online or live? where did you make your first serious start?

[BIGRED]

I want to get an idea of where you guys made your first SERIOUS start at playing poker. Most likely, we all learned and played our first poker hand in a casino or in a home game, but when you realized that this game is beatable and decided to start playing with some intelligence, was it while you were playing in a casino or online?

[BIGRED]

For those that voted online, would you mind sharing with us when you first logged on and when you first started winning. I'm trying to get an idea of how long this on-line phenomenon has been around.

As for me, I first logged on to PartyPoker on July 2003 and made my turn around in February 2004.

[mrbaseball]

I voted live. But my first online experience was on Planet Poker in 1999. Planet had pretty much a monopoly back then and I remember beta testing Paradise who soon dominated the scene once going live. Of course they have since been buried by Party and affiliates.

[AnonymousGambler]

I started playing in '98 or '99. I'm not even sure I owned a computer at the time, which is funny now that I'm looking back. It wasn't too long before I started playing online at Paradise, but the initial jump was live.

[Escape]

Dec '04

[sammy_g]

Online -- Feb 04
.5/1 on Empire /images/graemlins/smile.gif

In my last two days at 10/20, I've given back as much as I made in my first few months of poker. Ugh.

[manpower]

[ QUOTE ]
Online -- Feb 04
.5/1 on Empire /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]
The same for me actually (except at party :P ). I read the forums for a while until I was pretty confident of beating the limit. I hopped right in with $125 (after bonus) and was lucky enough not to start off on a downswing.

[Jdanz]

started late spring 03 at UB broke even in december or january.

[KaBoom]

I started on October 31st, 2002. Signed up at Planet Poker. I played freerolls until March 26 2003 and then finally won a PL holdem tourney with 553 entrants. Got 25$ for it and boy was I proud! I know the exact date cause I printed the tourney results and am looking at it now. LOL! I also received planet points which helped me buy into better tourneys. Next month I won a Omaha Hilo PPE tourney and got 40$ more. I played with this money + 190$ more in deposits for more than a year. Then I went broke and moved to Party.

I still have over 400 planet points left if they haven't vanished, maybe I'll give their new software a try and play a PPE freeroll someday.

[zCereal]

got my start on pacific poker

friend told me about a free set of poker chips (nice ones) and i was playing some home games so decided to go for, fiirst thing i did was read everything i could about poker. i assmilated the knowledge then started playing. this was all in august 04 that i started

[mantasm]

I started screwing around with online poker in winter of '03. I'm not familiar with "live" poker? Is that where you play with other "people"?

[housenuts]

online early '04. got serious and started winning july '04.

[JohnnyHumongous]

[ QUOTE ]
I started screwing around with online poker in winter of '03. I'm not familiar with "live" poker? Is that where you play with other "people"?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah. No bots, if you can somehow believe it.

[Russ McGinley]

Online, 2000 or 2001. Bought Winenrs Guide to Texas Hold'em by Ken Warren at the bookstore and went to work on Planet Poker. I always knew the game was beatable and playing like a donkey was not a great idea. But of course education is nonstop.

[TheCleverOne]

Online from summer of 2003 at age of 16 ( /images/graemlins/blush.gif ) 0,25/0,5nl in ladbrokes. Lost couple of my first deposit, then ordered couple poker books and understood how to win.


Ive been able to go live games couple of months, but its just so damn booring and they play too low stakes here in Finland.

[lozen]

Switched to poker Aug2004 after I was banned from playing BJ at most of the onlines. Finally fine tuned my game about a month ago but never had a losing month. Now mainly playing 5/10's and 10/20,s hoping to be at 15/30's by June

[NoChance]

Here is a tread I pulled from the archives. I posted this back in August of 2004. It's kind of long.

August 03, 2004 (http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=890394&page=&view=&sb=5&o =&fpart=all&vc=1)

I also used some of that internet money to go to vegas and play as high as $15-30 just to get the experience. Again, long.

Vegas Trip Report (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=cardroom&Number=1268369&Fo rum=f13&Words=Vegas&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=126 8369&Search=true&where=sub&Name=3875&daterange=1&n ewerval=1&newertype=y&olderval=&oldertype=&bodypre v=#Post1268369)

Currently: Online I play two tables of $3-6. Live, I range from $4-8 to $10-20. Anyway, since that August post, I have made an additional 10K. It's not much compared to some people on these forums but it's certainly good for me considering where I started as this is still just a hobby for me at this point.

[KaiShin]

I think I should have read the whole poll question first, because I screwed up my answer /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

I started playing seriously a couple years ago on Pacific. That's when my game moved out of the "I know what hands beat what" era and into the "I want to be a better player" era, which I suppose I'll be in for the rest of my life.