Rising up levels (long)

[stormswa]

The whole Penguinfan poker is rigged against me thread had got me to thinking about my own play. I concider myself a moderate winner at poker and a consistent tournament player but looking back through the forum I really don't know what clicked or changed to make me this way. Through the like 4 years I have been here I have been given a ton of advice and even though I said I never listened to it I think subconsciously I must because im not the same poker player I was 4 years ago. Here is my story.

TPF was my 1st big online forum I came to, I came as 1st username Brianswa, you may search me but keep in mind im not the same person I was 4 years ago. I was a rec player that thought like everyone else, hey poker seems fun why not give it a try. I came to the forum when it 1st opened up and was really a horrible 1st time player. Soon after coming to the forum I took custody of my son Gavin from my sister-in-law and around his 1 year birthday he was diagnosed with cancer. Needless to say my head was not in a good state of mind and I proceeded to forum tilt on a regular basis and managed to get myself banned numerous times. These were all deserved of course and I like to thank TalkingPoker for letting me come back.

anyway back to the topic of this thread, I played the micro stakes for about 3 years, I played pretty much any game $10 and under and was a break even player. My big field tourney game faltered but the $4 180s saved my overall ROI. I have always had the ability to deposit money and play higher limits but my lack of poker skill required that I stay where I have a +ev edge. Through these 3 years of playing micro's I got a lot of advice from other forums but mainly this one and I like to thank all the users that gave me advice like, Pshabi, chipfish, JD, mayhem, TP and all the other original members here. I believe you all layed a foundation in my early play that allow me the success I have had today, now im not a huge winner but I do believe I look at the game in a much better way thanks to you guys.

It wasn't until 6 months ago I was given the opportunity to increase my buy in range. 6 months ago I joined PTP because one of my users on my own forum was talking about it, I heard about a place called neverbeg awhile ago but never joined. I guess PTP is what neverbeg used to be, I never imagined a place like PTP existed. I started off small like everyone else but quickly built a small group of regular investors. About 3 months ago I was given a 1k investment and the chance to play $55 buy-in's, for all you that think playing with better players is easier because they dont suck out as much.....BULLSHIT. I can tell you from experience that it is much harder to extract value from good players. Its real simple to get the low limit donks to stack off with bad 2nd and 3rd pair hands but against good players you need to play tricky and mix up your play a lot. Against low limit donks you can just bet value all the way down but against good players you need to play hands so differently.

most of my big scores to day have still been in $10 games....

my double best finish in Dailys for $1700
$10KO win for $1000
$22 180 for $1200
and numerous $26 tourney on FTP

so you see even with me playing the higher limits now still my best score is in the smaller limits. Now this is mainly due to the sample sizes in the levels, I have only played a handful of $55s and I know a huge score is right around the corner. I kind of just want to post this so small stakes to medium stakes players realize that these games are beatable and you can make a decent amount of money from these games if you just stick to it.

This has gotten much longer then I wanted it to, I guess my main point is to squash that whole idea of its better to play with better players. While this is true if you looking to play better players to improve you own play I would rather sit a table of 8 donkeys then sit at a table filled with your Rizen's, GambleAB's and your Peraljammer's.