In this article I would like to tell you about my experiences with the game of poker. But before I start with the actual article, I introduce myself. I am Matthias, 26 years old, and am currently studying business administration in Amsterdam.

Already in my school time I started to play poker with my friends. We often used our lunch break to play pennies. For most of my classmates it was only a small pastime, but for Moritz and me there was more behind it. In our spare time we watched a lot of poker videos on Youtube and followed the communities.

When I finally turned 18 I registered with Pokerstars. Since I’ve read and seen so much about poker and won so many rounds at school, I thought I was a very good player and quickly realized that it’s not so. Although I could also achieve small successes again and again, but a 10€ Paysafecard lasted only in the rarest cases longer than a few hours. Although I always played only the smallest limits and never paid more than 10€ at once, but for one student these supposedly small amounts added up at some point. Therefore I was forced to become better in order to continue my hobby of poker, as I simply could not afford to continue to deposit regularly.

Together with my meanwhile adult school friend Moritz I registered at Pokerstrategy to get access to the content videos. We both started to deal with the so-called big stack strategy. We always bought in with 100 big blinds, that is $2, at an NL2 table. Since we learned to play tight and not lose unnecessary money, we both made our first winnings. But we realized that we would never make significant money on the small limits. Moritz had been licensed to play the poker tracker for several weeks, but I didn’t think it was necessary as I rarely played many hands with the same players anyway. But after I went to Moritz once again for a session, he explained to me how he used the individual values and what they could say about the way the opponents played. I was impressed with how transparent the way the opponents played was partly through the tracker and decided to download the test version of the poker tracker. I also decided to switch from Pokerstars to the iPoker network at that point. There I could get one of the 60% rakeback deals at Coral Poker through a friend. In addition, I had the advantage that the player pool was much smaller than at Pokerstars. So after a few 1000 hands I already had statistics for the players who played there regularly. Moritz also joined the network a little later. However, to avoid getting involved in leveling wars or the suspicion of collusion, we decided never to go to a table where the other player was already sitting. However, we still had the advantage of analyzing our hands together and discussing other regulars. If they had any noticeable statistics, especially folding on 3 bets or always stealing on the small blind, then we would make a note and take advantage of it in the future. So we both got much better in a short time and were able to establish ourselves at the limits of NL50-NL200. Since many regulars played here it was hard to achieve a positive win rate, but the rakeback payments made every month left a few thousand Euros. As it was the first time we had so much money at our disposal, we enjoyed our lives, went out for lots of food and bought expensive clothes and watches.

We also started Live Poker at this point. Since we lived near Berlin, we had the opportunity to choose from three different casinos. Cash game wasn’t very attractive for us because the limits were very similar to those on the Internet, but the style of play was very different. Since there were a lot of good players at the tables here, we didn’t expect too many chances of success and therefore played the different tournaments. The buy-ins were mostly 50-150€. With 30-40 players, the winner could quickly bag a prize money of 1000€. Although I could only win one of the tournaments, I often ended up in the money and was able to make profits on a regular basis.

After the evenings we often went to the casino to celebrate and often spent more money than we would have liked. In the beginning this was no problem for us as we continued to make a lot of money with online poker. But little by little iPoker cut rakeback, the monthly payments became less and less and it became more and more difficult to generate volume as the number of players decreased constantly. Often it was even a challenge in the evenings and on weekends to find tables where not only professional players sit. For me, this was the time to stop playing poker, because it wasn’t really worth the effort anymore and I wanted to do at least a good study after my not really satisfying Abitur. I had my remaining bankroll of about $12,500 paid out and used it as the financial basis for my studies in the Netherlands. I am still sometimes annoyed by the fact that I have only put aside a relatively small amount, although considerably more would have been possible.

Moritz also took a break after the end of our time on iPoker, but started playing poker stars a little later. Since the massive grind of rakeback is not possible here and the player pool differs considerably, he had to change his entire playing style. In contrast to iPoker, he rarely has extensive stats for his fellow players and can therefore play his skills to the full much less often. Although he has also become a profitable regular on NL50 on Pokerstars again, but the monthly income comes only rudimentarily close to what was possible on iPoker back then.

 
Experience report written by Matthias, 26 years, from Amsterdam