I just completed my first session of Live Poker about two hours ago. In fact, it was one of my first sessions of poker in any format. My poker experience is literally 12 hours or so logged on sealswithclubs playing .01/.02 chips to .10/.25 chips whenever I found a spare hour or two. I have never played a home game, casual or otherwise. I have never played on any other poker site. I have never even played with play money (unless you count bitcoins as play money). Two months ago I had no idea that a flush beat a straight or what the term "the nuts" meant. I stumbled across a post on another forum where someone claimed to make a secondary income from poker. The idea offended me. "What an idiot. Talking about gambling in a serious thread about retirement planning." With the original intention of arguing with said poster, I did some quick research via Google. I ended up purchasing Harrington on Cash Games Vol. 1 by the end of that weekend.

I'm 28 years old and reside in the United States. I'm a full time and part time physical therapist (working 60 hours a week at the moment attempting to pay off some debt). Poor spending habits in my late teens and early twenties coupled with the high cost of education in this country left me about $60k in debt by the time I graduated. I've been working for three years since graduating and make decent money. Only for the last year, however, have I decided to prioritize paying back my debt. Immediately after graduating I was still single, relatively young and had no interest in spending my money on anything other than alcohol, dinner for an assortment of young ladies and an expensive addiction to a certain uncontrolled substance. By the time I was able to see things a little more clearly (thanks to the help of my current girlfriend), I had added another $20k onto my debt. So here I am, stressed out because I'm working too many hours at a job, well two jobs, that I used to enjoy.

I will have a majority of my credit card debt paid off within the next two years, leaving me with only $30k in student loan debt at an easily manageable $400/month. The original plan was to keep my part time job until I had paid off my credit cards, thus eliminating a $900-$1100 monthly payment. At that point I could comfortably leave my part time job and return to working a normal work week. This plan got kind of screwed up, because along with my increased income came increased spending habits. Self control is not my strong suit. After working 60 hours/week through all of 2014, I've realized that there's no way that I could keep it up for an additional two years. I have started reeling in my spending habits a bit, freeing up some money in my budget and still living very comfortably. Unfortunately, I still require just a bit more income than my full time job provides to maintain the minimum lifestyle that I am willing to accept (first world problems). If I could at some point supplement my fulltime income reliably for several hundred dollars per month by playing a game that I enjoy, I would be ecstatic.



Goals For This Thread:

1. To give other brand new players an open and honest view into my personal learning curve with this game (and hopefully help them avoid some mistakes that I am bound to make). As well as to give more experienced players something to potentially laugh at (today I asked permission to leave the table because I had no idea if there was some sort of procedure, i.e. wait for the button to come around first.).

2. Keep myself on track. Hopefully this thread will keep me grounded and everyone will ridicule and shame me if I decide to take some stupid shot at 2/5 or 5/10 a month from now.

3. Have a way to track my progress and give myself something entertaining to read years from now, assuming I am still playing.

4. Get advice on hand histories, table etiquette, etc. that I would be embarrassed to start a brand new thread about.



Current Bankroll: N/A. At this time I have a pretty solid amount of flexible, additional income that I will start slowly adding to my bankroll. Reloading is not much of a problem at this time.


Current Goals:

[] Save up $6000 (20 full buy-ins) for my local 1/2 and 1/3 games (both games have a max buy-in of $300).

[] Get more comfortable at the tables. Following action, calculating the size of the pot, etc.

[] Finish reading and rereading Harrington on Cash Games Vol. 1 and 2.



No volume goal for this month, as I won't really be able to commit a lot of time until I save up a decent bankroll. Christmas will slow that process down as well.


A special thanks to poster gobbledygeek, as reading through his "A clueless noob reaches 1000 hours of live 1/3 NL" thread was really one of those "Eureka!" moments for me.

I'll post a summary of my first live session here shortly.

The thread title is the name of a song, but it accurately describes how overwhelmed I felt for my first 15 minutes at a live table. I may change it at some point because it really gives no insight as to what this thread is about.

Thanks for reading!

November 15, 2014 - Session 1

Getting to my seat and into the game was quite an issue. I looked around for poker tables for a solid 20 minutes, not realizing that the casino had a seperate poker room. I walked up to the desk to put my name on the list for a $1/$2 game, immediately and surprisingly I was given a table number. The room looked packed and there were quite a few players waiting around already, but I suppose they were waiting for games of higher stakes. I walk to the table and quickly realize that I don't have any chips, just a wad of cash. Unsure as to whether or not I am supposed to buy chips somewhere other than the table I kind of just stopped and looked around. I guess I looked dumbfounded enough for a waitress to come up to me and point me toward "the cage". I get $300 worth of chips. She asks how I want them and I really have no idea. I end up with a bunch of red $5 chips and some white $1 chips.

I finally get seated at my table with my stack of chips and look around at how everyone else has their chips stacked. Before I realized it I had a hand dealt to me. I'm still unsure how this works and I don't know if I accidentally snuck out of paying a big blind to get dealt in immediately. I guess I'll figure that part out next time. I end up folding every hand for the first couple orbits, just trying to figure out the flow of the game and how to realize when it was my turn to act. Interestingly, within those first few orbits I see two preflop all-ins, both players with AA lose. And an all-in on the flop with AA on a K high board that gets cracked by K trips on the river.

The first hand that I actually play I'm in the CO and call a raise from UTG to $10 with AJs. I don't really remember what actually happened in the hand, I think I missed the flop completely and folded to a pot-sized bet from UTG. At this point, after seeing me waiting for the dealer to indicate that it's my turn for an action and after fumbling around awkwardly with my chips, I think it became pretty apparent to everyone else at the table that I am a new player. A player to my right asks if I play here often. I say "first time actually." Then he asks where I normally play. And I honestly reply "first time in a casino at all really." UTG from this hand, an older guy who has been talking up how big his hands are every time he's involved in a pot, replies "yeah this is everyones first time" and rolls his eyes.


I realize that I need to figure out some kind of efficient way to remember hand histories to post here, so pardon how poorly detailed and broad the few hand histories in this post will be. Some of the exact pot sizes and positions are really just as close an estimation as I can figure, but it's nothing complicated and you will get the point this time.


Hand 1:

Dealt Jc7c in the CO and I limp behind several other limpers. Button limps as well. Flop ($12-ish) comes J86 rainbow. UTG raises to $10, I call, button calls rest fold. Turn ($32-ish) is a Q, still no flush draw. Checks around. Flop is a 7 and I've made two pair. UTG checks, I bet $30. Button folds and UTG calls. 2 pair holds up and UTG (same guy from earlier) looks a little disgruntled.

Hand 2:

Dealt Ah2h in the CO. Three limpers to me, I raise to $10. UTG calls (same guy as previous hands), rest fold. Flop ($19-ish) comes with three low unconnected hearts. So I flopped the straight up nuts here. UTG checks to me, I check behind. Turn ($19-ish) comes an A, he checks and I throw out a small $10 bet hoping to be re-raised if he has an A with a decent kicker. He c/r's to $30 and I happily call. River ($79-ish) comes something irrelevant and he immediately shoves all-in. His stack was somewhere near $180 at the start of the hand I believe. I show my hand and he gets pretty salty and just leaves the table.



Anyway, sorry for the poorly reconstructed hand histories. If someone has a method of quickly notating them during a live session please let me know.

I ended up playing for 2.5 hours and cashed out +$275.


Very happy with the results, even though I know I am just on the favorable side of variance here. I definitely wasn't playing my A game, as I was really spending a lot of time just trying to get used to the flow of the game. I'll also have to work on estimating pot size a bit better because right now I'm terrible. I didn't get into any large pots with less than two pair and was pleased with my ability to muck TPTK when it seemed appropriate.