OH MY GOD. That "Internet Texas Holdem" book is so bad. Me and my brother still read it out loud and ROFL.

Another one who started playing before internet poker was really a viable option.

Coworker invited me to a home game tournament $30 buy in. It was at some house in one of the worst parts of Oakland, CA. About 50 people showed up. The place had actual poker tables (rented/run down) in every room in the house. There were probably more guns in the room than cards. I had never played before. Friend told me to play tight (which in my mind meant any pairs and hands that = 20 or 21) about 5 min before the tourney. I finished 2nd some how and was hooked. Thought I was the ****.


Found out that there were actual card rooms in California where poker was legal. (Lived in CA 10 years and had never even heard of this). Found a place called The Oaks which at the time had 1-2 limit live. It was played with .50 chips. Mostly populated with whichever homeless herion addicts happened to be sleeping outside the joint that night. Watched the game from the rail for about 45min and could not believe how fast the action seemed. Signed up on the board and bought in for $50 shaking like I was sitting $4000/$8000. First real poker hand I played was AQs flop AQ4. Drilled by 44. Lost a couple of buy ins in this game. I think the rake was something like 3 dollars per pot or something crazy like that.

I am an engineer so quickly figured out that the 3 dollar rake probably made the game unbeatable. Did some research online and found two plus two. Bought HPFAP and tried to apply it to no foldem after making the big move up from 1-2 to 2-4. Looked over at the 3-6 tables like they were full of professionals lol.

Won about $200 one night playing 2-4 and decided I would "take a shot" at 3-6 the next day. I had about 24hrs playing experience at this point. My first try at 3-6 I ended up playing a 52hour session where I ran my $100 buy in up to $2400 without ever leaving my seat. I ran like a god. Thought it was standard. obv

Have been trying to do it again ever since......

Have played online through the heyday on Party. Ended up becoming a semi regular in the 20-40 limit at Bay 101 for a stretch. Game used to play like online 2-4 limit.

Never really could see making a move to play full time. I make 120K+ in my real job without the swongs or the degens at the tables. Got burnt out playing while working full time. Every time one of the people at the table would say something that I had heard 10000 times before like "Dueces never looses" after someone was all in short stacked and won the pot or "Jack King Off lol" at 5 am on a Tuesday i would want to kill a baby.

Took a long break from playing. Came back to online poker recently to find the game a little different than it was say in 2004. Can't see going back to playing live because the game is just too damn slow and the swings can last forever.

Trying to learn how to 8+ table online now at the micros and build a roll. Never liked to stake myself with my real savings and jump right in to a higher limit. After all its easy to run $100 into $2400 in one session one table...........obv

FYP

wow...just read the whole thing.....

only thing i remember:
-clicked the mouse really softly with bluffs because i was afraid they could hear

[x] thought full tilt was rigged
[x] played any A, K, Q, suited or connected cards
[x] thought flush draws were godly
[x] played often with 100% of my br
[x] thought any two cards higher than 10 preflop was a monster
[x] folded a king high flush draw with 3 spades on board cuz the other guy obv had the ace high flush.

HAHAHHAHA now thats gotta be a winner.

played once a whole weekend online from friday to sunday while being stoned and having a maximum brm of 2BI. turned 1k into 20k in this weekend and was all happy and fuzzy about that I won 1k from mike matusow at the 25/50NL tables at FTP.

on sunday evening I lost 15k of this winnings in 2 hours, cashed the other 5k out and left some hundred bucks in my account. that was the day where i decided i'm gonna start poker for a living, quit my apprenticeship and never looked back....

first few months were rough hard as I knew all I got are these 5k to live, so I have to become good at this....

logically the most stupid thing I ever did, emotionally it felt ****ing great beeing able to pull this **** off....

I one tabled 5+1 sngs on Paradise Poker for months. I never bet unless I flopped top pair or better. If someone bet I would fold unless I had at least top pair strong kicker or a flush or OESD. I still won almost everyday because this was 2003 and people called preflop raises with any King and never folded bottom pair.

I also played .50/1 LHE online and 3/6 LHE live. I recall playing 3/6 live and folding a set of fives on an all spade flop after I raised and it came back to me capped like 5 ways. The board paired on the turn and I would have scooped a massive pot. I scolded myself silently for playing too goddamned good for my own good.

Played those 1500 man freerolls on FTP. Worked out that rego for them started 1 hr before so I would sit in the lobby of the tourney waiting for rego to begin cause they filled up so quick.

Sometimes I would miss out on a spot, so I would sit there waiting for the Register Now button to appear when someone unregistered and then try to get that spot.

If I remember correctly the best chance of getting one of those spots was to have your mouse where the button would appear, press it as soon as you saw it, then press space bar and enter.

Cashed a few times in these but proceeded to lose the ~$2 in about 10minutes

Deposited $50 on Full Tilt.

Sat at a 10NL table.

Wrote down every single bet I put into the pot on a notebook. (Thought the sites would be cheating.)

Always had the cashier page up to see how much I was up or down.

Always played a hand if I felt lucky. If not, I would fold. Yes even A/Ks.

Those were the days.

Still stuck in burglars and "getting started"

Whehe, great thread...

Nothing crazy or stupid on my side actually Just deposited on 5 sites or so (for the bonusses, resulting in not having a real roll anywhere) which wasn't too handy. But mainly the fact that I had a major increase in heartbeat when I was all-in on a 2NL table still amazes me... and the rush when winning such a hand.

haha i always think this...

Deposited $50 on FTP 2 times over the summer 2 years ago and lost both times within 2-3 days. I had no concept of bankroll management and sadly didn't take any advantage of the 100% deposit bonus.

[x] first started out in home games playing $20 sit n gos with co-workers
[x] started playing at full contact poker and Ultimate Bet
[x] ran $500 on FCP up to $14,000 in 72 hours at 5-10 NL
[x] lost $8000 in 20mins playing Phil Lakk Heads-Up 10-20 NL
[x] threw up after losing $8000 to Phil Lakk in 20 minutes
[x] threw up more after I realized I donked off more than 4 months of working at a real job for $10.00 an hour.

TL/DR

- Learned 5-card draw and played with best friend at age 7 w/o chips. Would play for 2 hours+. Learned hand-rankings this way.

- Learned no-limit Texas Hold'em from a friend at age 13. Would play in the garage with his plastic chips for 2 hours, each of us having like 1500 BB and finally agreeing to just 'deal the cards and see who wins'. Never heard of limit until I played play-money online at age 16 (consider this a brag).

- Played play-money on holdempoker.com and ran 1k up to 32k. Got bored with play money and went all-in every hand until I busted. Dreamed of topping the playmoney leaderboards.

- Started playing in a weekly game with people from church: $5 buy-in tourney. Won $100 bucks in two weeks, thought I was the ****.

- Weekly tournament buy-in drops to $2, prompts everyone to re-buy 5+ times in a night. I continue winning just about every other week, take great pride in beating everyone and winning money for coffee throughout the week.

- Begin watching poker on tv. Grow especially fond of WPT.

- One night while watching WPT there is a player who I swear can READ OTHER PEOPLES SOULS. He ALWAYS makes the right play, always folds when he is beat, and always shoves when he's ahead! I thought he looked kind of goofy because he was wearing a green baseball cap that had duct-tape over it. Vince and Mike kept saying things like 'I guess all the things he writes about in his seminal poker book really do work wonders at the tables'. I am immediately fixated to the TV, through commercials and everything, because I had no idea there were books on Poker.

The player was Dan Harrington, I bought Harrington on Hold'em that week. I consider this my first true break-through.

- Read HoH vol 1 twice, apply the strategy to my weekly game with friends, continue beating the game frequently. Get UBER pissed when I lose all-in preflop when I have hands like 55 and they call with J8o. Did not realize its a coinflip no matter what they call. Remember tilting for 30 minutes at the game and practically cussing out someone from church when he runner-runnered a straight AJ vs 77 AIPF.

- Learned from a friend that there were 'free-roll' tournaments on a pokersite he played at call pitbullpoker.com. The free-rolls were 25$ and went every hour, I cashed in one and started playing 50 cent SNG's. Site was small-time and most players were micro-players. Won a free-roll, ran money up to ~50, would bust and start over again. This cycle repeated twice.

- After placing first in a free-roll, I decided to move to cash games. By this time I had purchased HoH vol 2 & 3. I had 20$ and play 10NL, the smallest stakes on pitbullerpoker.com. I run this up to 45$ and told everyone 'omg cash games are so easy I am killing'. I get it all in A9 vs AK on a AA9 board and think 'wow these players are bad'. Hit quads for the first time in my life in a cash game and promptly tell all my friends at school that I am making good money in cash games and that I 'flopped quads and slowplayed a guy and got him to go all-in'.

Note:
I would 1 tabled 10NL for like 3 hours at a time.

- One day at borders I find a book on tells and get into a short-lived obsession on finding tells on the people I play with in my live game on sunday nights. Believe that the key to poker is 'reading people'. After two weeks decide the 'science of tells' is bull****.

- Heater ends, bust my roll and go into 2-day depression. Come to a self-realization that I might have just gotten lucky in the cash games. Decide if I am going to play cash games I need to buy Harrington on Cash Games, which I do.

- Deposit $50 onto pitbullpoker.com. Run it up to $100, believe I have finally found my edge, than go on major tilt after losing with AA and run $90 down to $12.50. Finally realize that I might be losing all the money because I am angry and am making bad decisions, so I take a break. This is all at 10NL.

- Come back the next day and decide I am going to play SUPERTIGHT like action dan and get back up to that $100 then cashout. Hit the nuts on a board that reads 7777K when I hold AT. I go all-in on the river, shoving my last 10$ into a 50 cent pot, and get insta-called by someone holding 99. I double my roll to $20. I proceed to run my roll back up to $100 while reading Harrington on cash, but don't cash out.

- Grind my roll at 10NL up to $200. Go on tilt when I get AA twice in a row and get all-in on the flop against a calling station who has never folded a hand preflop. First AA hand I lose to QT that flopped 2pair. Second AA hand I lose to 72o that flopped trips on a 822 board. This started at 11:00 pm. I play until 3:30am and drop 5 buy-ins. I believe I am the unluckiest player in the world and go to cashout my winnings from pitbullpoker.com because I am sick of 'how rigged their site is'. I go to cash out thinking they will just credit my visa and discover you can't cash out onto a credit card. I get major-pissed and contact their 24/7 live support. The support guy can barely type english, but I finally figure out that they can mail me a check. I cash out $153

- Lurk 2+2 and deposit on to stars and start grinding 10NL.

I guess this sort of turned into my poker history and is way tl;dr.

Folded 9,2 off UTG hit a 2 on the flop and thought oh damn why did i fold

In fact i still do that

Tilted at least 2-3 years off my life if not more.

****ing game is stressful

first pot in Holdem way back when;
was super nervous with flopped set(the pot was over 100 dollars YOOOOO)

[x] lol was prob up against ace high = good old days.

Decided to play a "Tight Aggressive" game as I'd read in an article, played sngs on a 5 buyin roll (Makes me laugh now as Im a mega br nit) Basically I opened A2+ and any broadway, didnt used to raise pairs because I learned that a pair vs overs was a flip so I just open jammed any pair from any position with any size stack cuz I figured Id either ship the blinds or we'd flip for it so it had to be profitable.

Chalked every pair< higher pair to bad luck.

bustoed. Got a free roll of $30 and learned how to play since then!

Oh here's another. After a few thousand hands i would delete my database because I was losing and "start over" seriously each time. It only took me about 10 databases before I realized I don't get a prize for having a winning database

Started out on party poker i remember this day so well, we was playing Vietcong back in the gaming days ahh this was like 3 years ago.. All on teamspeak and they are like we are playing party poker and im like wtf is that? Went and had alook instantly hooked.

Deposited like 20 times just going broke each time.. Standard?

Ran my PKR account from $1.67 to 3k in a 48 hour period no breaks no nothing just play play play. Went busto by sunday morning. $0

Came 89th in the 750K FTP Tourney won like $900 went straight to heads up won 2K next hand i get AA flop comes 3 A 6 i check he bets i re raise he calls i push the turn all in he snap calls shows straight im drawing to a few outs if board pairs, i sat and staired at the computer after a punched my 22in Viewsonic screen and smashed it.

Today. Still grinding but taking a break while i read all these poker books and read 2plus2.

I Have really bad Bankroll skills its a simple as that, if i can overcome this i think i can become a winning player.

omg i used to play those freerolls too, LOL

My grandmother played a $5 5 Card Draw freezeout with me when I was 7, to teach me that gambling is bad. $5 was my networth at the time. She beat me, and told me I could have the money back if I promised to never gamble again. I refused instantly. I spent the next week playing the game by myself, and challenged grandmom to play again the next time I saw her. Unfortunately, I had blown my life's savings in our last match. So I put up never gambling again, vs. $5. I took her for $20 before she quit and told me that I wouldn't always be so lucky. I've been in the black ever since.

...but only because I ran good when I first started playing seriously, and I thought good BRM was having enough money to rebuy twice in case of bad beats. I deposited $150 on Party, lost $147 of it playing 50NL, and took the rest to a $2, 2,000 man NLHE tournament, and decided poker was easy when I finished in 6th place for $250 or thereabouts. Lost it all playing 100NL the next day.

Deposited $200 on UB intending to play Limit Hold Em, deciding I didn't like the sick variance of NL, where it was possible to lose 3 buy ins in a row! Fortunately I only had to lose 1 buy-in at 2-4 LHE to realize that I sucked at it, and won that money back playing .25-.50 Triple Draw (totally not making the connection that the reason I felt more comfortable was because I had enough money for double the buy-ins I usually had). Eventually got tired of limit, and made $3,000 playing 200 and 400NL, withdrawing about half of it before going busto taking a shot at 600NL.

I played a ton of freerolls, and never cashed, then one day I was seated at a table with 8 people sitting out. Cashed. Oh and one of my mates cashed in the first FR he went in...