Hey,
First post here, sweet forum. I was looking for something like this, I can't believe how many forums I post on and yet I've never joined a poker forum despite playing Hold 'Em for 7 years (4-5 online).
It doesn't sound to me like you are doing too bad. I have learned so much in my 4-5 years online playing, I realize that a lot of my bad beats were actually my fault, not the cards, not bad luck, etc. For instance, I used to think that Q-K was just a great hand and if someone raises 3-4 times the big blind, whatever, I'd call because I have Q-K!!! lol. Then I started thinking about what I raise with, and it ain't Q-K offsuit unless I'm blind-stealing late in a tournament. So I took a lot of beats like top pairing the queen, losing to A-K after getting pushed all-in and thinking I "had to" call. I don't know how you play so I can't really say, but falling in love with A-K is a huge mistake.
Every night I track the mistakes I make, and I don't care who you are or how good you are you make mistakes. I make mistakes and I usually am such a thoughtful poker player. Tonight I raised on the turn with A-K, nobody had raised, and I had a flush draw with my king. The lady pushed all-in, which was about 35% of my chips. It was tough because I already had a decent amount invested, and I felt like she didn't have anything but I was just wishing she had a lot more chips so it would be an easy fold! lol. Instead I stupidly called, and was rewarded -- she had a pair of 8s and I rivered her with a king. But it was a bad play. It was a loose call and probably the worst mistake I made all night. Pushing all-in with 10-Q on short stack and running into A-Q isn't a mistake, IMO, you just gotta do what you gotta do. In your case running into pocket aces, heck, I've had that happen constantly.
The other day, I had pocket jacks 4 times. THREE of those times, I ran into pocket aces. Twice I called and lost. It was late tournament luckily so I cashed, but the third time it was early in an SnG and I folded (I made a small enough raise that I was able to get away from the hand, which is what I always make sure of with that hand, big enough to scare bad hands, but not big enough to commit me). He showed pocket aces after I folded. I was like, "Yay... good fold!" haha.
I would agree that $20 isn't sufficient for a bankroll. That being said, when I first started playing about 5 years ago I put in $20. I lost my first $20 and I put in another $20. I was playing 25-50 NL tables. I think I won my first massive pot near the start of that with pocket aces, there were three all-ins and of course I was scared because bullets are great but not against so many hands. Anyway my bullets didn't improve, but nobody else hit anything better, and I ended up with about $70 after that hand. I realized after a while I hate cash games -- no offense to anyone here who loves them -- because I am a better strategy player and like to read my opponents. I don't like to lose money on a bad hand. I like to lose chips. I can recover chips in a tournament and play my situation and my opponents. Cash games were never much fun for me. In person, the few times I've played at casinos, I have done admittedly terrible in cash games. I got rivered once by my friend in a $3-6 limit game when he kept calling my raises with pocket 2s and I had pocket kings. Grr. Then I got rivered when I hit a set of queens that made someone else's straight. Then last time I raised big in a NL game with A-Q and got two calls, K-7 suited and 5-10 suited. I top-paired the flop, pushed all-in, they BOTH call with four-flushes, and I hit my two pair on the river as they both flushed. I left the table. I just can't tolerate that kind of play at all. Sure, after 12 hours of that you're bound to win money against the donkeys but it was driving me absolutely insane.
Anyway, that second $20 that I put in on Poker Room over the next 3-4 years turned into $650. I later withdrew the money when it closed to U.S. players and put $200 in Full Tilt where I play now. The rest of it is in the bank, or spent, whatever
Because I play mostly tournaments, whether they are SnGs or MTTs, etc. I would recommend at least 20x whatever buy-in you want to start with. My philosophy, despite having plenty of funds for my hobbies, has always been that I wanted to win my bankroll in poker not just start with it. I didn't want to put in $1,000 and just say, "Gee I think I'm good enough to play the $20 tables." I wanted to start at the very bottom and prove to myself I was good enough to play at better tables (or at least bigger buy-ins). But that's a lot a mental thing. I am a very conservative player, and with my money in real life I'm also conservative. Heck I live in a nice condo and I eat cup of noodles 3-4 times a week just to save money on eating out, LOL. It's just how I am. If you're comfortable playing at larger tables by all means buy-in at a bigger amount. I'm so conservative I want 40-50 buy-ins before I play at that level, so like $400+ to play at $10 tables, etc. I started with $10 tables on Full Tilt with my $200 actually because I just figured I was used to playing them at
PR anyway. But then I lost about $70 in my first 20 tournaments, just a bad run, and decided to go ahead and move down to $5s again and rebuild the bankroll. Now I'm up near $400 after this recent surge.
Best of luck and my last advice is that sometimes it really is good to step away from the game for a while. My 4-5 years playing online, I have generally played very very actively for stretches of 6-8 weeks here and there, then not played for 6 months sometimes. Part of that was real-life obligations that were more important (though I always missed poker), other times it was suffering a bad or mediocre streak and I needed to step away for a bit. Like when you play 30 tournaments or 40 tournaments and are up $3 or something, it starts to make you feel like you totally wasted your time and you wish you would have just done something more relaxing or fun like watch TV or movies. But before I started playing again about 3-4 weeks ago, I had been watching 4-5 hours of TV a night for a long time (on DVD) and I missed the thrill of online poker, the elated feeling you get when you win, the feeling that at least for this night, you are unbeatable. There's just nothing like being the last person sitting at an SnG after a great hand where you did the right thing or heck even got lucky and won. It just makes your night. I think mediocre and bad nights are worth it just for those moments of greatness.
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