Playing the penny tables was good training ground - however as my play improved, I became the victim of more bad beats. I moved from being the beat-er to the beat-ee. While it's true that those "no fold-em" players will ultimately see their bankroll dwindle to nothing (as did I), I have a theory that the sheer numbers of them online make it hard to keep your head above water when faced with a table full of them.
I concluded that to get past this it was time to move up in limit - to the .25/.50 tables. I figured that as the stakes got higher, the skill of the players would be better and there would be less tendency to play marginal hands out to a show down. And I was right - to a degree.
I was nervous the first time I posted that first big blind. Wow. This was the big time - at least for me. Our home games were penny-ante with the biggest bet being a huge nickel - .25/.50 was high stakes! (ya'll can laugh now)
I did ok for a while and then that familiar slide hit. I did my best to analyze where the leaks were in my play. UB was great for this because I could pull up and print out the hand histories almost immediately.
But I kept sliding down until just before Labor Day weekend when my bankroll was at $8.00. I decided that the long weekend would be make or break for me. I embarked on a marathon. I busted myself back to the penny tables and hand after hand, began to slowly build my bankroll up. When I felt confident enough, I moved back up to the .25/.50 level. I did really well there, as well. So much so that I took the leap and moved up another level to .50/$1.00.
I was doubly nervous when that big blind went down in my first hand at this level - but after a hand or two - this was great. Completely at ease. I sailed through the session and watched the bankroll grow. At one point I even dipped my toe into the $1/$2 level, took down a $25 pot and then lost that shortly thereafter and got out fast. Not ready yet. You can get twice the bucks the higher you go. But you can also lose it twice as fast.
I stayed at the .50/$1.00 level for the most part, except when I'd hit a bit of a slide, I'd bust myself back down to a lower level. But by the end of Labor Day weekend - Monday night - I had turned my $8 into $169.
I stayed with premium openers, began to play the pot odds and refused to chase. I made plenty of mistakes, and hadn't grasped how to read my opponents yet, but that said - I did great. And it felt great. I was now better than breaking even and felt I could conquer the world! Ahh, hubris......
