$2.20

The amount of money I left in my bodog account after cashing out today. Why $2.20?

FYI: I just put the $2.20 into a $2.00 + .20 SNG and will play as I write.

I started playing poker (bodog and fulltilt) a few months ago and one of the things I learned fairly quickly was that depositing can become a very bad habit, fast. In the beginning I payed my learning tax by way of and .10/.25 ring games and $2-$10 SNGs, I would deposit on average $75 and it would either be gone that same weekend or if I got lucky it would put me through another week or two (you know how it goes). And of course, the moment I went broke I would reload.

This went on for about 2 months, along with reading the limit and no-limit section of Doyle Brunson's Super System every night before sleeping. Then about 3 weeks after the usual ups and downs of online cash games I was down to a measly $3. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I was low on cash that week because of some car repairs and wouldn't be able to reload until next pay day. Then it hit me, if I lose this $3 I won't be able to play poker for another 10 days!

So I stuck that $3 into a $2.00 + .20 SNG table and shut off the tv (I've always played on my laptop while watching TV). I hit 1st place and it paid me out $10. Played another SNG for $4 and hit 1st place again. I played another 4 or 5 SNGs that saturday and at the end of the night my $3 had turned into $65! I thought about it that night and realized there were three major factors to my success that day:

1. No TV - I picked up on players betting habits and hole cards. I knew the guy raising on the button wasn't just trying to steal the blinds because he hadn't played a hand in 20 minutes.
2. My attitude went from "I know I'm beat but it's ok if I hero call this guy's all-in on the river because I can just reload if he's got the nuts" to "I know I'm beat and I will not throw away my money."
3. No Cash Games - While I feel 1 and 2 can work for everyone; this one is moreso for me. I'm quitting NL cash games for good. I've found that while I'm a decent tournement player, I can't play cash games for shit. Maybe when I hit a big payout I'll consider playing live limit cash games (I'm only an hour from AC) , but for now cash games and I are going our seperate ways.

And by following the above 3 rules, my $3 blossomed into over $200 and T$110 (bodog tournment $) in only 2 weeks.

That was about a week ago. As of this morning I was left with $100 (Played a few large buy in MTTs, no luck) and I decided to withdraw all but $2.20. Just enough for the SNG mentioned in the FYI above. I am very proud to say in the past three weeks I've had a of ton fun, learned a lot and have not deposited even once. I 'm going to try to do it all over again, this time I want to win the large buy-in tourney's once I build back up.

Oh yeah btw, that $2.20 is now $8 =D