Is this the best way to begin to learn Hold'em? New Players Log

[derick]

Evolution New Poker Player.

Hello,

I'm new to the two plus two forums. I'm also fairly new to playing Hold’em for real money. I'm looking for mentoring/comments about if I'm going about learning poker the most optimal way. If I had known now what I didn’t know before I would have done things much differently.

I’ve been playing poker since I was in grade school. I’ve just started to play Hold’em for money about 2 months ago. Prior to this I had played six months of no limit hold'em for play money on Ultimate Bet. I figured if I can beat play money games I probably can beat real money games. I heard about Ultimate Bet by reading Phil Helmuth's book, "Play Poker Like the Pro's". I don’t recommend doing the above as an optimal way to learn Hold’em.

I played my first game of Hold’em in a Casino about 2 months ago. The other players were drunk or loose or both. By chance and being a little selective of starting hands I won $110 at 2-5 limit poker (with a 10% rake). I went back the next day and lost $65 to a bunch of older conservative rock players who play during the days.

Books:

I decided I liked this game but I playskill need improving. I went out to the bookstore and bought all the books on poker.

Killer Poker, Killer Internet Poker, Ken Warren’s Big Book of Poker, Mike Caro’s Book of Tell’s, TJ Cloutier Tom MacEvoy “Championship Pot Limt and No Limit Poker”, Doyle Brunson’s SuperSystem.

Killer Poker recommend rec.gambing.poker

Rec.gambling.poker recommended Lee Jones “Winning Low Limit Hold’em”

Winning Low Limit Hold’em was one the better beginners books I’ve read. Lee Jones recommended, Hold’em Poker For Advanced Players.

After reading HEPFAP I found out about this forum.

Since then I’ve been reading Ed Miller’s Small Stakes Hold’em and have bought Middle Limit Hold’em and Theory of Poker. (I plan to read them after I get through Small Stakes Hold’em)

Building My Bankroll With Bonuses While I Get Experience.

I started with Ultimate bet because Ultimate Bet will pay the instacash charge on Neteller.
I put $50 into Ultimate Bet. I cleared a small 25% bonus on Ultimate bet playing .25/.50 and made about $12. Next I put money into William Hill and cleared their 5 pounds per hour bonus playing 1/2. Next on the list was Party Poker. I put in $200 for a $100 bonus and cleared the bonus playing .50/1 (I made about $13 ). Around this time I downloaded PokerTracker. It took me about 742 hands to clear the $100 bonus. After I cleared the Party Poker bonus I moved my funds to Paradise Poker and am slowly clearing that bonus playing .50/1. I bought the full version of Pokertracker yesterday and am up to 1147 hands in my database.

In my play so far I’ve been slightly positive bb/100 but with this small sample size it’s hard to tell. My biggest problem is I don’t know if I’m playing correctly or not. I was planning on posting some of my hands and asking for comments here. I seem to have lost the most with AQo a hand I’ve had 15 times. What pokertracker stats should I be looking at to try to improve my game?

Thanks for reading this, I plan to post my stat's progress to this thread as I progress/improve.

Derick