join u in some devilish way
I believe I started in November 2008, I think it took me about 4 months. I played in December a shitload of Double or nothings to $800 at Januari, Februari I had my first $1k. I took it to the cashgames and played poorly and tilty. In around April I was taking it very seriously with only $300 left, grew it to about $28k total to this point with 8 months serious poker, rest of it dedicated to school, breaks and social life.
Originally posted by N0pr3s3n7
Playing since 6 months poker at all.
Before a year i vanished my starting capital for few days.
At November started with 10$ free from a site.
Since February i deposited some money at PokerHeaven,up to now i got 1000 euros.graph for the last month:
I'm playing only NL10 up to now !.
Wooow 50 buy ins up on 37k hands 0,o thats sick ev graph plz ;=)?
I started in June 08 and passed 1k at the end of October 08, here is a brief history of my trials and tribulations from my first year in poker;
https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=53522
basically to sum up; almost 5 months to reach 1k, and 7 months of actual playing seriously after I started my first ever session to pass 5k. It was super hard work and when I played, I played constantly. Back then I posted an absolute ton of hands in the sample hands forum and watched a ton of videos too, the only thing I didn't do was get private coaching which I think was a big mistake.
Oh. I spent all my money and am back at the micro-stakes playing BSS ♦ I would advice against that part!
I passed 1k yesterday
Finished second in the early double on fulltilt catching myself a nice 900$.
i took a long break from when i first started only been playing properly with about 100$ since beginning of may. now nearing 1.2k and i get to move up to NL25
Started going up slowly, got at the final table of the early double, lost most of it.
Then I was back at 100$.
Then I played the big little tournament and shipped 1k$ where I shouldve shipped like 9k 
So it took me 4 months and one big win
started playing maybe 2 years ago?
slow-losing player cash games nl25-nl10
started playing properly 2 months ago, practiced proper BRM and did more reading, deposited 200 and played NL10, grinded up to nl25, finally hit 1000 today.
so... 2 years from starting poker online, 2 months from lost deposit (i guess that counts as 2 years)
