Intro: Freeroll to Bankroll

I was sitting in my Portland apartment one day watching the WSOP on Tv and heard about this Chris Moneymaker guy who won a seat in the World Series online in a $40 satellite. Then during a commercial I saw an ad for a poker site so I figured I would check it out. I looked up the site and downloaded the software. Then I started Googling to find out if there were any other sites out there and I found more than I cared to review. Some of them required a cash deposit and others offered freerolls with no deposit. I ended up downloading too many for me to recall now but I found out the hard way some of them wanted money, some of them wanted you to watch ads and others didn't allow US players.  At this point I had never heard about things like the Chris Ferguson Challenge or the Daniel Negreanu $10 to $100,000 challenge (I just ran into these articles explaining their attempts about a week ago.).  I just figured I would give it a shot.

So you watch poker on tv and think, "Hey I can do that!" But how do you go about it? You could try your hand at a casino with a cash buy in at a smallish tournament, sign up to an online site and make a deposit there to play for real money, or you could try to find a local cash game with your friends or neighbors.  If you're anything like me, though, you think to yourself "Yeah I think I can do that but what if I just think  I can."  There is always the possibility you will be cleaned out and you will have nothing left but the shirt on your back (Unless it's just the kind of game that makes that sort of loss fun)

 What I am doing is playing in online freerolls to get a  starting bankroll (br). As I am writing this I am attempting to start a br on my fifth site. I have managed to accumulate roughly 150$ on the four I have already and will keep playing in freerolls after I have a win to try to boost my running br to a comfortable level.  There is a certain degree of luck involved in poker at this level admittedly and you can't let yourself become discouraged over a bad beat for very long or you will never be successful.  But in the long run I will be able to pay my rent and support myself with a job that has the word play in it.  I can't wait till I can answer the question "So what do you do for a living?" With " Play poker." That would be just about as much fun as saying "sport fishing". But fishing will have to wait. (for now)

 My intention is to help anyone who would like to challenge themselves to a task such as this however I can.  Or at least fill you in on how I have done it.  There are a few tricks I have learned to help you along the way, that without knowing you would have a much tougher time. I would like you to know that I am not an affiliate for any poker sites so I don't have any reason to be biased about explaining my personal experience here in this format.  I will be naming a few of the sites I have used (both poker and chat forums) and offering you information about my personal experiences there.
 
 Ok enough of the intro stuff it's time to get started. Good luck and may all your hole cards hit the board.