Ryan Fee’s Poker Story: From High School to High Stakes

Hey Everyone, My name is Ryan Fee. I started playing poker online in high school back in late 2006. I started with $300 and since then have played $250,000 and $100,000 Live tournaments and $300/600 and $500/$1,000 cash games online. In total, I’ve been fortunate enough to have put millions of dollars into my bank account. 

I am going to share with you my journey… Stay with me and I will help you achieve your own poker goals. (There are two free downloadable gifts in this blog post for you!) 

Ever since I was a little kid I always had a fixation on making money. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just knew I wanted to be successful.

When I was a second semester senior in High School I started to play poker. I didn’t do well in school and didn’t really enjoy the process of it all.

I did however really like games.

Back then… I lived up the street from a bookstore that had a poker section. Each day after school I hurried over to read every single poker book they had.

After a few weeks had gone by, I remember being confused and disappointed by what was written. The content didn’t tell me what to do directly –  much of it was superfluous.

Turned out, the time spent in that bookstore was not a waste…

I noticed that  one company was publishing a lot of literature on the topic: TwoPlusTwo Publishing. They had a website printed on the back of each book: twoplustwo.com.

So I decided to check it out.

I was astounded. This online poker forum was a community for learning the basics. There were tons of threads about poker strategy and others with people crowdsourcing an opinion on the finer points of no-limit holdem strategy.

I remember people would always include numbers when they posted on the forums, like 27/20 or 17/15. I had no idea what that meant at the time! But, I was excited to see that there were people working on poker strategy I hadn’t even thought of yet.

I was hooked.

I read as much as I could in the beginning. I was building a game plan that would prepare me for all possible poker situations. After some time, I had a rough draft for my poker game plan.

Then I set out to play, starting out at $.1/.$25 with a $25 buyin. At first, I played really tight and tried not to do anything too crazy early on. I only started with $300 and was very determined not to lose it. Over the next year or so I managed to move up from $25 game to the $200 and even the $400 game.

Relaxing in my office one night, reflecting on a bankroll milestone of $15,000 – I felt compelled to give something of value to the poker community.

Back when I first started reading the twoplustwo.com poker forums, I liked that there were different “stickied” threads in each forum full of poker strategy to help get you started. There were topics on 3-betting, continuation betting, reads, tilt, bankroll management, general AMA posts, playing out of position, etc.

I liked these threads but – they lacked continuity – there was no single poker road map. What I wanted was a basic primer; “So you want to win at poker? Start with this game plan!” type of post.

Once I built up a $50,000 bankroll (an enormous sum to me at the time) I decided to give back to the poker community. So I choose to write a poker ebook and give it away for free.

You can find the ebook linked here. (I must warn you I wrote it many years ago when I was a young man, and much of the content is outdated)

It received a really positive reception and I was very pleased. Every day for weeks I received multiple PMs thanking me or asking me me questions. The book went on to be translated into several languages. Even to this day people all over are grateful for the book. When I was in Spain in 2014 playing the EPT main event deep on day 4 a player at my table mentioned he read the book and it really got him started on his way to becoming a professional.

I should mention that this was back in 2008, while the book is still freely available most of what’s in it is very dated.

After the release of the book I had a few offers to make instructional videos for poker training sites. I was involved with a couple and even made videos for bluefirepoker.com. Around this time things were going well and I was moving to high stakes.

I was playing beating $2,000 no-limit and shot taking $5,000 no-limit. {The amount of money you get paid to make training videos is shockingly little – especially relative to the alternative of playing and taking into account that you are also releasing valuable information.}

I went on to build an extensive network of very intelligent and like minded players. Through experience, sharing ideas, extensive hand review, software, and the introduction of math and game theory into my play I was able to consistently evolve as a player.

I can say with absolutely certainty that every month since I’ve started playing poker I have been a stronger player compared to the beginning of that month.

The process I used to become a poker millionaire is grounded in logic. 99% of decisions I make can be broken down and explained so that anyone can learn my process.

My strategy now has everything I wanted when I was starting out.

1. Preflop Strategy
2. Postflop Strategy
3. Positional breakdowns
4. Board texture breakdowns
5. Mental game techniques
6. Health for poker pros
7. Focus in poker
8. Bankroll management
9. Combo counting
10. Model Building

Trying to cover all 10 of those topics in this blog post would be impossible!

Instead, let’s start with item #1: Preflop Poker Strategy.

Ryan Fee is a Pennsylvania born poker pro with almost $3,000,000 in live tournament winnings, a figure exceeded by his online cash game success. Learn everything you can from Ryan Fee exclusively here at Upswing Poker.