WAIT!!!!!! STOP!!! -Bankroll must nots

Never play out of desperation or need. And Never play Catchup..
I've been reluctant to post on here or do a podcast in awhile... But one of the reasons I have this site is so you can learn from me (even though I was hoping you'd only learn from my success and PAST mistakes) Although I went from 0 to 800 (actually closer to $850)... I also went on a trip to Vegas and I won $300, in a $60 poker tournament. However, since the buy in was $60, this win shouldn't count towards my challange... If I wanted to consider part of it towards the challenge, I could count maybe $15 of my buy in towards the challange, and I could just say that the remaining $45 was from an outside source (from my bank account, whic can support a $60 buy in.. If $15 represented 25% of my buy in, I could count 25% of the win (the exact number was $348), which would give me $87 then subtract the buy in, and I'm up $72. Even so, I cant really post about my "0 to $1000 success, if I lost most of it shortly after. See when I got home from Vegas, I felt like I really wanted to get the challenge over with. and I was in the gambling mood, so I did some sports betting, and some blackjack, but mostly some blackjack. I decided that I would spend around $200, which was a mistake because if you're going to set a number it should be specific and exact. But anyways, I went from $700 to $850, then all the way down to $500... I continued to play and although I caught a sick run of bad beats, I still didn't reevaluate the bankroll situation. I was still sitting with $30 and $40, as if my bankroll was still 800. $25 should have been the max. I wanted to play "catch up" and make everything back. This is a big mistake and I'm kind of suprized I didn't recognize what I was doing earlier than I did... It's definately something I should have done the first time. I have freerolled my way from 0 to $1000 twice (and a half if you count this time) but the first time I prroceeded to lose it all, and ereally I gained it all because of risk taking and overextending my bankroll, and I had no concept of bankroll management. The 2nd time I properly managed my bankroll and built it up to $1000, and cashed out..

After that point... I realized the other options as far as playing poker online goes, and realized that many online sites were still working. I had seen a few videos about Daniel Negreanus, ordered his game stacked and learned the small pot poker concept a little more (previously I just thought it was minbetting in late position and betting the pot on the flop). Once I started to get that concept down, I felt like I could really play and then decided to test out my skills via frerols. If ound it amazing at how much better I was able to get my money in, and I actually had to learn to start folding hands to all ins that I almost never would have folded preflop (AK, TT, AKs, etc). I cfind myself in big 5000 person fields actually only having to get my money all in a few times the entire touranment, and I qualified for events a few times. It was then I decided to create a "freeroll challange". At first It was just going to be a challange to prove to everyone that freerolls were EASIER, not harder (like most people say) to win...But I also wanted to prove to myself that I could do well without getting all of those poker bonuses, and rakeback. I wanted to prove that you could build a bankroll safely, in conditions even if you had a fulltime job, along with several things on the side.
Then I learned about Chris Ferguson's 0 to 10,000 challange, and decided to do something fairly similar. Only a couple weeks into it, I had a couple cashes, followed by a HUGE cash the next week. Those of you who have been following my 0 to 1,000 tracker, know that I earned quite a bit of money, pretty quickly, and was quickly on my way to 1000... but then I went to Vegas, felt like If I could win live tournaments, that I could play around a little, felt like I wanted to get the 0 to 1,000 challenge done in one day, doing something other than what got me to that point and suffered the consequences. I didn't want to make the post that I overextended my bankroll slightly from the requirements, and that I played blackjcak because I want to teach everyone that playing solid, at affordible stakes can still get you a pretty good amount of money, pretty quickly. But I decided to post it because regardless of how well you play in the past, a couple losing sessions followed by poor decisions, can ruin your bankroll.
So managing your bankroll is much more than a set of guidelines, it's a mentality of disapline, and consistancy. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just take a couple weeks off. Looks like I'm back close to where I started now, with under $100 dollars in my account. I'm probaably just going to take a little break for awhile, I apologize for those of you following the challange I want to eventually build this site to be the place, where everoyone comes to for learning about how to play poker, and excell from total amature to a professional, but I still need some work on my own emotional control, even though I have previously been pretty emotionally stable and disaplined, one 24 hour period could mean your whole entire stack. Developing the awareness to recognize your emotional status, and how you are feeling now, as well as how you will be feeling, and how that feeling relates to your poker game is a very important skill as well. If you have complete emotional control, and awarnesss of your state of mind and emotions, you could be a break even player, but along the way chase bonuses, and play freerolls and tournaments with added cash, and you would be ahead of 99% of all players.
The disturbing fact is that 99% of all players lose their entire bankroll at least once at sometime. and of the 1% that don't, maybe half of them don't play poker very often and when they do they play super conservative with their money, and super tight with their style of palay. The other .5% might have half of them be players who have been playing for less than a year... and/or players who have run extremely well in the right situations. But the remaining .25% might not even be among the best in the world, because even the greatest players go broke... but they are the best in terms of having the best combination of disapline and overall play. They are winning players WITH disapline, and even if there skill level is lower than the best players in the world, these players most likely will be the ones with 80% of the money. Mike Matusow has gone broke 6 times he has said. He is one of the greater players in the world and perhaps THE greatest poker player whwhen he's on his game. As great as he is, without disapline, and bankroll management he is going to keep going broke... but at least he is smart enough to invest most of it, so when he does, he's got more in investments than anyone. He's often asset rich, cash poor. A great strategy to preserve your bankroll, is to withdraw your bankroll and invesst it.
At this point, I'm basically starting over. I have a long ways to go once again. from my experience of going broke before, I was at least able to use that information to recognize what was happening before it did, and I stopped myself from continuing to put my bankroll at risk, and I finally cut back. Unfortunately since I am certainly not in a position of "need" like some people, and since it is certainly not going to be my primary income, I still didn't really care to play disaplined, I could recognize the signs, but I didn't really stop to take a second and think it over. The decisions you make in poker to play or to stop, to go higher or not, they will always be there tommorrow. But if you make a decision, the next decision will be harder to make... don't get sucked in! One day of playing isn't going to be enough to shoot your bankroll up overnight, but it is however enough for you to lose it all. Take a deep breath, sleep on it, and live to fight another day... It's just like in a tournament, if you know you're probably beat, keep the pot small if you can, otherwize, live to fight another day.

Episode 4 Installing a BS detector Part 2

Due to the popularity and demand for more information on the "poker bs detetor", I have created another episode with one more on the way.
Click here for Episode 4: Installing a BS detector Part 2