As I hope you read in my 'About Me' section, I was attending Kutztown University in Pennsylvania when I picked up poker online. What began as a small deposit soon turned into a 5k bankroll within my first month. That was a ton of money to me(and still is) at a time when I was working as a waitress while maintaining full-time status at the University. Without much hesitancy, I left my waitressing job and continued play online.
It wasn't long before I lost my half of my bankroll, most likely playing like a fish and getting hit with the not-so-friendly side of variance. Luckily, I have been doing my research that month. I scoured the internet to learn more about how to improve my game, began reading the forums, etc. I wanted to network with good online pros so that I could get some guidance on how to improve my game. I got lucky when I stumbled upon Matt Stout, aka Allinat420 (online moniker). Matt lived in Atlantic City at the time... a place I'd only been to perhaps 3 times in my life at that point (now I practically live here!). I trekked 3 hours there and back each Sunday to watch and play among some really amazing players, Matt included. I learned a lot and took my once completely naive poker logic to the next level. I didn't push too hard too fast. I played with a few new rules each week once I was comfortable and adjusted to the ones I had implemented the week before. My game immediately improved, and within a month of training with these guys, I'd gone on a 20k upswing. I watched a lot of sicko online pro's hand histories, which I obtained as a result of my previous networking attempts.
Even after I went on my upswing, I still remained diligent in using good bankroll management. I still do to this day and I think it's a huge part of the battle in prolonging and preserving your future wellness in poker. If anything, I underspent on buyins for a long time.
Eventually my networking led me into an elite online circle. I got backing from Dipthrong aka Mark Herm and DJK123 aka Dan Kelly, two highly regarded online players. Being able to socialize and learn from not only my backers, but their whole stable of sicko horses and friends.. it was like a plethora of poker knowledge at my finger tips each and every day. It was at this time in my career that my stats and consistency really took off in the online tournament world.
As my online career began to really take off, the idea of marketability began to come more into question. There were not many females crushing online at the time, and I was one of the top ranked online women out there for tournament poker. I wanted to capitalize on my poker abilities in any way possible. Public relations was one of my focuses in college, and so this type of consideration seemed to be right up my alley. I will say that it was tough to get noticed for my online achievements(which was around 800k in earnings) because most mainstream poker media focuses on the achievements of poker players in the live arena. Poker celebrities are bred from televised poker tournaments. This definitely worked against me. At the time of my eventually sponsorship, I had not one single live cash to my name.
Within 3 years of learning, networking, and grinding online, I was fortunate enough to come upon a sponsorship with a smaller poker site in 2010. The sponsorship was short-lived. As the unfortunate Black Friday fell upon us, so did the renewal of my contract. Obviously, as an American, my brandability for online poker more-or-less dropped to nil when online poker shut down in the U.S. It was a major hit to me, my bankroll, and the prospects of my career. It was a scary time.
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