Three years ago I was working in a call center, doing technical support for the business of a major UK ISP. As I only dealt with business customers the weekend shifts were slow, in fact dead would be a better term, often I’d spend 8 or more hours of a 10 hour weekend shift simply sitting waiting for the phone to ring!
Well one day I noticed the guy at the desk next to me playing a card game that I’d not seen before, thinking he had a new version of solitaire or hearts I asked for a link so I could play too. The link he sent me was to an online poker site, not one of the big sites we all know today, but a small UK-only site.
Curious now, I sat and watched him play for a while and asked him to explain the rules to me. He was playing a no-limit Texas Holdem tournament. An hour or so later he was at the final table, and soon the tournament ended, with him in 3rd place, and paid out over £100 for his trouble.
Well this Saturday was really dragging on, so I went back and looked at the link again, and saw a special offer “Sign up and deposit £10 and we’ll give you £10 free”. Well I was still bored, so out came the credit card, and a few minutes later I had an open account with £20 in it and was ready to play. I found a 5p/10p limit holdem game running, and sat in, after a shaky start and losing a couple of pots I started to get the idea, and a quick search on Google for a strategy guide got me on my way and by the end of the day that £20 had turned in £35! I carried on for a few weeks, playing a little poker during slow shifts, and the balance kept growing, until one day I came second in a tournament, and won £84, taking my total balance to over £200. I was amazed, this was easy money!
I then decided it was time to get serious, I spent some time researching online poker sites, and reading strategy books, and then withdrew my £200 and opened a US dollar Neteller account. I had quickly realized that there were loads of poker bonus offers out there, and that I needed a quick way to move money around without paying loads in bank fees and currency conversions. From then on it was easy, deposit at a site, play the required number of hands, claim the bonus, cash out, and move on to the next one! Soon my £200 ($400) was $1000, then it was $2000, and then I discovered casino whoring with no deposit bonuses and quickly learned how to play perfect basic blackjack strategy (it’s easy there are loads of charts on-line, all you need to do is memorize the chart!) and then my bankroll really took off!
Today I still play poker, still lowish limits, you’ll usually find me at the $50nl tables, or $100nl if I’m feeling lucky and I still find a few poker and casino bonuses to play every month, and to date my records show that I have cashed out a profit of just over £20,000 ($40,000) – not bad for a £10 initial investment!
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