Starting Poker at Different Stages of Life

[pokerjoker]

my dad started playing and said i should give it a try 6 months ago..we both like to play games and used to play a lot of large Magic the Gathering tournies together...since then Im up $7000. Read a few books and once you realize how dumb a lot of the low limit players are you will be up to 3/6 in no time.

[TaoTe]

I'm right in the bag with the university crowd. I started less than a year ago when a friend put me on to pokerstars. I played play money for months and eventually started playing for cold, slimy cash eventually. I play break even poker mostly with some large tourney payouts putting me in the red. I liked what you said about you don't care if it takes ten years to move up in limits. I don't think that way but maybe I should. I'm always eager to try the higher limits.

[UseThePeenEnd]

I killed the informal games in college but did not play again for over 20 years.

a year or so ago, at age 46, I watched TV, read a book, bought in $100 and ran up to $250 immediately playing .5/1 and decided I should turn pro...

Of course I then went broke. Read everything I could find, played play money, played the Turbo software, and bought in again. I then fluctuated for awhile, but began to win modestly but steadily.

I bought Poker Tracker and a poker library from my winnings and used player view (it was free then, and still is for use on a single table). I played 1/2 very briefly while watching a lot of 2/4 (loading observed hands in Poker Tracker) and reading this forum. I then moved into 2/4, then started multi-tabling.

Ive been very cautions with my bankroll. I presently have $4200 after paying for software and books from my bankroll and playing a few hours a week, and am still only cautiously moving out into 3/6. This is probably more careful than you should be, but I, like yourself, intended to never have to put any more money into the game after that second buy-in.

What helped me most:
Poker Tracker is an absolute must.
TABLE SELECTION AND RELATIVE POSITION ARE PROBABLY AS IMPORTANT AS YOUR ABILITY.
Player View is extremely useful once you start multi-tabling.

Reading: Small Stakes Holdem, Holdem For Advanced Players, Theory of Poker (all by Sklansky with collaborators).
All excellent.
Lee Jones and Lou Krieger: their books have some useful material, but they basically reinforced my early (and recurring) weak-tight tendencies.
Phil Hellmuth: awful trash. 300+ pages of "aint I great?"
Ken Warren: utterly useless, other than a nice section of odds and probability in "Ken Warren Teaches Texas Holdem".

The new book by King Yao is also superb.
I have never read super System, so cant comment.

Learn something besides holdem. I am horrible at stud, so I tried Omaha high-low and there are more crossover insights than you might think, and it is a great change of pace.

[pokerjoker]

ya..ken warrens book is a piece of [censored]. There are a considerable ammount of probability errors too. I dont know how that one got published.

Anything by slansky/malmuth will do the trick.

[CaptSensible]

First off, Interesting topic!

I'm 40, single.

I started poker a year ago. I knew very little if anything about the game. I didn't know about the concept of bankroll. Load up 50, lose 50, load up 50, lose 50.

I was spending money I shouldnt have been spending. I'm figuring I lost A LOT that first 6 months. I stopped playing for awhile. I read books. Found these forums and switched from limit games to SNGs. I put in 500 bucks in my bankroll. moved down to the party 11s. I've been doing moderately well ever since. I've cashed out about 300 bucks for personal reasons. My game is getting better and I'm making small cash. If I can get my bankroll up to 30 buy ins for the 20's I'll move up [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[FredJones888]

Don't make the mistake that I made. I started out at micro limit holdem and moved up very rapidly. One day I found myself looking at a $500 loss in 2 hours playing no limit. That was truly horrifying to me and I started to think I was a compulsive gambler even though I never gambled before I started playing poker and I am in my 30's. I quit gambling completely, told my friends about what happened, and we all decided that I just got in over my head and there is a chance that I was a victim of collusion. After a 3 month break I started playing again at low limits B&M and won steadily for 3 months. Then I took some of that money and started playing low limits at a different online site that I think has a lot of security features to keep the amount of cheating low.

I have 3 warnings:

1. Track your performance even if its a piddling amount of money.
2. stay at low limits well beyond the time that you think you are ready to move up.
3. be very conscious of table selection. Even at low limits it is possible to run into very good players and/or collusion.

[RydenStoompala]

Started the game at 15.

Learned the game at 16.

I was always astounded at how crappy people played when I was in college and at home games. Truth is, I was not that good either. I got good later, along with the rest f the universe.

I prefer B+M to online, but play quite a bit online, NL only and seldom in tournaments.

After three decades, when has it been most enjoyable? Definitely now. I have the money to play at the limits where the skill level is very good, so it's a rush. And...if I get crushed in a session, it's meaningless. When was I best at the game? Definitely now. Experience really does count even if you do have a Stu Unger IQ at age 18. The younger guys are definitely better in the longer sessions. Stay in shape if you are going to park your butt in a B+M game for any length of time.

Now that I've seen what Doyle can do, I'm looking forward to retirement.

[4thstreetpete]

Hi Hank. Interesting post, I had a good time reading the various responses.

I'm 30 now and single. When i was 18 I worked at charity casinos here in Toronto. It was such a great time. Met a ton of great people and generally had a lot of fun working there. We would also get a bunch of our coworkers after work and play home games. Unlike the home games today, everyone we played with were either dealers or regular players from the casino so everyone was pretty experienced.
I also met some "pros" at the time who confessed to me that this was what they did for a living, playing poker. At that time all I could think about was what a pathetic existence. It's funny how things have changed for me now.

I've always been pretty good at gambling and at that time I've already understood the concept of money management by figuring out myself. I was good at math and always like strategy games.

At about 19 or so I use to hit the underground clubs quite a bit and was starting to get quite a reputation for myself, I was constantly winning. I spent a lot of my time there. Of course, my grades started to suffer. I remembered being in class at university and I just couldn't concentrate because all I could think about was poker. I started missing a lot of classes because I was always at the clubs.

All my life I was an honour roll student and now for the first time I'm failing a lot of my classes. I hated where my life was heading because I felt like I was addicted to poker. I was making quite a bit of money at the time though but all this didn't seem to matter.

It was soon after that I met the love of my life. There was something different about this girl than the other girls I've dated in the past. I was really in love for the first time and finally knew what being "in love" really meant. I gave up on poker and spent every waking hour with her. This really was the best time of my life as it gave me a new focus.

Flash forward a few years and I've jumped back into poker, only this time it's online. I'm quite dissallusioned with my job and I hate the "real world". I'm also quite lazy, I've never found much passion in anything except for poker to this day.

I have made up my mind and will definately walk away from my job within the next 2 years or sooner to go pro. I am currrently multitabling the 30/60. I'm playing a lot smaller stakes than my bankroll will allow but I'm very risk adversed.

I can't wait to start the next chapter in my life, because I do want to go pro and just start travelling and doing the things that I want to do. I see the next two years as really saving for the future.

[4_2_it]

[ QUOTE ]
Now that I've seen what Doyle can do, I'm looking forward to retirement.

[/ QUOTE ]

Me too, though I estimate you will have an 8-10 year head start on me [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]