A (52-year-old) Kid With A Dream

February 28, 2025

I’ve been toying with the idea of blogging for a while, and I’m just beginning a new chapter in my poker career, so I figured now would be a good time to start. I enjoy writing, and I think it will be helpful to me to chronicle my journey as I go. Hopefully some of you will follow along with my adventures.

The journey is this: I play on CoinPoker and ACR, and I currently have a bankroll of $123.31 between the two sites. The majority of that ($103.43, to be exact) is on CoinPoker, and that’s where I will spending most of my time. The idea is to turn this $123.31 bankroll into a $15,000 bankroll for live cash games, starting with 1-3NL and working up to 2-5NL, which is the biggest game generally found in my area (the Mississippi Gulf Coast). I want at least 50 buyins for 1-3NL to feel comfortable, hence the goal of $15,000. Once I reach that level, the majority of my play will (probably) switch from online to live.

Now, while my ultimate goal is to beat a 2-5NL cash game, I am going to be playing MTTs online to get there. I just don’t like the online cash scene. If live tournaments weren’t so expensive and didn’t have ridiculous vig, I would play those instead of live cash, but that’s not really an option right now. Maybe someday I’ll be comfortable plopping down a grand for a tournament buy-in, but that’s a long ways off. So, for now, my plan is to grind online MTTs, with the hope to transition to live cash when my bankroll gets above $15k. I am ahead on MTTs lifetime, although I don't have a big sample size. But I think I am (or can become) a winning MTT player. I am also ahead at 1-3 live cash over my lifetime.

Here’s my situation: I am a (divorced, no kids, one cat) 52-year-old man living with and caring for my 88-year-old mother. Yes, I’m a loser, but at least I don’t live in a basement. I am on a fixed income, and as long as my mother and I are splitting the bills, it’s enough to get by on. But when my mother eventually passes (she’s in good health now), I won’t be able to support myself on what I get each month. I need something to augment my income, and due to some limitations that I have, getting a job isn’t really an option. I basically have two ideas on how to keep myself afloat once my mother is gone: writing or playing poker. And of the two, poker seems like the best option. So I’m going to give it a go.

The plan is to start with the satellites on CoinPoker—the centrolls and small-stakes satellites with buy-ins of up to $2. This $123.31 is not an irreplaceable bankroll, so if the satellites bust me, I can reload another $100 every so often. But ideally I won’t have to.

I’m starting with these satellites on Coin for a few reasons. First, and most important, I’m a pretty good satellite player. Satellites are a strength of mine. Second, the satellites on Coin often have significant overlay, which should help me along. Third, I think Coin is a good site in terms of population strength. The games there seem to be a little softer than on ACR, from my experience. Fourth, I like that the tournaments on Coin don’t end up with hundreds of players like on ACR, because that will help keep my variance down as I build my roll.

So I’m starting at the bottom, and I’m going to try to work my way up. I don’t have a target ABI in mind, really, but I’d like to be able to manage a range of buy-ins from $10 to $100, possibly taking some shots above that in the right circumstances, and using satellites to keep my entry fees down.

Like I said, my mother is in good health now, but she’s 88. It’s not like I have forever to accomplish this and keep myself housed and fed when she’s gone. The clock is ticking. In my ideal scenario, before my mom passes I will have established myself as a solid winner at the 2-5NL level live and will have a bankroll over $50k. That seems pretty pie-in-the-sky right now, as I sit here with my $123.31, but you have to start somewhere. I don’t really have any other options. I have to make this work.

I’m going to be studying and playing A LOT. I’m not a big video person, so I’m going to build my foundation with books. I have crafted a study plan that includes 26 books all told, spread amongst different categories like NLHE theory, MTT theory, live cash theory, mental game, etc. I even have a couple books on PLO, because eventually I would like to be able to play live PLO also, when it’s an option.

I’m aiming to post here 2-3 times per week, but it may be more or less depending on what I have going on and what’s happening in my journey. I won’t be dispensing much poker advice, because I’m not that good of a player yet, but I do have some thoughts on theoretical concepts and tournament strategy that I will discuss eventually. For the most part, though, this will be a record of my journey—what worked, what didn’t, what I learned, and how I (hopefully) pulled this off. While this blog is primarily just for me to have a place to express my thoughts, I enjoy writing, and I will try to make it an interesting read in case anybody wants to follow along. Hopefully this first post wasn’t too boring.

Today (February 28, 2025) was to be my first day playing, but Coin had technical issues, so I’m going to begin in earnest tomorrow, March 1st. I’ll post after the weekend with my initial thoughts and observations. Wish me luck, and thanks for reading.