After having discovered Poker Stars early 2009, I happily abandoned all other online poker sites.
I started my exploration trying out some '2BE Late Night Stars of Poker Freeroll [Belgium]' tourneys. My best result was a 31st place out of 1035 participants (on 2009-04-16). In addition, I also tried some daily Benelux Poker League (Division 2) freeroll tourneys, simultaneously participating in the Netherlands/Belgium Poker Stars freerolls (without success either way).
On 2009-09-18, I reached an historical milestone of winning my first cash from a freeroll. Therefore, I made a pure profit: no less than the amazing amount of 0.10 USD ... !
I reached 11th place out of 1064 participants on 2010-02-03, again in one of the Benelux Poker League (Division 2) tourneys. Considering I played only once a week, apparently my Harrington books started paying off ! Anyway, a couple of months later (on 2010-05-07), I reached my first online final table (8th out of 225) in one of the 'Belgian Poker League' (Silver Division) freerolls. Moreover, I seemed to be progressing towards ending up in the top 20% about 80% of the time, so I realized I needed to aim a bit higher. In fact, my past (sub-optimal) 2-phase strategy always revolved around getting into the money first, and only then trying to reach the final table.
After numerous smaller tourney wins, I won a 'Medium - Play Money' 27 seats Sit & Go on 2010-05-27. My next target was winning a 45 seats Sit & Go (after having finished 2nd place several times). Almost 5 months later (on 2010-10-17), I finally managed to win one of these.
I actually started contemplating 6-max micro-stakes cash games (before naturally evolving towards small stakes) after having finished reading all my Harrington books. However, as a kind of scientific experiment, I decided to fulfill my theoretic initial 100 USD bankroll requirement (i.e. 50 buy-ins) for these cash games by accumulating small amounts of prize money through large (Belgium/Netherlands only) freerolls. These tournaments usually attract between 2500 and 5000 players. In principle, I should then be able to enter the cash games world without any initial monetary investment at all.
Next step of my slowly unfolding plan: on 2011-03-19, I had accumulated 8.37 USD through 13 top 10% or better results, including my best large tournament result until that point in time: 4th place out of 2833 participants (on the very same date). I wanted to speed things up by playing micro stakes 'Fifty50' tournaments (whereby top 5 of 10 split even money), the target being the transformation of 8.37 USD into 100.00 USD. Unfortunately, unlike freerolls, money could now also be lost ... Indeed, after finishing only 6 out of 18 tournaments in the money (and obviously having started with a way too low less than 5 buy-ins bankroll), after a month I was back to square 1.
Having learned from this first experience, I decided to simply start over again (and again and again, if necessary). In theory, a couple of good subsequent 'Fifty50' results should have enabled me to break free, but these 'Fifty50' bootstrapping freerolls were discontinued near 2012. Guess what: I also got struck by statistical variance, so I yet again lost the few dollars I had earned before.
Doing lots of other stuff, I didn't play much online poker in 2012.
My 3th attempt to generate 100.00 USD from nothing is still in progress (on 2013-02-17 finally beating the new 'Fifty50' tournaments, whereby top 5 of 10 get paid proportionally to their finishing stack). At that time, I started thinking about perhaps improving my bottom line by pumping some external bankroll money into the mechanism (giving up on my crazy poor man's experiment). However, as a longtime mind sports aficionado, I didn't like the idea of actively investing money (irrespective of risk) ... and I wasn't exactly in a hurry ...
Literally no time for online poker in 2014 ...
Due to many other activities, having taken a break from online poker until waking up again in December 2015, I immediately started reading up, speeding through the PokerSchoolOnline curriculum (up to a screeching halt at the mandatory 'first time deposit' step), and finetuning my HUD. I immediately started hitting hard, a.o. placing 174th on 30000 (2015-12-04), and winning a 558 players freeroll (2015-12-13), respectively, earning me 1 USD + 18 USD total in the process.
In between construction works at home + whilst performing a very late planned major time consuming other mind sports related software development project, I worked my bankroll further up to 39.70 USD, exclusively by means of the unfortunately few freerolls that were accessible to me (compared with the more abundant opportunities from the couple of years back). My best 3 results were 22th place on 1173 (2016-01-31), 10th place on 8477 (2016-02-09), and 20th place on 13560 (2016-08-25). I mouth-wateringly started contemplating the more modest 20 buy-ins bankroll starting requirement (i.e. 40 USD) for the lowest 0.01/0.02 USD tables, being confident to relatively quickly close the remaining 0.30 USD gap, happily abandoning the freerolls world forever.
However, triple sigh ...
At the beginning of 2016, PokerStars very unfortunately decommissioned these 0.01/0.02 USD cash tables ! My freerolls-generated initial bankroll requirement for the new 0.02/0.05 USD lowest micro-stakes tables would therefore become 250 USD, sticking to the defensive 50 buy-ins approach. Even the tighter 20 buy-ins idea would still require 100 USD. However, that seems not to be an attainable short-term goal, and I don't want to gamble on the time-consuming 'Fifty50' tournaments for fast bankroll ramping anymore. All of this will necessitate me to give the 0.02/0.05 USD tables a confident shot with my potentially still less than 10 full buy-ins bankroll, as soon as I'll be able to prioritize a serious bulk of hours to hopefully rapidly (and long enough) crush this new lowest micro-stakes level. As a side note, I will first fiddle around with a kind of multi-street betting patterns 'opening theory book' (like in chess), which I already templated. I'm not sure about its potential usability, but I have synthesized/developed very powerful analysis tools supporting my other mind sports, so who knows ... Anyway, eventually somehow getting to the actual 250 USD milestone without initial monetary investment (and taking it from there in the intended disciplined way, i.e. still on the 0.02/0.05 USD tables) would finally abandon my years-long (from many other people's perspective totally unnecessary :-) puristic preamble, launching into a hopefully long and fruitful 'serious' poker experience. Perhaps even a late-blooming poker 'career' might be lurking around the corner. Who said anything about ever retiring ?
Unfortunately, not much time to play poker due to my other endeavours ...
Same remark ...
Well, on 2019-01-21, I ended 4th in a 360 players freeroll, thereby (after 10 years :-) surpassing the 50 USD bankroll milestone. The 0.01/0.02 USD cash tables were reinstated some time ago, so the question is: should I ramp up towards 100 USD, i.e. the defensive 50 buy-ins approach, to continue my experiment ? Ony occasionally investing some free time in specifically freerolls (what's in a name) without too much time and focus and barely remembering my Harrington books, perhaps that would be the safer bet. On the other hand, I'm not planning to wait another 10 years (of sporadic freerolls) to finally start playing at the cash tables, even though I'm eternally involved in lots of other (non-poker related) activities.
No time ...
Don't ask !