What did it take?

How much did you lose before you started becoming a winning player? How long did you play before you saw positive results?

[Borno]

if you asking this question because you want to know when you'll start to win this is the wrong way of going about it.

In my personal experience I was an unthinking playing for 6 years. Then I became serious about poker (but was still an unthinkjing player) I lost several thousand dollars. Then I got a thinking... I joined 2+2 and read some books. I read. I posted. I got responses. I'm a win win winnna now.

Poker is a journey. Start by learning the fundamentals (my suggestion is to read SSHE and start playing limit 1st)

Start with LIMIT... So many skills I acquired came from busting my ass playing 2-4$ limit. When I was comfortably beating the 9-18$ game for a rack a week ($300)... i read some books and moved over to no -limit.

The key is to play your best game whether you are play micro-limits .05$-.10$ limit, or a $5,000 no limit game. If you read Scott Fischman or Daniel Negraneu's blog... they always talk about how they still play $50 sit-and-go's and $100 tournaments just for the practice and experience.

If proven poker pros/millionaires can play $50 tournaments... i have not problems putting my best efforts forward in free-roll points tournament or $1-2 limit poker.

[soko]

I started about a year ago, put 50 in to pokerroom playing 0.25/0.50 blinds limit and $25 NL, went up to $200 then lost it all

put 50 in pacific poker playing 0.25/0.50 blinds limit, went up to 150 then lost it all

Decided to get serious about the game, went to barnes and noble and picked up SSHE, had no idea about 2+2 at the time, it just seemed like a good book.

Read about halfway through the book then decided to try agian

put $200 in party poker with $100 deposit bonus playing 0.25/0.50 blinds limit and $25 NL, probally lost half of it then ups and downs and ups and downs but never busted out and have been a profitable player since, but still a long way to go.

took about 3-4 months before I saw any real improvement in my game, at this time I had no job and was playing 10-12 hours a day every day.

[ianlippert]

Why lose anything? Play .01/.02 until you can beat it, then move up.

I played dealer's choice with my friends for about 2 years before I moved away to university. The only game I could get into here was an exclusively holdem game (2002), which was very unfamiliar to me. I hadn't watched Rounders, and I knew only a little bit about how the game played out. It was a $5 buy-in NL game with $0.25 antes. After 2 months of up-and-down swings, I watched Rounders, got convinced that there was strategy involved, and started looking at holdem strategy websites on the internet.

After reading a whole bunch of basic strategy, I bought Super/System and read through that. I didn't really understand it. The next scheduled game we played was twice the number of players as normal (normal = 5 players). I decided to "borrow" $15 from my dad and see what I could do in this game. I ran well in that session and netted over $100. I quietly put that $15 back in my dad's wallet and looked at what was now my poker bankroll. I continued playing in these $0.25 ante games until they migrated to a blind structure and became $20 NL. At the same time, I opened an account on Royal Vegas Poker and got my free $10. I played the $0.25-$0.50 NL games way underrolled, but ran well and had about $200, which I then dumped most of to a friend and added it to my live game BR. After continuing to work what was left up to $200 again, I started my Neteller account and cashed a lot of it, leaving myself underrolled again, but playing $0.10-$0.20 fixed limit games and $5 SNGs. My total BR was about $500 when I played my first B&M game shortly after my 19th bday and lost $200 at $2-$5 fixed (!).

I ran well playing $5-$10 fixed limit and many $0.25-$0.50 NL games, and in a couple sessions and built myself up to over $1000. I must have been running extremely well, as I surely had very little idea of what I was doing. I read HFAP without understanding much it, along with Helmuth's very beginner book. I'd been sitting on most of this money, sticking to recreational NL and low-limit games online, with the specific intention of never going bust. After doing this for approximately 16 months, I read Inside the Poker Mind, Middle Limit Holdem, and Poker Essays. These were all great theory book and I tried to implement everything I learned, very cautiously. Only now am I beginning to feel more comfortable with my decisions in live low-limit games. I just started reading SSHE, and started on this forum about 3 months ago.

My main fascination with poker was partly the psychology, but it was mostly the theory behind it being a beatable game. I've always been very risk-averse and have never been very open to gambling. I've played about 2 hours total of table games in my life and even that was only to experience all of my Vegas vacation. Most of the time I've dedicated to poker was tied up with reading articles on the internet and not with playing actual games. I wanted to prove to myself that poker was a beatable game before actually trying to beat it. Most of what I read had less to do with actual strategy than it did with the mindset behind playing a winning game.

Every time I give advice to a new or budding player, I try my hardest to assess her reasons for playing and her ability to control her emotions, as this is exactly where I started out when playing poker. I'm sure my logic and math skills have helped me immensely along the road of development (it is much easier to become emotionally detached when using logic to assess a situation).

So, to answer your questions:

I lost nothing before I started becoming a winning player. Actually, I have no proof that I am indeed a winning player over the long run. Yes, I am "up" since I started my BR and have only played seriously since then, but I am almost certain that I got lucky in my early stages of playing (or maybe the games in which I played were actually so loose and terrible that my weak-tight style was actually quite profitable).

I played for about 20 minutes before seeing positive results. Once again, I probably ran luckier than most. However, I am continually trying to gain a deeper understanding of the game, as I know that you can only win over the long run by making correct decisions. The results take care of themselves, and I truly believe this.

I am not a gambler by nature, but poker is indeed a gambling game. I was never a gambler before I discovered that some games are actually +EV (provided you play such games correctly). The more I play, the less risk-averse I am becoming (of course, a growing BR has helped with this as well).

I don't play professionally, and I don't think I could. But nevertheless, I'm still obsessed with making the correct decisions all the time.

[UATrewqaz]

I played 3 months as a slow, but steady loser (I was tigher than most newbies but still too lose but very passive and made expensive mistakes like cold calling alot).

I got a few excellent books and began reading/posting here and began solidly beating the lower limits (.5/1 and 1/2 PP) for 3-4 BB / 100 and have been winning since (there are downswings but you always come back, I had a 120 BB downswing at one point but that's not uncommon).

Small stakes hold'em by Miller is an absolute must.

As a matter of fact a just ordered another copy on Amazon for yet another friend who wants to get started in Poker... I've probably bought eight copies of this book as gifts.

I wish this book was around and/or I knew about it back in 1997.

[Lash]

I've been playing for 10 years. Was a loser, but not a big one for the first 8-9 years. The reason I wasn't a big loser or winner is because I gave the game a lot of thought, but failed to hold myself accountable for deficiencies in certain areas of the game... and life for that matter.

I had read a lot of books, and spent many hours around the game as a player and / or casino employee. The problem was that I never was willing to let go of many bad egotistical habits… or at least control them. I was always wanting to show others how much better I was than them. So in turn I stubbornly refused to learn.

[pineapple888]

Started on-line for play money. Learned all the theory. Practiced until I learned the game.

Moved to the real money tables.

Lost my first all-in for $25. It was like a stake through my heart. Got back in there after a few minutes of panic.

I've been in positive territory ever since then.