Who am I? My name is Taj London. I consider myself an advantage player. (Someone who uses mathematical knowledge to gain an advantage in games). I know that I'm not the best out there, but I'm good enough to be a +EV player. That's a winner in laymans terms!
The beginning. My career started in late 2006 when I discovered some great sites giving away free money to play online poker. I decided to give it a try as a bit of a laugh. The first site I joined was YPC. At the time they were pretty new, but are still going and getting stronger every day. They gave me $50 free to play at Absolute Poker, with a $50 pending bonus. I wasn't too good at poker in those days, but due to some miracle, I managed to not only clear the bonus, but was a few hundred dollars in profit too! Unfortunately, I lacked any bankroll management skills in those days and lost most of my profits. I ended up banking out a measly $72 after about 3 weeks of play. Still, something was better than nothing.
The beginning. My career started in late 2006 when I discovered some great sites giving away free money to play online poker. I decided to give it a try as a bit of a laugh. The first site I joined was YPC. At the time they were pretty new, but are still going and getting stronger every day. They gave me $50 free to play at Absolute Poker, with a $50 pending bonus. I wasn't too good at poker in those days, but due to some miracle, I managed to not only clear the bonus, but was a few hundred dollars in profit too! Unfortunately, I lacked any bankroll management skills in those days and lost most of my profits. I ended up banking out a measly $72 after about 3 weeks of play. Still, something was better than nothing.
Training. The real beginning of my career came when I discovered another site called PokerStrategy. They were offering a free $50 bankroll at Titan Poker along with a $100 pending bonus. But there was a catch, I had to complete a poker course first and pass their quiz.
Boy am I glad I took that quiz. I learned about stating hands, bankroll management, going up and down playing limits. Their strategy is solid and essential for any player seriously thinking about poker as a career. There's no fun without fundamentals! And no money too!
It took me a whole 4 weeks of playing low level limits to clear my $100 bonus, but the experience was invaluable. I banked out $237 in the end. A nice boost to my poker bankroll!
Claiming All Bonuses. I spent the next 6 months finding every free poker money offer I could. You can find a list of them here: FREE POKER MONEY OFFERS. Over this period I ended up building a poker bankroll of over $3,000. Impressive you say? Actually no. I should have done 4 times as much. I remember winning an invitation freeroll of $2,000 (that's first place prize money!) and only cashing out $300 of it! I was still a bit of a loose player in those days and like to chase my loses to my expense. But I can't complain really. $3,000 from scratch over 6 months! No complaining.
Bye Bye Poker, Hello Blackjack! Fast forward to early 2008. The movie 21 came out and I saw it. A friend and I became excited about how cool it would be to swag casinos out of millions of dollars by playing blackjack. You can read some of my blackjack stories here:http://confessionsofacardcounter.blogspot.com/. During this period I didn't play much poker. Blackjack was being quite successful for me and I managed to turn my $3,000 into nearly $10,000! And that includes spending $6,000 on myself as treats!
Bye Bye Blackjack, Hello Poker! Let's face it, playing blackjack is tedious and boring. I was onto a good thing, making a little here and there over time, but it was a slow process. Streaks were sometimes scary, and overall a very lonely experience. However, one good thing that did come out of my blackjack experience was my discovery of live poker games!
Going offline. After a few hours of blackjack where I'd had a good streak and was up about $500, I was wondering around the casino and found some people playing poker. I found out they were having a tournament and asked if I could join. Entry was $200. Since I was up already in blackjack, I decided to give it a go. The tournament was semi-decent for me. I lasted until the final table (only started with 2 tables), but was not close to finishing in the money.
After the tournament they had a cash game, NL Texas Hold'em. I sat in with $200. The next few hours were a vivid blur. After a slow start, I quickly started to figure out my opponents. These guys were aggressive players, but very loose. I just had to wait for a good hand and let them do all the betting. Admittedly I got some lucky hands, the one I remember best was sitting in big blind with K2. Flop dropped 2 kings. I smooth checked, someone raised and I only called. Turn was a 2! I hit full house. My went all in. Turned out he had pocket dueces! Poor guy had no outs. I walked away from the night winning well over $2,000. My biggest one night win ever!
Of course, winning is addictive and I was back for more the following week. I couldn't believe how easy these guys were to read. Tight player, loose players, aggressive, call stations. They were all there. There are a couple of very good players there too, but the rest of them are what I call gamblers and thrill seekers. A number of old gentleman who've made a few million in their careers and are not too bothered about losing a few thousand in a night. I guess it helps when you've got a pretty smile ;).
Over the last year I've won about $28,000. Have had some big losses thrown in there, but I'm up every month. I know that I couldn't have done this online, there's something about being able to see your opponent and getting a read on their style. I've played a few tournaments too, but I'm down on those :(. My advantage is greatest in low stakes NL hold'em. I say low stakes, because some of these guys play enourmous games ($100,000 can easily switch hands in an evening), but the stakes I play are high enough for me.
And that's my story to date. I'm no poker protege like young Tom Dwan, but I'm good enough to hold my own where I play.
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