Intro!

      Hello all, 

most of you probably know me, but it's standard to right introduction at the start :D 

      My name is Ignas, i'm 21 year old professional poker player from a small country, Lithuania (Eastern Europe, check map on the right :D ).

Usually, people of my age are studying at universities, but year ago i made a decision to quit it, because i wasn't really interested and my results were really bad. Was studying econometric (maths+economics+statistics+IT), it's actually great subject and most likely i'll start at it again next year, but that's different story, let's get back to poker :)

Long time ago i knew that there's such a game played for real money, named "Poker", but have never tried it and even seen how it's played until, in 2008, i got a poker chip set as a Christmas present from my parents. I started searching for game rules on the internet and found that it can be played online. Of course, why should i wait till i can play it with friends if i can just do it now. I don't remember what was my first site, but after some time playing for play money, i found out about "no deposit" bonuses and this led me to Pokerstrategy.com where i got free $50 at FTP. For obvious reasons, it didn't take very long till i lost it :D With some other bonuses i played for ~ 2 months and then, when i couldn't find any, i just quit.

It took almost a year when i started playing again(2010 February) and decided to learn it seriously. Started out with freerolls, won few $ there and it was enough for long 5 months where my bankroll never passed $150 mark (busted multiple times, but was lucky enough to rebuild after i get rakeback payment :D ). In the mid of summer, decided to deposit 30$ on FTP and learn how to crush turbo 9mans. Again, i busted in ~ 1 month.

Right before busting at FTP, i remembered that Pokerstars have cheap($0.01-$0.25) MT Sngs, didn't have much money back then, so started with only $11. I already had some knowledge(well, that's what small winners at micros know, so not much :D ) and with some huge luck, made around $1,000 in one month. Felt like i'm living a dream, had never made sooo much money in such a short time. But well, because of my low skill-level i breakeven'd next 3 months...

After my hot run, i joined SitnGoGrinders.com, that helped a bit, but most importantly, i found out about SngProtege.com there. Was lucky enough to be accepted and started out at $2.2 180mans with Matt as my coach. Breakeven'd another month, while was getting better and then it started. My volume jumped up 3 times and i started crushing. It took me only 3,5 months to finish the deal (8,000 games) with a total profit being close to $20,000. I learned sooooo much in those months AND i became really, i mean realllyyyy, greedy. Started taking a lot of shots at $100-200 MTTs, trying to hit a big score, while in same time my MT-Sng game devolved which led me to ~$8,000 "downswing" overall. Tried to recover the loses playing 180s only, but still didn't get my game back and so decided to have a break for 2 months and have a great summer :)

Now, the summer is over, i have signed another deal with SngProtege.com and my game is great again. Of course, there are some things i need to work on, but it will never change, cause there's always room for improvement :) I'm so grateful to Matt for the opportunity to learn. God, that really changed my life. Even tho, i still live with parents, but now i have a substantial income source and i could just as easily live on my own :)

So, that's how my short career looks like, not a very impressive story, but it's really nice to know that i already achieved something :)

Oh, and you'll probably ask "what's the dream?", here it is:

Not M5 most likely, but i'm looking at 535 :)

Cheers,
Bigniux