YOUR poker Story (So far)

[steaknshake925]

summer 2004: watched WSOP on tv and dropped two $50 deposits on party

august--december 2004: play microlimits at Pacific and Prima

Jan 2005--May 2005: put in $700 and whored every site possible, starting at $25nl and ending at $400nl, always 4-tabling. padded BR considerably thru casino whoring.

May 2005--now: decided to learn limit, started at 5/10 6max and now comfortably playing 10/20 6max on party with rakeback, and also play NL on Prima occasionally.

goal: to make as much money as possible

[pmdvert18]

I started playing on Party Poker in July '04 and lost my first $300 playing mostly 25NL and some limit. I gain some needed experience and eventually went on a winning streak since. My first cashout was in september and since then I done very well. I mainly play 2/4 & 3/6 on party and gamesgrid.com. My big scores were from large tourney's. In a three week stretch in January I took 2nd in a 780 person 20+2 on party for $2,091, 1st & 2nd in 20+2's on Pacific totally $2,400 those two tourneys. I have since been playing alot of limit.

My new experiment is on party where i recently deposited $500 and will play .50/1 till I earn 500 big bets at each level...moving up accordingly. That has gone well so far but I am still in the early stages.

Also, I play 1/2 and 2/4 dealers chioce on GAMESGRID.COM, which is a great site. The offer 1000% bonus and they pay you per hour to play. That site is the real deal so join up and use my SN as a referral to enter the VFP program.

[macdaddy991]

Found poker in college 03, played home games every sat for the fall semester. thought I was good. Went to a casino and played 2/4 and got owned. I decided that if I was going to play well, i should read about poker. I went out and bought (no joke) books by Ken Warren, and Phil Hellmuth. Game went downhill fast. Fortuneately, I found 2+2 and in october of 04 deposited 50 into party. Started palying 5$ sngs. Pleyed a few more times at a casino, and decided to learn limit. Hit huge roller coaster where I was up to 500$ then back down to 37$ (ya I sucked) Finally decided to play 20K hands at .50/1 before moving up. Have about a 1K roll now and move up to 1/2. After about 2000 hands, I see several leaks in my game. Drop back to .50/1 to plug them. That is where I am at now. Want to move back to 1/2 but am going to stick to .50/1 fow a while to improve.

[THATWACOKID]

I played poker for my first time over christmas break my senior year in high school (03-04). It was just a game with some friends for fun. I was instantly hooked. We would play 10$ tournaments with about 10-20 people once a week. This wasn't enough poker for me so I decided to put 50 dollars into party poker. I'd never read a book or anything else on poker. I got it up to 100 and quickly lost the rest in the next couple of days. I waited about a month to deposit my next 80 bucks. This time it went a little better. I got it up to 275 but then lost the rest in about 2 weeks playing SNGs. I really had no clue as to what I was doing, but I thought the game was awesome. At the beginning of my senior summer I put in another 50 bucks. I then proceded to get up to 250 playing SNGs and lose the rest. Deposited another hundred and got it all the way up to 922. Lost the rest of that in about 3 weeks. I finally decided to learn how to play and bought a few books by John Vorhaus. They weren't the types of books I needed to be reading, but I learned a little bit. I went off to college and made a few deposits into Paradise and won a couple hundred bucks then took that out and put 100 into party. I lost that playing 5$ SNGs. Then I read HPFAP and a couple other 2+2 books. This turned me into a decent TAG player. I had 100 more I was willing to put into my little poker dream for a long time. I got that hundred up to about 700 playin the same ole SNGs and took out about 200 bucks to play some live at a local underground club. I did okay at this place, but I knew I was a better online player. I withdrew another 500 from my 1700 roll online and played a good mix of live and online. This was all in about 2 months. In the next month online I played mostly 30$ and 50$ SNGs and pretty much broke even. I played in small buyin MTTs and was close to some huge wins a couple times. The third day home over Christmas break I came in 9th in a 20$ buyin MTT with about 900 people in it and you all know how much it sucks to finish around there in a MTT. I was pissed but hooked to MTTs. The next day I got TPFAP and played in 30$ MTT. There were 690 players and I won!! It was an incredible feeling. Over the rest of my break I playd 10/20 limit and the big MTTs. I was out of the money in all except my last one. It was a Super Thursday on party and I came in 10th. From there I played a lot of 1/2 and 2/5 live p.l. I did okay but I still couldn't adjust to the extremely weak play. Online I played in a bunch of MTTs as well as SNGs for the next two months. During those two months I started reading the 2+2 forums daily. Around March I began playing n.l. cash. I did really well right off the bat. I 4-tabled 100n.l. on party about 24 hours a week for about 6 weeks and won quite a bit. Around April I started playing 1/2 n.l. on party where I won close to 3k in a month or so. May 3rd was my first day of summer. I started off with about 3 days of 1/2 where I ran really well so I decided to move up once again. I've won around 13k playing 2/4 n.l. and MTTs on party in the past three weeks. This site has been a HUGE help to my poker game. Sorry this was so long an unorganized, but I wrote it as I was playing in a low buyin MTT.

[billyjex]

first got online last august. sucked at poker. weak tight little bitch.

lost a few hundred, won a $20 tourney on poker room in november, played 2/4 underrolled but ran well, after 40k hands there played 3/6, played 18k hands there and did good and i made a bunch of final tables this year including a 9k score in a party special, and now play 5/10 6-max.

last year i made $7 an hour as a sales clerk. now i make over 50 an hour in my computer chair. it's awesome.

[SmileyEH]

If you put paragraphs in people would read your post.

-SmileyEH

[helpmeout]

Saw some WPT on late night tv, thought i could do that.

Aug 04 played 5c/10c on pacific, played some on stars as well.

Oct 04 went to PP played 50c/$1

Forgot the rest

Now i mainly play 15/30 with some 20/40 and 30/60 depending on the games

[gomberg]

Well, I first found paradise poker in 2000 when I was starting out in grad school at U of I. I lost $400 right away playing in some really tough 3-6 limit games. Then I played Planet poker and won some back. Then I read HPFAP, and lost more at paradise. Luckily, I won one of those 1,000,000th hand promotions (can you imagine a site w/ only a million hands nowadays?). And I was back to even [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

After TONS of reading, studying, practicing, etc., I was making $10 / hour / table at paradise 3/6 and making some decent money at the planet 5/10. I would always take shots at higher games though so unless I cashed out, I would eventually go bust on a site. These games were way tougher than the 15-30 games of today IMO.

In my 2nd year of grad school, I started playing pokerstars and winning some 60-100 people tourneies for $10-$30 entry fees. I also started playing PLO and $25 NL Holdem. I liked these games much more than the limit games I had learned to beat, so moved to mainly NL.

I started working in 2002 and kept playing low-limit and up to $100 NL and PLO and MTTs mixed w/ some sit'n'goes. I'd do ok but never kept a bankroll of over 1k.

In december 03, I came in 18th place in pokerstars freeroll and made $600. Then in Jan. 04, won a 305 person $50 MTT on stars for about $2650. Then I got into 1/2 NL. I moved up stakes very quickly w/ a bankroll. I took shots at 5/10 w/ varied success and finally moved up there for real in January 05 on Full tilt, stars, and party.

In 04, I probably made about 26k playing a little over 10 hours / week on average. This year, I've been making 5k / month on average while only playing about 5 hours / week lately because of work / girfriend back from the peace corps / moving in with me, playing hockey, going out, etc. I tried moving up to 10-20 this week but lost 2 buy-ins and played badly, so I'm going to move back down to 5/10 and gain some confidence - then take another shot in a month or so as long as I win in 5/10.

Throughout my NL "career", I've made 10PT BB / 100 at all levels while playing on average 1.5 tables at a time (except 10-20 obviously). My biggest downswings have been in the 6 buy-in range and happen about once every 5 months or so. I would play more MTTs but don't have the time. I also suck live and am a lifetime loser at the live game (although a very small sample size and playing drunk in vegas don't help).

I've thought about going "pro" but it would pose problems with my GF and I like my job which pays well (software engineer for a proprietary trading firm) and has good benefits (and can be interesting at times). Playing poker on the side has the added benefit that I can just not touch my bankroll and let it grow w/out spending any of it.

I've also taught classes in chi-town a couple times. It's been fun and has helped out my game as well. Posting here has been +EV for sure... probably would have taken me longer to get to 5-10 w/out it.

can't think about anything else to say...

[ThaHero]

My twin brother got into poker before I did. He used to watch the WSOP religiously. Eventually I decided to check ait out, as I was always up for some gambling, though I never played cards except a little bit in high school.

Can't really remember the date I started, but about 6 months ago I suppose I bought SSH and started reading, playing the play money tables for a while. One day my mom(who plays a lot of slots) was going to Casino Morongo out here in California. We tag along and I play a bit of 2/4 in their poker room. Bought in for about $50, first hand got pocket aces and dragged a $30 pot with a set. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] I was hooked! About 5 hours later I had busted out. Reviewed SSH in the casino at the bar while my mother and brother were still playing slots.

Deposited $50 into Party Poker around Feb of this year. Built it up to close to $100 before losing it all that same night. I was now pissed and determined to win, so I read SSH some more and came to this website for help.

Feb. I lose my job. Which meant- plenty of free time! I live with my mom so expenses are very low. This gives me plenty of time for whatever I wanted, and poker has filled that area considerably.

I started at .02/.04 and worked my way up to .05/.1 on Pokerstars. got bored, threw in some of my own money and now I'm playing .25/.50 on Stars. Won about $100 in a week, was planning on moving up to .5/1 but hit a wall. Going through a -200bb downswing. Actually I'm not sure if you can get a downswing this low, if you can please correct me. More than likely I just suck.

Hopefully the downswing is over. It's been about 6k hands or so. I'm just grinding away. Goals? To hopefully become a "pro" like some of you to an extent. I have a lot of business ideas and talented individuals around me that I want to invest money into. Maybe one day poker can be a springboard to larger things for me.

[slimbob]

I give a deep insight in my poker story with my thread "poker below the southern cross" at the Small Stakes No-Limit forum.

Regards
slimbob