The system

To repeat the theory about making money playing online poker that I mentioned in an earlier blog, I believe there are just two things necessary:

1. You must be a winning poker player.

2. You must be extremely disciplined when it comes to bankroll management.

Here the rules I laid out for myself before asking a friend to transfer $50 into my Full Tilt account:

1. I swore I would put money online only once in my life. This prevented me from taking a shot at a tournament I had no business playing and ending up with a zero balance. Too many people put $100 online and then play a few $5 tournaments before getting bored and buying into a couple $50 games. I told myself that this was not an option.

2. I put only 2.5 percent of my bankroll up for any tournament or sit-and-go buy-in. This allows me to ride out the inevitable swings of bad cards, bad luck and bad decisions that every poker player occasionally goes through.

3. I broke rule No. 2 early. I put $50 into an online account, but I started playing $2 tournaments and sit-and-gos immediately and told myself that I was never going to move down from there. Playing anything cheaper than that is utterly ridiculous. Besides, if you go through a fifty $2 at a time, you're not a winning poker player. If you go broke at that pace, you should log off forever.

It took forever to build up from $50 to $200, which is when I allowed myself to move up to $5 tournaments. (Again, the 2.5 percent rule.) It took some time to get used to the Internet game and the crazy people who play low-stakes tournaments and sit-and-gos. And it took a while to figure out which size game worked best for me. But once I got rolling, I got rolling.

The move from $5 to $10 tournaments didn't take long at all. The move from $10 to $20, where I should start playing right now (that's less than 2 percent of my $1,000-plus bankroll) took almost no time at all.

Managing money is key, but it's still not the most important thing. No matter how well you manage your bankroll, you still have to be a winning player. Only 1 out of 3 players win money online. If you're in the 2-out-of-3 group, you're going to lose all your money eventually no matter how much you deposit or how smart you are about managing it.

So why all the discussion about bankroll management when being a winning player is more important? Because I can explain bankroll management. When it comes to figuring out how to be a winning player, well, you're kind of on your own.

Current bankroll: $1,033.

OPR ranking: 98.05 (first time ever over 98).