[grouchie]

I first learned Texas Holdem when a friend needed someone to go along to the local casino. On the way up, he explained the rules to me, how the bets worked, the blinds, even which hands beat the others. On that hour up I asked question after question so that I wasn't so dead in the water.

We sat at a 1/3 limit table and after 3 hours of play I was down $6 bucks.

Played limit a few more times and started playing in a NL home game that is run tourney style. No Limit was easily more my style as even at my first sitting I walked away with part of the money.

Finally, we ended up at the casino and they had a NL ring game that was gaining lots of popularity. 40 dollar max buy in with blinds of 1 and 1.
Made a good chunk of change at that and the occasional tourney they held and have moved to the 1/2 100 buy in tables there.

somewhere in there I started playing online at Ultimate Bet. Mostly playing the tournaments as i was obcessed with hitting a big payday for some reason. Kept losing what i'd
deposit and eventually tried out the low buyin ring games which I won a little.

Finally introduced to party poker, bought in once for 150 bucks and played a combinatino of the NL ring games and the Limit ring games. had someone trying to coach me up on Limit to make money. Started working my way up a little bit and dabbling (unsuccessfully in the NL games). Eventually got up to 2/4 and hit a horrible downswing that was aided horribly by tilt.
Finally got down to my last $50 and between pokertracker, 2+2 and some book studying I bought into the Party 25NL games and hve not looked back since. This was about November. Now, through mostly the 25NL gmaes and some whoring i have my bankroll up to about 1800.

Finally got a rakeback at a party skin, withdrew all of my money but $50 into neteller so i could whore elsewhere and am building that money alone up to the point where I can advance to the higher games.

Still have some tiltedness that gets me once in a while, still have some leaks in my game that hinder my advancement. But, this is the reason that after I built up the roll, i started over again.
I'm about to the point where I'll start taking shots at the 50NL game from time to time, but for the most party I am starting to add extra tables into my habbit. Right now I can 4 table and am getting tot he point where I feel comfortable. With my current monitor situation adding table 5 and 6 might become quite tricky.

One more thing in this long ramble, I am going to Vegas this coming may and that whole trip is being paid for out of poker winnings. That makes me feel pretty good about my game even though it's got a long way to go.