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So I dropped the full $600 at Full Tilt for a variety of reasons, most importantly because I'd heard horror stories of bad beats and brutal suckouts at Party and Stars and assumed that FTP would have better players. (Yes, I know this is mistaken...
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It is great that you realize this, as it is something that you NEED to understand. I have a friend that refused to play 2/4 and 4/8 and played only 6/12 at my casino because the players "respected his raises." You DONT want players to respect your raises, and you WANT them to call you with crap as much as possible. When this happens, you are playing with and edge and that is how you make money. If everyone always respected your raises, the only time you would make money is when you are getting better cards than they are.
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I sat at a $1/$2 table (again, thinking better players would be here and I'd do well because bets were in dollars and not cents) and started red-hot. My first hand was A/A. I made $50 in three hours. The next day I made $30 in two hours.
Then it all went to hell. I couldn't buy a break. I probably tilted a ton (actually, I'm sure I tilted a ton). I lost my $80 profit and $150 more on top of that.
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This is unfortunately very common in poker. Variance really sucks, but it is something you will have to learn to understand and live with. I moved up to 3/6 and made $800 in my first 3 days, then proceeded to lose all but $200 of it in the next two days. Understand that there will be a lot of upswings and downswings when you play, but don't make the mistake of blaming all your losses on variance. Variance will be part of a downswing, but you have to realize you will probably be making mistakes as well. Post the occassional hand when you are really unsure of your play, and see what others have to say about it.
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It was as if they had personally overseen my game and wrote the book just to tear my play several new orifices. Virtually everything I read ran counter to what I'd picked up by playing bar-room no-limit (a far different beast of a game) and learned in books by Ken Warren and Phil Hellmuth (and now I know how Mason feels about those).
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First of all, you probably realize this, but NL and Limit are really two completely different games, requiring completely different strategies. Strategies applicable to NL could completely kill you in Limit. Also, players on this forum have found SSH to be the best book on low limit hold em, and it is far and above any other book. A lot of the advice in other books doesn't teach you how to properly maximize your profits, and sometimes is even plain wrong. Read SSH over and over, study it until you understand and can apply all the concepts in that book. It will actually make you a winning low-limit poker player if you can do this, and a pretty good one at that.
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So . . . where the hell do I start?
I'm stuck at FTP because I want to ride out the deposit bonuses and their tournament schedule (especially the WSOP satellites) better fit my real-life itineraries. I'll eat the humility of dropping down to .25/.50 if that's what it takes.
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Where to start depends on what kind of money you have, and what you are willing to invest. If you click on the Whoring 101 link at
www.bonuswhores.com it will give you a guide on how to whore bonuses to get yourself a bankroll of a couple thousand dollars. I'm not sure how well this is going to work anymore with the new developments at Party, with them becoming very opposed to players having accounts at more than one skin now.
If improving and becoming a good player is more important to you than getting a large bankroll to start off, my suggestion is deposit $500 into Party Poker or a skin. Try and go through an affiliate that offers rakeback. This won't mean much to you now, but as you get better and move up, you will be very glad you did it. I'm not sure if you can still get rakeback at Party or not, but you can at Empire and Eurobet at least.
Anyways, your $500 + $100 signup bonus is more than enough of a bankroll to be playing the .50/1 game there. This game is an excellent starting point. It is very soft and filled with a lot of bad players. Once you become good at this game and learn to multi table, you can even make a decent amount of money here.
The whole time you are doing this, I suggest reading these forums often. Read hands posted by other players, and respond to them with what you think is the correct play. Then go on to read other's responses, and see how it compares to yours. If it differs, try to understand why they are saying what they do, and why it differs from your advice. If you think that your method is actually better, say this, and try and get a discussion going about it. This is an invaluable learning tool, and I suggest doing it often.
Other Notes:
Read the FAQ at the top of this forum. It will answer many beginning questions, and teach you a little about the etiquette of the forum.
Buy PokerTracker - another invaluable tool for improving your game. You will slowly learn how to use all of its functions. It is $55, but it will pay for itself MANY times over
Again, read and re-read SSH many times. Eventually you may want to invest in a few other books such as Theory of Poker and Inside the Poker Mind.
Good luck, and welcome to the forums.