How did you start playing online poker?

[tagtastic]

Just wondering how some of you got into online poker. Personally, I came at it from the "online game" end of it, not the "poker player" end of it. I knew how to play poker, but rarely did. I have been gaming online for many years however, and I've been extremely competitive in several games over the years (Quake, Counter-Strike, Warcraft, etc). I thrive on the competition and interaction with others.

I started taking on online poker as I would any other online game - learn the rules, learn the strategy and practice the hell out of it until I'm better than everyone else I'm playing with. It's working out quite well (been playing for a little over a year now and it's currently my sole source of income). I'm wondering how many others have come from this route, and how many have come from a poker player background.

-TAGtastic [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Rudbaeck]

A friend mentioned he made $3k/month on online poker to pay for his living costs while studying. Off course I got interested, so he lent me Lee Jones book. I started with a few free bucks on Royal Vegas and grinded away on their 0.10/0.20 tables and all the freerolls I could catch. The rest is history.

I've played games since I could walk, and with a background in math, comp sci and psychology I immediately felt that poker was a game for me. As I have a slight case of ADD I sometimes lose focus in long matches in more traditional strategy games such as chess or go. (Go is still the single most beautiful game ever devised. I love emergent qualities, and this game is all about that.) The constant input of poker, and the short time to make your decision fits me perfectly.

[MadMat]

A workmate of mine was playing microlimits, 5p/10p on a uk site on slow night and weekend shifts, I deposited £10 to join him (at the same table, didn't realise it was a bad idea at the time!)
Long story short, had no real idea what I was doing, but I ran my £20 (got a deposit bonus) up to over £200 in a rather nice run of good luck, which included placing highly by playing weak-tight in a couple of MTTs.

This is easy I thought, must be serious money to be made here, and started googling for more info, thats how I ended up here!

Mat

P.S. I've only ever played live poker once!

[bkholdem]

I heard some guy make reference to it (online poker) while playing at Foxwoods. I decided to check it out. Now I 4 table 5-7 days a week. I haven't been to foxwoods in about a year as it's almost 2 hrs away. that's 4 hours of play I miss compared to playing online.

[jrz1972]

I used to play duplicate bridge until I moved to South Dakota, which doesn't have the population density to support a competitive bridge infrastructure. I tried playing at a site called OKBridge for a few years, but it's just not the same as tournament bridge.

I've always been a card player, and I've always needed some kind of competitive outlet that gave me something to think and read about in my spare time. About a year ago, two things happened. One I finally got fed up with online bridge, and two I realized that I knew several people who were playing poker online and were not getting ripped off (I was once very leery about moving money around the internet). So I decided to give online poker a try.

I wasn't a total noob at this. I learned the mechanics of draw and stud poker from my grandparents when I was a little kid, and I played some non-serious poker with my friends in grad school. More importantly, I had read several poker books just for entertainment purposes over the years. Now, those poker books were just books I had randomly picked up at Barnes and Noble at various times, so they mostly weren't the kind of books you would recommend to others (Silberstang, Warren, Steiner). However, as luck would have it, I had once bought a copy of TOP as well, so I had some vague understanding of basic poker concepts and more importantly I knew about 2+2. When I decided to start playing, I looked up 2+2 on the web, found these forums, overnight-ordered WLLH from Amazon, and I was good to go. It also helped that SSH came out literally a couple of weeks after I started playing, so I basically was able to cut my poker teeth on that book. Lucky timing.

So I guess I came at this from the "card" side. I've never played multiplyaer Quake or Doom or anything else, and I don't own a PS or XBox.

[poker-penguin]

I think I started playing play money games at pokerroom.com, and have no idea why or how I got there. I think it was the freerolls that attracted me.

[A-Baum]

I watched Rounders in 1999 and got hooked to HE. Did some searches on the internet trying to learn the game, and found Paradise poker. Lost like $2500 in a couple weeks at $3/$6 and decided to buy some books and learn the game. I actually found this site in its infancy, before registration and posted and learned some here as well.

Came back to Paradise, lost another $1500 and quit playing for a couple years. Then I decided to really learn the game, start at limits that weren't above my bankroll like previously, and have since been a slight winning player.

[Womble]

I wasnt introduced to poker by anyone. I read on a message board about casinos and making money from their bonuses. I did that for about 6months boefore I found another forum dedicated to casino whoring.

There was a small subforum with poker so I started there and before you know it my free RV $10 was $100 and I was playing cryptos every month!

[Chadt74]

Someone put a gun to my head

[young nut]

pretty much same way, online gamer turned online poker player.