Thank you!!!

[Guido]

About 3.5 years ago, a friend of mine, Peter (not Peter_rus [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]), told me about Hold'em. I knew about draw poker but not hold'em. This may sound strange, but I'm from the Netherlands and they didn't play that much poker here. It's getting better now fortunately.

Peter started playing hold'em a few months earlier and he had lost a lot of money ($300 or $400 was a lot of money for us at that time). When he had won almost all of it back, he told me about hold'em. I didn't want to experience the same, so we started playing at the same table with playmoney. He told me what I should do in certain situations and why. We only did this occasionally, about once a week or so. I also played some tourneys with playmoney and did quite well. I knew this didn't mean a lot.

After about nine months I stopped playing for about half a year (no time because of school). After that, we started playing again and I watched him play at 1/2 and 2/4 at Truepoker. I also borrowed Hold'm Poker by David Sklansky from him and read about half of it. About three months later, I thought I was ready to play with real money. At Truepoker, the lowest limits were 1/2. In the first three months I lost about $250. Peter advised me to go to Pokerstars so I could play at lower limits and learn it from there.

At Pokerstars I deposited $50 and I started at 0.05/0.10. I went really easy to $100 so I moved up to 0.10/0.25. I went to $200 in no time and moved up again. At 0.25/0.50 it was a little harder to double up again. When I had $400 I started playing at 0.5/1 and sometimes 1/2. I had $600 really fast but even faster I was down to $300. I didn't understand why because I didn't play any different then before?!? Now I know that that was because:

1) The players were a little better
2) I was too loose for the skill I had
3) I knew nothing about swings

Peter told me that I shouldn't just play poker for a few hours a day, but that I had to do more about improving my game and learn more from my mistakes. So I bought Hold'm Poker for myself and read the hole book (he got the other one back [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]). I started posting hands at 2+2 and read a lot of posts and articles. This started about 20 months ago, just after I finished university. I remember making posts like: Should I 3-bet with AKs at the button? Not long after that I went to Party, it was heaven for a medium poker player like me. Free money everywhere! I have learned so much since then, I went from 2/4 to 5/10 in a few months. Then Nate gave me the advise to start playing shorthanded so I could improve my blind defense, learn how to steal and play even more aggressive. Best advise I could have got at that time, so thank you Nate! I played shorthanded for about 8 or 9 months and for the past few months I've only played 15/30 full.

Since in finished my study I was also looking for a job. Because I didn't knew exactly what I wanted and because there weren't a lot of jobs, I played a lot. Most available jobs were at a much lower level and very boring. I played a lot, I won a lot and the freedom felt great (now it's pocket change, Strange how things can change...). Sometimes I tried really hard to find a job for a few week but because I couldn't find any interesting onces, I just kept playing.

My girlfriend doesn't like that I play poker and she would really like to see me have a regular/normal job. Well today came that day, I finally got a good job in a very nice informal organisation with lots of young people.

Because of that, I won't be able to play as much as I used to and probably don't even want to after working all day. I won't be able to participate as much on these boards either but I will try to keep reading, learning and help others when I can.

Because of this I would like to thank you all! Ed Miller for his marvelous book. Of course David Sklansky and Mason Mallmuth for there excellent books (I've almost got them all now). Dynasty and Clarkmeister for there great replies, especially when I started. I would also like to thank GoT, Nate Tha' Great, Peter, Peter_rus, Nikla, Schneids, Stripsqueez, Joe Tall, Trix, Saborion, Naphand, TazQ, Joker122 and many others for helping me becoming a better player.

Many thanks to all you guys.

Good luck at the tables and in life.

Guido