How did you get your start in poker?

[Gamblor]

As in, at what point did poker move past "follow the bitch" and "Anaconda" for $10 in your buddy's house in college? At what point did you say "I'm gonna really learn this game" and make it a serious hobby/living?

I'll go first.

In my first year of university, I bumped into some old friends from elementary school that I hadn't seen in a few years due to living abroad. we hung out a few times, and eventually they extended an invitation to their poker game. $20 buyin, maybe two people at most had to rebuy all night. it had all the classics, follow the bitch, kings and little ones, pregnant 3s, black chicago, and in-between, with the odd hold 'em or seven stud game thrown in. WIthin 2 hrs, the table had chopped up my $20.

Now, $20 wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough to piss me off. so i went online and searched pretty much everything i could think of related to poker. "poker strategy", etc. etc. hours spent memorizing abdul-jalib's preflop strategy (of course, not understanding that full ring limit hold em was slightly different than no limit shorthanded hold em) i watched a downloaded rounders every day for a week, often as my last activity before bed. i downloaded ultimatebet and began playing hold em for play money.

Then the real fun begins. I found 2+2 in early '03 and made my first post asking for any information on any freeroll tournaments online. i had been playing planet poker, pokerstars, and ultimatebet freerolls without any success. one fateful day in september, i won $10 in one of stars' freerolls.

then the penny games. quarter games. dollar games. get neteller. switch to UB. play 2/4. 3/6. nice run.

Then the collapse. with a $400 bankroll, and stars in my eyes, i jumped into a 10/20 game with Thanatos and two others. one hand i recall, i raised first in on the button with 53o to steal the blinds (having never even heard the term "steal the blinds" or ever read anything outside of abdul's stuff). the BB 3-bets and I decide it would be brilliant to set up a resteal on the flop or turn and cap it. flop: 553. nice. BB went on a tirade. By nights end, I had $1200 in the account and was dreaming of ways to spend my $800/day income.

by 7pm the next night, it was gone. 3 months and a neteller deposit for $50 later, i was on party at the 1/2 tables, grinding it out. i mean, i can't beat ub. must be the software. reading 2+2 daily. buying more books. and so it begins. first stop: amazon. order hpfap, hep, top, and championship p/nl hold em (cloutier). read. read. some more reading.

In 2 years since then, I've built a five figure bankroll online and about the same amount at live play in ontario casinos, and added at least that much to my bank account as well. my friends call me and ask for advice about poker. i have uncovered a network of underground "private" tournaments and cash games around Toronto. I've made friends with great people, here and in real life. i go out to a bar and don't save every receipt like i used to.

but most importantly, i win now. i'm good at it. maybe not the best, maybe not world-class, but I'm a winner. and it's going to pay for law school next year.

What's your story?

[MarkL444]

Last Feb I was bored one night and put $100 in party (without even getting a rakeback deal! DOH!). I was probably not even good enough at the time to beat the .50/1. (of course i did not know this) I played any limit that I have 25BBs for. Starting at 1/2, I was playing 15/30 in a few weeks. Built my roll up to around 3k. Needless to say my luck caught up with me and I lost nearly all of it. I was convinced that I was losing due to bad beats and such and that I was still really good. I bought some books and started getting better. It wasnt till a few months later that I realized how terrible I was then and the almighty power of variance. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[DcifrThs]

back in May 2002 or so i am ashamed to say it was rounders...i was wondering how likely it was that the hand vs. kgb went as it did. being a statistitian i found it interesting...i simply googled poker odds and i can't even remember the sight that came up but eventually i found Brian Alspach's poker digest...mathematical approach to poker using a 3rd person thing and discussions with friends to frame the problems...

then i found 2+2 and ordered books before ever playing a hand...i read every single old archive post at work (exciting job) from august 1996 (or 1997) all the way through the end of those older archives, i remember registering before the switch and then again after...archive logistics were changed, but still same content. i started looking at posted hands and was able to piece a lot of it together...i never looked at small stakes, only mid-high...then i started posting and took a very technical mathematical approach to the game as the older posters here may recall...

then came the party, poker. i gave myself 2k to learn the game and came within $50 of busting but i kept at it...learning folding and raising etc...

built that last 50 up as quickly as i lost the first 1950 to over 3k (moved to 2/4 w/ 1000, then played 3/6 with 1800) and moved to 5/10. i found the game made more and more sense and moved up with only 6k to 15/30 ... i won a whole lot very quickly and then lost a whole lot back down to 4k...that was very very depressing...

it was also during this time that i had to continually manually update this spreadsheet i derived from Mason's old spreadsheet to log my sessions and calculate bb/hr.

i gradually learned more and more strategy and started really killing the party games...

then i cleared my bankroll for school and started all over again in early december 2004.

bought into a live nl game with friends with $20...we were messin around all drunk, & i left w/ 200. deposited that on party and played 1/2. killed that game for a while and then played paradise 3/6 heads up and fed off of some insane fish and built my br up and up (paradise allows like 6 or 8 bets heads up as opposed to 4 and one guy went through an entire $1000 just raising every chance he got). i then went to AC, played 20/40 with 3k in my poket and 6k in the roll. after 2 sessions during christmas break i was up to 9k and deposited 2k on party...haven't looked back since /images/graemlins/smile.gif

now i play the 30 games on party, & occasionally stars & ub for a change up as well as the 15/30, obviously, on our favorite site.

thats the whole story up until now. note that i was usually underbankrolled and if i could do it again i'd play lower limits longer...i could easily have busted myself! i really literally did get very very lucky.

-Barron

[CCass]

When I was in HS (20+ years ago), I was betting $25 a game on football, and playing golf for money all weekend. Cards naturally followed. Played at the Country Club and at the local Pool Hall. Played a lot of Tonk, and a fair amount of poker, mostly 8 card stud hi/lo declare. Looking back on it, the men I played with were always very accomodating to the young punk, because I imagine I fed the game well.

Continued playing various home games during college, and had a regular game for 3 or 4 years after. I hadn't played in several years, when I made my 1st visit to Vegas (summer of '99). Found the poker room and was in heaven. Played HE and Omaha, probably had a flops seen % in the high 80's...lol. So on my next trip to Tunica (much closer than Vegas), I didn't play my customary BJ, I only played HE. I only get to Tunica 1 or 2 times a year, and those infrequent visits weren't feeding my new found "jones". I heard about Moneymaker winning his seat off the interent in '03, and in the fall of '03 I could stand it no more.

Deposited $50 in Stars, lost it in a matter of days. Decided I needed to find out more about poker stategy, found 2+2 and went at Stars again. Deposited a total of $300 (in $50 increments) over the next couple of months, but HPFEP, TOP, and constant reading on 2+2 finally began to sink in. I haven't won a great deal of money, but I am on the plus side, and I still consider myself a recreational player. I am now very comfortable online in the $.50/$1 and $1/$2 NL games, and $3/$6 limit is fine as well. Additionally, the last 2 times I have been to a B&M casino, I have played $10/$20 LHE, and have no qualms about those limits. In fact, while at Tunica during the WPO, I played at a $10/$20 table where I was most likely the best player there. Not a ringing endorsement of the other 9 players at the table.

My goal is to continue to improve my play, grow my bankroll, and have fun. I am also planning an annual trip to Vegas, starting this summer.

[Diplomat]

Very well, where should I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. A sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. If I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fifteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shawn scrotum. At the age of eighteen, I went off to evil medical school. From there...

Oh wait, you mean poker. I'll write something about that later...

-Diplomat

[stabn]

Nicely done, good quote.

[stinkypete]

i lost something like $190 bucks to my older brother playing triple draw when i was 11-12 or so. it was no limit, and it wasn't table stakes. that was a lot of money. my royal flush of hearts lost to his royal flush of spades. (yeah, i know). i'm pretty sure wild cards were involved.

i discovered online poker april of 2004. i lost a couple grand in a month or two. i got into casino bonus whoring and made my losses back, and a few grand on top of that. i was playing 5/10 at casinos once in a while, and i was convinced i was a winning player, but i was probably somewhere a slight loser. (i'd read phil hellmuth's book, so i knew my stuff!)

i read some 2+2 books and bought poker tracker in september, and deposited $400 to play $0.5/1. i'd been playing significantly higher than that before. poker tracker quickly told me i was way too loose preflop, and i started winning pretty much immediately.

i played relatively regularly at ontario casinos thereafter, and did very well. i ran bad online and stopped playing for a while, but in december i took a shot at the 5/10 SH, won $2200 on my first day, and started playing the game regularly. i've been averaging 5 figures per month since, despite not having much time to play.

in other words, i'm a total luck box.

[Boltsfan1992]

Hiya -

I played bad draw poker in high school, played for pennies, it was fun and we looked cool.

Then, college came and there was NO ONE who would play. Instead, spades was the game, sometimes hearts, no gambling with money. So I forgot about poker for a long while.

Then, I had to take a certification test for my job. I had to go out of town and stay over night since the test was early in the morning. The bar where I had dinner that night had the 2003 WSOP on television. I said, "Poker on ESPN?! This isn't a sport!" I tried to get the bartender to change it but no luck. Then I saw Moneymaker interviewed by Letterman. When ESPN re-ran the WSOP, I watched every episode - I was hooked, what a cool game!

Then, I caught episodes of the WPT. A colleague at work watched it too and wanted to organize a home NL game, for fun. We did that for awhile but it wasn't enough.

I played play money on Party Poker and figured out quickly that I wasn't learning anything. People were fearless because there was no risk. I picked up Hold 'Em Poker at the book store and I was confused by the play money tables. I deposited $150 at Party Poker and started playing $.50/$1. I got lucky and won some.

Then, around November, I knew I was underbankrolled and wanted to take this more seriously. I deposited another $150 (bankroll was $300 +, just about breaking even). I picked up SSHE, and read that as well as TOP. I started applying what I learned and started to get better. I won enough to purchase Pokertracker and I saw what I was doing wrong/right while re-reading sections of the books and found this place.

Now, I haven't had to make a deposit since November. I did have a downswing in December, but having that 300BB "rule/guideline" helped a great deal. Now, I am playing $1/$2, ready to jump to $2/$4 and take a shot there. I have since added one table (oooohhhh....ahhhh...two tables at once, I am DA BOMB! /images/graemlins/laugh.gif) and still learning and improving.

That's my story...So I guess I can blame Moneymaker?

PB

[Turning Stone Pro]

My grandmother taught me how to play poker when I was 4. We used to play for pennies, 5 card draw, and I could never beat her. 31 years later, I probably still couldn't.

TSP

[lighterjobs]

[ QUOTE ]
Nicely done, good quote.

[/ QUOTE ]

where was that from? royal tennenbaums?

[Ryno]

Used to count cards in BJ - loved the casino environment, but not the increased technology and crankiness...switched to poker as I'm sure many other counters will...still have not equaled in poker what I made in BJ but this hobby has a longer shelf life /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Kanchi]

You went to York/UofTRyerson? I'm at York.

Last summer I was interested into getting into poker, one friend shipped me $10.00 on PStars. I read HEFAP, then I played micro limits till the end of summer, cashed out and paid for a University Book.

This mid-November just after my I turn 19 I bought back $55 at Party. I just bought online for fun cause i never get to play, no idea SNG's were profitable. End of December I made a few grand and moved to $30+3. Haven't played much at all in 05 though.

I've never played live, other then a few $5 friendly game with friends.

Do you know of any soft games/torunaments in Toronto where I can try out small limits just for a feel? I've heard of a $250.00 buy-in in Woodbridge that's beatable, but that's way to high for me now. I still haven't hit up a casino yet, I probably will once exams are over.

[deathtoau]

[ QUOTE ]
Quote:
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Nicely done, good quote.


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where was that from? royal tennenbaums?

[/ QUOTE ]

Austin Powers Baby

[morgant]

i always loved cards, if a game was being played i was in.

but when i worked for reuters 2001, i had a long period of training which meant sitting in my cube with T1 acess and nothing to do till a class began. I got bored of chess and typed in poker. Found UB sometime in 2002. I quit that job last February and cant imagine working in an office environment ever again................................

[BigBaitsim (milo)]

Played nickel-dime-quarter poker a few times in grad school, and always seemed to finish ahead of the others. It helped that uniquely amongst my colleagues, I was neither drunk nor stoned.

No poker for 10 years.

Then, this one night in May of 2003, I'm in bed busily not getting laid by my wife of 20 years. So I'm channel surfing, and, no [censored], I stumble across this TV show with a poker tourney. Only they're playing some crazy ass game with two cards down and five in the middle. It takes me a while to really understand what's going on, but it's pretty cool looking.

Then, I read this book by this famous poker guy named Phil Hellmuth. And I start playing at Party. The wife lets me buy in for $50, no more. Ever. So I play a little bit, never really winning, but never really losing. I'm just breaking even.

Then, in October of 2003, I stumble across 2+2...

[uuDevil]

[ QUOTE ]
...not getting laid....

[/ QUOTE ]
Very Freudian. Also, I'm sure you're not the only one.... /images/graemlins/blush.gif

[M2d]

Dr. Evil in group therapy

[Gamblor]

I went to U of T.

I've been playing Woodbridge for 4 months now, the game has toughened up significantly. Maybe 60% of the field is donkeys, but 40% have real brains and with the high rake at "private" tournaments it's not worth it. I know of a bunch in the $200-$500 range, not including a smaller stakes sunday one in markham. pm me.

[Bluffoon]

I first learned poker when I was dating my ex wife. Her dad had a regular nickel and dime game and I was soon a regular. He taught me how to play craps and blackjack and it wasn't long before I taught myself how to count cards. The card counting funded a couple of vegas trips yearly. I started playing low limit stud at the casinos when I would tire of blackjack and booked steady small profits.

I dropped out of my regular games and pretty much quit gambling altogether after my son was born. I don't count cards anymore at all.

My interest in poker was rekindled when moneymaker won the WSOP. I deposited a couple of hundred dollars on Pokerstars and bought the first book i saw on holdem at barnes and noble. Playing like the pros!! Despite reading this book I managed to build a small bankroll using the tight and agressive style of pokler I developed playing stud while I learned (and continue to learn) the nuances of Holdem thanks to the many talented contributors to this site.

Thanks guys for your wisdom and support.

[FrankLu99]

i learned how to play some form s of poker in elementary school. we played 7 card stud, 5 card stud, 5 card draw for nickels, dimes and quarters. In high school my friends and I did not play that much but after watching rounders we started to play holdem in large groups. I was usually a consistent loser, losing $5 or $10. The occasional win was what brought me back. I still did not understand strategy. In my sophomore year of college my roommates and buddies use to play nickel and dime holdem. Later my sophomore year my roommate's friend told us that there was a good book out by Sklansky and Mulmuth called THFAP. One day I decided to go to the book store to read it. Reading it gave me a solid foundation to build on. I read a few more books that I liked, did some online research (2+2, GoCee, twoDimes, cardplayer, Caro University) and then everything seemed to go smoothly. /images/graemlins/blush.gif /images/graemlins/smile.gif /images/graemlins/cool.gif /images/graemlins/mad.gif /images/graemlins/ooo.gif /images/graemlins/crazy.gif /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[thirddan]

i think there is a pic somewhere in the SS forum that shows that poker improved relations between Milo and his wife...courtesy of bison... /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Duke]

I turned 21 and walked into the Bellagio with $500. Bought in for $500 at a 4-8 table, and played for about 35 hours straight. I was down $100 or so at the end. This was after I had read the S&M books at the time.

After that I went back to work in the Bay area, and started playing 15-30 at Bay 101. Lost about 4k the first month, but by December was up about 6k. Gabe Thaler taught me not to play KJo from EP.

~D

[codewarrior]

Suckin' on a chilli dog, outside the Tastee-Freeze.

It was then I had an Epiphany, and dedicated my life to hold'em.

I later found out it was severe heartburn, but I still play sometimes....

[Jack of Arcades]

My friend got me started playing play money tables on Full Tilt. From there I tried to find everything I could to win at poker.

[Joe Tall]

I was around 5 or 6 years old when I played some 5 card draw w/my grandparents and parents for pennies. I just kept asking them to put me in the game. They taught me what to do, how to deal and there it was. My father is an excellent 7 card stud player and he taught me the real basics when I was around 9 or so, 3 cards to a flush, st8, big pairs, make sure your cards are live, etc. About that same time I got my first job at the local paper office. I used to help unload the trucks and then started my local route. There was about six of us kids waiting for the truck each day and we would play poker in the office before the truck came. Six 10yr olds making $70/week, sure made for a good game.

I still play poker with these same guys, today. I'm 32.

Great stories in this thread. Thanks for sharing.

[SinCityGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
At what point did you say "I'm gonna really learn this game" and make it a serious hobby/living?

[/ QUOTE ]

April, 2003. I was backed off at the Monte Carlo blackjack tables, the fifth casino I'd been backed off in the last month. I made a decision that I would learn to play poker.

It's been less than two years since I played my first hand of poker, but I've made a lot of progress. I've still got a long way to go.

[lighterjobs]

[ QUOTE ]

April, 2003. I was backed off at the Monte Carlo blackjack tables, the fifth casino I'd been backed off in the last month. I made a decision that I would learn to play poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

were you a card counter?

[SinCityGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
were you a card counter?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, and quitting blackjack to play poker is one of the best decisions I've ever made.

[etizzle]

first saw texas hold em in january 04. Learned for about a month by watching a friend play on paradise, one hand at a time.

Played with a friends money until i was up 200 dollars playing 1/2 on party, and then i moved to 2/4. Played 8 hours a day over the summer and built a comfotable bankroll for 5/10, and now 10/20.

I'm in my 3rd year at MIT, so occasionally I have to take breaks to study. Hopefully this habit will pay for law school when i get out.

[EliteNinja]

Well, I signed up with a bonus code or something (can't remember) and I got a playable $15 signup bonus without depositing anything. I can't remember the clearing requirements for it, though. I played .1/.2 until I got to around $45 (took a while). Then I played the newbie freeroll and placed in the money and won another $25 (this was huge to me at the time. I was so stoked, lol).

Bankroll at this point in time was around $71-$75.

From there, I moved on to Pacific Poker for $100 in bonus. $50 for signup (I put in my own money, about $25 to make it $100-even since it was a 50% bonus then took it right out after signing up). + $25 bonus for no reason. + $25 for referring a friend.

The problem with Pacific Poker was that you need to wager 20 times the bonus amount. That is, for a $100 Bonus, $2000 was required to be wagered!!!
That took me like 3 months to do! I played .1/.2 until I had 300BB for 0.25/0.50 limit ($150). Then playing 0.25/.50, it was a lot faster clearing the bonus. But still took me all summer long.

After clearing the bonus, I moved on to the Party Skins having enough bankroll to play 0.5/1. I started multitabling at some point here and have worked my way up to 2/4 where I currently reside playing 4-tables until I can get a new computer+monitor next month.

[dogsballs]

Pre 2+2: Only poker was a couple of times a month home game for nickels & dimes. The booze we drank was several times more $$ than the money we had on the table, for 2 reasons...
1) we were skint bastards
2) too much booze. it was a game with an australian cook, a couple of deckhands from Newfoundland, a couple of north carolina guys who also worked on the ship, plus some assorted other more regular people, such as myself. Pot too, but that wasn't my scene (don't like smoking, even if it's hydroponic cigarettes). I was a regular host cos I was single and had a decent size place, so my pad got trashed regularly. I even got into two fights - score: beat the newfie, tied w N carolina (tho I reckon I'da done it if the others hadn't stopped it...of course... /images/graemlins/tongue.gif). Noone had absolutely any clue how to play the game of poker, even if it was the home game oddball stuff.

Found 2+2 in 1999 while skiving at work and surfing around one day. Was home in scotland a few months later, xmas shopping, and saw one lonely copy of the original edition of 7CSFAP in a glasgow bookshop. Picked it up.....


Post 2+2: Was reading 2+2 daily, everything, all the new threads, until the forums got too big; have to pick and choose now. Played Paradise 2/4 stud, also the 8/16 stud there ocasionally. Tried the other games as the sites introduced them (still don't understand why most of you lot ever liked LHE). Now I'm quiet and comparatively respectable. I moved a coupla thousand miles, now married and I make my living sitting on the porch clicking a mouse.
It's nice. /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[TomBrooks]

My Life Coach recommended playing poker mainly as an excercise in reading body language. So I figured if I was going to play, I might as well learn how so I don't lose money while I was at it.

[Blarg]

Can't resist dropping in this nugget from Monty Cantsin that he posted a few months back.
---------------------

Poster: Monty Cantsin
Subject: Re: How did your mad poker skillz0rs develop over time?

I'm sure my story is similar to many other 2+2ers. One morning I was pulled out of my 7th grade English class and told to go to the principal's office. There was a tall man with a briefcase standing next to my mother and father, who were smiling strangely - like they were sad and scared but trying to be brave.

The man's name was Mr. Morgenstern and he told me about his job studying school records looking for children who had a certain rare combination of mathematical ability and pathological aggression. He said these children had a special gift and that no-one is truly happy if they don't reach their full potential.

Then he handed me a deck of cards and told me to say goodbye to my parents.

The Camp I was sent to was a converted boy's school somewhere in the desert. In the mornings we drilled Markov chains and Nash equilibria, in the afternoons we drilled transverse psychology and all the differential calculations of greed and fear necessary to map the currents of the coldest and hottest tables. In the evenings we were given fruit plates and watery cocktails and we played cards.

We slept in staggered 4 hour shifts in blackout curtained cabins. When we couldn't sleep we would sometimes play poker from our bunks, calling out bets and raises while one boy, who kept the entire deck in his head, would shuffle from bunk to bunk whispering hole cards.

And it was no secret many of the boys practiced another kind of hold'em to stave off the lonely chill of those cloudless desert nights.

The Camp had its own baroque hierarchy of influence and respect only loosely associated with the different stakes that we played. We never payed much attention to bankrolls because they were given out and taken back pseudo-randomly by the counsellors. But we knew we knew each other's edges down to the fraction of a degree. And we kept our distance from the "plankton". Every two weeks the mulch at the bottom of the pool would be culled, and a handful of boys would be picked up by shamefaced parents and taken away to careers as investment bankers and computer programmers. This was the only risk of ruin that haunted our nightmares.

Because we had nothing to spend it on we came to view money as a cipher, and we craved it not for its tawdry exchange value but for its ultimate and true meaning as leading indicator in the economics of domination and control.

Eventually it became clear that the counsellors set up our games for something more than educational purposes. Top boys were pitted against each other at tables where the stacks, positions, and temperaments were carefully composed analogues to certain real-world economic and geo-political situations. Through one-way glass the optimal solutions to complex multi-agent dilemmas were recorded by balding men with visors and clipboards.

The internet bubble, for example, corresponded to a ridiculously long run of good cards caught by one "Tubby" Peterson, who eventually went mega-tilt and lost everything in a spectacular reverse rush. Later that night he tried to hang himself but the rope broke.

Certain key confrontations of the Serbo-Croation conflict were modelled with tense heads-up matches between notorious LAG Micky "The Tooth" Chambers and a brilliant but insane little TAG named Steven who was widely rumoured to have kept a severed human finger under his mattress.

Most of us, myself included, had no curiousity about the shadow world behind the mirror. To us these messy scenarios of civil unrest, disease control, and oil prices were just warped reflections of the ideal realm of pips and digits whose combinatory circulation was the alpha and omega of our private, perfect empire.

When I was too old to play they sent me home. I was 15.

Nowadays, I'm allowed to make a certain amount per month, and the counsellors monitor my accounts to make sure my win rate stays sub-anomalous. But to be honest, I'm not sure I'm even capable of breaking that rule anymore. I have a family now and hobbies and interests. I shop, I ski, I watch television. These things, and the pills I take, have dulled my edge enough to make me harmless. I can cut but not kill and so I'm safe.

And I'm happy enough, I guess, to have reached the full potential of something once, though I'm not sure what it was.

/mc

[Rick Diesel]

I was always playing in the nickel-dime-quarter games as a kid with my friends. In college, I got into sports betting and had an account at WSEX. When they opened poker on their site (I think it was around late 2001, early 2002) I moved $50 from the sports betting over to poker.

I quickly ran my $50 into $1,000 playing 1/2 and 2/4 7-stud. The problem was, that most of the people on this site were playing this game called Hold'em where you only got two cards and had to share the other 5 cards with everyone else. I really wanted to just stick to 7-stud, but WSEX was so small at the time that I would go days without a full ring 7-stud game going. So I cashed out $500 of my bankroll and took the other $500 to decide to learn hold'em.

I lost that $500 within two weeks. I decided to learn a little more about the game, so I stumbled onto what I thought at the time was the greatest internet site ever.........RGP! Someone on there recommended that I purchase Winning Low Limit Hold'em by Lee Jones. I did that, and read the RGP forum all the time. The problem was is that forum was filled up with so much crap that I couldn't really learn that much. I decided to deposit $200 back into my poker account at WSEX.

Lee Jones book is what I can credit most of my poker success to. I ran my bankroll up over $2,000, and began to withdraw $500 a month playing one table of 3/6 limit for about 10-15 hours a week. I didnt give my bankroll much of a chance to grow, as it would be around $1,500 and then over the course of a month I would win about $500 and then withdraw that $500 every month. This continued for about 1.5 years, into mid-2003.

At this point I was starting to get bored with the same old grind, and was not learning much on RGP. Oneday while viewing RGP someone mentioned this other forum, called 2+2. I decided to check it out. I have NEVER even looked at RGP once since this day.

I moved my money over to PokerStars, where it has been since then, and began to learn the MTT theories and strategies, while still building my bankroll through limit ring games.

I had my account up to 5 figures in mid 2004, when I decided that I would withdraw all of the money except for $100 to make a down payment on my first rental property. I mean, if I could build my roll from $100 once, I could do it again. So I officially become a slum lord. I go back to the 5c/10c no-limit ring at PS to rebuild my roll. I am up to about $160 in September of 2004. On September 24th (yes, I remember the date) my brother came over one day to let my dogs out while my wife and I were out. As we returned, he was just entering the $11 rebuy on Stars, and asked me if I wanted to split it with him. I said okay, and 7 hours later we are chopping the tournament with another played for $6,000, or $3,000 each.

This put me back to where I was comfortable, and since that time I have won the $5 rebuy on Stars twice and the $11 rebuy another time. I have been rolling ever since, and my roll is now back over the 5 figure mark, even though I have made some substantial withdrawals lately.

My new goal is to be playing poker full-time by January 1, 2007. I think it is a reasonable goal, and will be investing a great deal of time into my poker game in the next year-plus to make it happen.

Rick Diesel

[Klepton]

some guy "hey you wanna play poker?"

me "ok."

[Gamblor]

hahahahaha

you're hilarious

i see why all the comedy movies are made in california.

[Ogre]

I am writting a post about my first year as an underage poker player very soon.