How did you get to where you currently are?

[AdamBragar]

Played poker with my family growing up. Played poker in highschool with my friends (we actually played NL Hold Em). Freshman-Junior Year of College I played about 3 times total. Senior year, started playing with kids in college and at 2/4 limit at foxwoods. I made 100 dollars on one visit and decided to deposit on Party.

First night, I dropped down to 11 dollars playing 2/4 limit and maybe a sit n go or 2. Somehow, I ran insanely hot after that, and turned that into about 800 dollars in 3 months, thereby convincing myself I was the greatest player alive. I mainly played 5-20 dollar Sit N' Go's and .5/1 NL. I was an absolute rock when I played. Anything above a minraise preflop was very unusual for me. I'd fold pretty much any hand besides 1010-AA (including AK) to ANY raise. I then decided I was going to take about 2 months off before I started work in consulting to just play poker.

I played .5-1 NL on party convinced I would make about 200 dollars per day 1 tabling for 6 hours or so. This did not happen. Or even close. I decided fish sucked out on me too much and I needed to play 1-2 NL. Luckily I cashed 2nd in a multi for 1800 which made me evenish for the summer.

My job was boring, so I found 2+2. My job continued to be boring and I read a lot of 2+2. Deposited some money on UB (I was IHeartBoobies on there) and played some .5/1 NL and then moved up to 1/2 NL. By January, 2005 I had a bankroll for 2-4 NL. I switched back to Party and played tons of 2-4 NL (if you've played 2-4 on Party, 99 percent chance I've played against you). Since my job let me out at 5-5:30 everyday and I had moved to Princeton, NJ for this job and knew no one, I pretty much got home by 6 and played till midnight about 3-4 nights a week. At some point I started doing well for myself and also had some big results playing 2-5, 5-5 and 5-10 live.

This past summer, I decided I hated my job and quit. I moved back to New York City and I now play poker for a living. I will be going to grad school in Fall 06.

I'm not sure I've gotten through an entire poker book. The Harrington books are probably about as close as I've gotten. By far, the most valuable teaching instrument for me has been this forum. I read it, a ton and it has taught me thought proccesses to use when playing that really is the basis for a lot of the strategies described in books.

[BobboFitos]

2 1/2 + yrs ago my friends started playing over the summer. So I started playing. We played 10$ and 20$ buyin games. We thought we were the best alive, period. Luckily I found caro's book of tells right away and immediately could stare into the souls of my friends.

My cousin suggested super/system early on, (he plays alot of poker as well) so I thought I was the next DB having read it. Found online poker november or so of 2003 (I believe) and started playing play money on pokerstars. Was able to sell several million play chips to start a poker br. Combined with a friend, we shared a 10$ roll and played 1cent/2cent nl.

We went on "wild" swings, including going down to 4.44$, before finally we had enough for 5.5 sngs and low limit. I multitabled NL25 and .5/1 limit (on a maybe 150$ roll) for a while.

A different friend found 2p2, suggested it to me, I read ToP and studied the game here. This helped substantially.

We won a 3$ tournament, gave our br a 1k boost, and split it up. I started reading 2p2 heavily and switched from .5-1 limit to just NL. (Which is why Im a limit retard!)

played my way up... Last semester I took off from college to play "professionally" (what a jopke!) in boston. I stayed at tufts w/ friends, multitabled 1-2NL and the like (and played in some boston games) but before the summer began I returned home and realized it's not what I wanted to do.

I still play way too much and read 2p2 way too much, last month was my first losing month, (I have no idea why) and this month seems to be in the same direction! But poker has been sweet on me.

[mgsimpleton]

let's see... not much of a story to tell. played poker in high school with some friends... we played nl texas holdem junior year and became pretty addicted to it by senior year - literally every chance we could get. we used to play at lunch time in the cafeteria .25/.50 c blinds, writing down in the margins of a piece of notebook paper who owed each other what. i thought i was the greatest thing to happen to poker until i visited the game of this one kid in HS who was a known hustler. i thought i was better but the whole time i thought i was being cheated and kept trying to prove it. anyway stupid to play there, dropped 50 bucks, emotionally not so good.

in college i sort of dropped poker until junior year when i found the "big game" at my school which was 1/1 nl. it sort of plays bigger than that but not much but yeah that's where supposedly the high rollers went, heh. played there at the end of my junior year a bit and was pretty much a fish. friends from the game told me about 2+2. i became fascinated and started reading.

dropped poker over the summer but then picked it up again in the fall. became addicted. reading 2+2 all the time, going to foxwoods to play 1/2nl. second semester started keeping a real bankroll, started playing 5/5 at foxwoods. never anywhere else, still underage. online - worked my way up from .5/1 to 1/2, 2/4 up to 10/20 all very quickly (i am very conservative bankroll-wise so "very quickly" means i had 25 buy ins but maybe didn't feel comfortable).

ijust graduated and this summer i played a lot and doubled my bankroll. i'm not really interested in playing for a living and being rich doesn't really excite me all that much. i'm doing research for a year and next year working full time (60 hr week kinda deal) before going to school. professional poker nowhere in my plans but i hope to always keep it as a hobby, and i'm looking to focus on live, whether cash games or tournaments. there's less money due to time restrictions but for me it's infinitely more fun. right now i'm also working on becoming a more versatile player, studying other games besides nl holdem.

I started at $25nl on party, i almost busted a few times, but a few good books and some help from fellow wannabys i have won my way up to $2000nl online... not real sure where to go from here...