How did you start playing online poker?

[langley11]

I started playing with friends at home and then one thing led to another. It just felt like a natural advance to start playing online poker.

[poker-penguin]

[ QUOTE ]
How did you start playing online poker

[/ QUOTE ]

Badly.

[NoChance]

In high school, me and my friends got together every week or so to play dealer's choice games. Most of them were of the 5-card draw varietly or 7-card stud variety with difference "wild Cards". Later, after college, I moved to Minnesota to take a job. I started going down to Canterbury to play 7-card stud. I could only afford the $2-4 game but even that was expensive since I really had no experience in playing tight or even correctly for that matter.

It didn't take me long to notice that the Hold Em jackpots were frequently near $50K while the Stud jackpits rarely went above 10K. So, I started playing Hold Em there. I had no idea what I was doing. I played any two cards that were the same suit, any pair, and any two cards that added up to 15 or more. (Yes I sucked BAD)

This was getting VERY expensive. Then one day I overheard one gentleman talking about playing online. I asked a few questions, did some invesitgating, and found out I could learn how to play properly at smaller limits (PokerStars) and it would not cost me as much.

That is how I became an online player.

[citizenkn]

Friend of mine invited me to a home tournament. I had no clue how to play (didn't even know hand rankings), so I found pokerroom.com and played some play money games to teach myself how the game worked. I still embarrassed myself at that first home tournament, but I was hooked.....

[grinin]

I was dabbling in sportsbetting and doing fairly well for a recreational bettor (It was paying for Christmas and a couple nice family vacations for a few years straight). Making $100 bets, you just can't make a lot of money sportsbetting and my roll prevented me from making $1000 bets. Also, the time required to research and stay ahead of the juice in sports betting is incredible. So when World Sports Exchange opened its poker room I tried it out, broke even, went to Party and lost my initial buy-in and went back to sportsbetting for about a year.

Again the time thing was just killing me and I was no longer enjoying it. It had become a number crunching exercise and I had lost the enjoyment of just watching the game/race/etc. I knew if I could beat sportsbetting I should be able to beat poker. My thoughts were that I would not have to spend all the research time after I had "learned the game". So I bought WLLH and HFAP and started at WSEX again. I soon went back to Party and I have even better vacations now.

[StacysMom]

I was an MTG'er. Pretty easy switch. And everyone was doin it!

[Tapin]

One of my best friends met his future (now-current) wife in Vegas while playing poker, a number of years ago. He didn't talk about poker much unless we pried, and of course once we found out how he met his belle we pried a lot.

He played on Paradise, so I downloaded the client and started playing their play money games.

One thing led to another.

[MrTrik]

It was a combination for me. I'd been playing online games for a few years and then ended up getting involved in a weekly home HE game. One of the guys mentioned PP and I was pretty burned out on other stuff I was playing online, so I downloaded, played play money for a while and then threw in some real bucks and I was off and running. I spent more money on books and more time reading on the net than playing at first. Eventually I got hooked on the game itself and rarely go back to EQ and Quake/Doom/CS type games.

[Kirg]

[ QUOTE ]
I was an MTG'er. Pretty easy switch. And everyone was doin it!

[/ QUOTE ]

[Schwartzy61]

Downloaded the software, installed it, and then signed up for an account...