My name is Taj London. Over the last three years (2006 – 2009) I created a poker bankroll of over $15,000 from nothing in my spare time. When I say nothing, I really mean nothing. My investment into this venture was $0. I accomplished this in my spare time whilst holding down a full time job. I spent less than an hour a day on this venture and have no plans to go professional. This is a hobby for me and I enjoy it.

Some of you may be thinking that $15,000 is not a lot of money, and for many of you it might not be. But it’s a pretty rewarding and fun way to spend my spare time. I also have a bad habit of spending my winnings on life’s little luxuries (like my new laptop), which often stunts the growth of my bankroll. Don’t forget that I started with nothing. Zilch, nada.

It all started late in 2006, when I was browsing some freebie offers, and I came across an offer for free poker money at a large and reputable online poker room. This was not one of those bonuses which you can only get if you deposit first. It was free poker money to play just for signing up, (I learned later it was called a no-deposit bonus). Now, I’m partial to a bit of poker, but never had the guts to put up any of my own money. So I clicked for more details.

All I had to do was sign-up to the poker room and send them a special code and they would put some free money into my real poker account for me to play with. Unfortunately, this offer was only available to new players, and I was already signed up this particular poker room. However, my curiosity was peaked, and I looked around to see if there were any other offers. Sure enough, there was.

I found myself at a 3^rd party website known as a poker sponsor. They were offering a free $75 at Party Poker, one of the largest online poker rooms at the time (and still very reputable). All I had to do was sign up through them. So I did. At the time, regulations for free poker money were still very loose, and I wasn’t sure how the whole thing worked nor why someone was giving away free poker money, but I didn’t really care. It was free money for me to play poker with!

There was a catch of course. I only received $25 in my real money account, the rest was a pending bonus which I had to clear by playing and collecting player points. I also wouldn’t be able to withdraw from the account until I cleared the bonus (thus meeting their minimum play requirements). No problem. I was here to play some poker and have some fun. And fun I had. I ended up playing texas hold’em fixed limit at low levels ($0.25/0.50). It took quite a few hours, but I hit some nice winning streaks and my bankroll went upwards. It took over a week to clear the bonus, and by the end of it I was sitting on $92, the original free money of $75 + $17 of profit. Not great, but not bad. I bumped up my limits to $1/$2 and eventually built up my bankroll upto $235.