whats your poker story?

jdsallstar

It may have been done on the forum before but whats your story? how did you get into poker? how did you learn the game?

i'm bored in work and want something interesting to read lol

jdsallstar

i might as well answer this myself.

Started playing NL hold em when i was 17 (now 29) but knew basic poker rules etc hand rankings etc and was brought up playing card games because my mum knew all the games and a deck of cards was never far away.

My brother started watching the poker on channel 5 and we started to get into it. He read a pile of books etc and he basically fed me everything i know during our weekly sunday game with a neighbour which went on for about 3 years. Played in a few charity events around northern ireland with some decent results and then started playing online at party p. Only played low stake 10 seater sng's and got my winnings up to about £800 before lifting it out. live poker events in NI are very thin on the ground due to the strict laws re poker over here.

Moved out of home had two kids and got married and didnt really play the game for about 3 years apart from the odd charity fundraiser/pub game. Got a email from my sky bet account re sky poker about a year ago and now I'm back playing every day.

devonfish5

used to play 3 card brag,(the in game then)years ago.
got a home poker game going 4 yrs ago with my brother and a few mates.
bought a poker table and chips etc after a few sessions...thought we were all real poker pro's.  lol
long story short...
the game lasted for a year,(ended due to a player changing his taxi shifts)...
i lost £600  lol
joined sky straight after that,still here today.

dev

jdsallstar

In Response to Re: whats your poker story?:

used to play 3 card brag,(the in game then)years ago. got a home poker game going 4 yrs ago with my brother and a few mates. bought a poker table and chips etc after a few sessions...thought we were all real poker pro's.  lol long story short... the game lasted for a year,(ended due to a player changing his taxi shifts)... i lost £600  lol joined sky straight after that,still here today. dev
Posted by devonfish5

our home game was a friendly one, more bragging rights. We each threw £20 then ran a league structure - 5 points for 1st 2 points for 2nd. 50 points won the league and took the all the money.

We started with a cheap set of cards on a fold out table by the end of the 3 years we were on a proper poker table, casino weighted chips and casino quality cards. The chips and table were prizes from the small events we played lol for our games we started with real good stacks and slow blinds so we got loads of play in them. Normally played for a good 2-3 hours and a good few beers to go with it - Good times!

Lambert180

I started playing when I was about 14 with 3-4 mates in my garage, we'd all just throw in like £1 and do basically a winner takes all SnG. The original reason we all started was because we all watched Late Night Poker on channel 4. Played them SnGs most days from like 6pm - 10pm.

When I was about 19 I moved out and didn't really see my mates from the street any more, eventually signed up for the big daddy of sites back then. Had no idea back then how little I really knew about the game. Being the life nit I am, I never deposited more than abuot $10 on there cos I played loads of freerolls and 10 cent tournies lol.

Took a break for quite a while then when I was about 21 I saw an advert for Sky, signed up to get the free £5 (life nit again) and 4-5 years later (I'm now 26) I'm still playing here and play 99% of my poker here.

EDIT: I still remember the whole Friday night line up from when I used to watch Late Night Poker, back in the day it was a great night on channel 4. All back to back it was like Friends, then Frasier, then Father Ted, then South Park (think it's awful now but liked it then) and I think Eurotrash (lol), then Late Night Poker. Not often these days I can sit down and watch 1 channel for 3-4 hours and get non stop quality (exclude Eurotrash from the quality bit lol)

benc

I took absolutely no interest in poker when i was younger, i used to flick past it on tv and wonder how on earth people could take so much interest in gambling with cards. However i some how found my way onto facebook poker when i was doing my A levels and  me and a friend would play on the same tables loads i remember playing for about 8 hours straight once and that was just for play money lol i was hooked and i quickly discovered i was better than the average player on fb making millions along the way( in hindsight a monkey would probably of discovered the fundamentals to being better than the average fb poker player) but at the time i felt like i was brilliant and eagerly awaited my 18th so i could play for money. Anyway i chose to play on skypoker as it was £s and played the odd dym and micro cash but never really taking it seriously. Then last summer i played alot of nl10 and did ok whilst also playing a live game every so often with some mates at the same stakes but with whatever buy in we wanted which led to some interesting 500+bb stacks lol. Eventually i put some work into my game started grinding HU in october time and am just trying to progress as a player in every different structure and get better and better. I have discovered so much just in  the past few months whilst starting to make some nice profit. I have to say i think learning to play via facebook really set me up to become a better player though and although i laugh about grinding for that play money now it probably helped me massively just getting used to the fundamentals and learning patience and discipline.

skeg01

I got into poker by watching it on channel 4 one night in August last year, and i thought to myself 'that looks like a good game to play, i might give it a shot' lol. But i didn't exactly have a lot of money back then, so i signed up with Zynga poker for facebook and started playing there every now and again, I didn't really get into it until the start of October when i started reading guides on how to play etc (the best one was from the partypoker website, absolutely brilliant tips and advice for beginners on there) and after i had read up about the game and started to understand it, i started going to the pub once a week for the Nuts Poker League, and i loved it so much I started going twice a week, 3 times a week, and now i play there every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, it's great fun and a good way to improve your game as well.

I've watched almost every episode on poker on youtube as well, all the WSOP main events, all the EPTs and premier league poker and the pokerstars big game. Never get bored of it, it's just a game i love lol.

I'd like to think i've done well for someone who just started getting into poker about 8 months ago, and just started playing online a month ago but i'm only 19 so i'm a bit inexperienced, but hopefully i will stick with playing poker for years to come :P

jdsallstar

In Response to Re: whats your poker story?:

I took absolutely no interest in poker when i was younger, i used to flick past it on tv and wonder how on earth people could take so much interest in gambling with cards. However i some how found my way onto facebook poker when i was doing my A levels and  me and a friend would play on the same tables loads i remember playing for about 8 hours straight once and that was just for play money lol i was hooked and i quickly discovered i was better than the average player on fb making millions along the way( in hindsight a monkey would probably of discovered the fundamentals to being better than the average fb poker player) but at the time i felt like i was brilliant and eagerly awaited my 18th so i could play for money. Anyway i chose to play on skypoker as it was £s and played the odd dym and micro cash but never really taking it seriously. Then last summer i played alot of nl10 and did ok whilst also playing a live game every so often with some mates at the same stakes but with whatever buy in we wanted which led to some interesting 500+bb stacks lol. Eventually i put some work into my game started grinding HU in october time and am just trying to progress as a player in every different structure and get better and better. I have discovered so much just in  the past few months whilst starting to make some nice profit. I have to say i think learning to play via facebook really set me up to become a better player though and although i laugh about grinding for that play money now it probably helped me massively just getting used to the fundamentals and learning patience and discipline.
Posted by benc

Funny you say about learning your way on play money, I did the same. I played loads of play money games on party p before moving to real money games. I think the most valuable lesson I learned from the play money games (especially in relation to sng's tournament) is that if you're involved in a hand there's a chance you can get knocked out, lose a big pot or simply call your money away. it set me on my way to try learning a tight aggressive style of play.

THEROCK573

going back 4 or 5 year ago, my week -end would start every thursday, thirsty thursday we called it, it would be footy training, quick shower and a change then meet in the local and let the beer flow, anyway all of a sudden 9 or 10 of the lads began playing poker weekly on a thursday night, me and the rest of the lads were not happy with this as it spoiled the crack in the pub, the only card game id ever played at that time was pontoon, oh and snap lol. a group of them were daft on the game so i came across playing by accident as i was a gambler threw sky bet and i started playing threw the telly not noing what i was doing just to see what all the fuss was about, anyway i got the bug and now i play every week day just about. wish the lads still played on a thursday tho but its all dyed off now!!!

GaryQQQ

I'm another one who started on Facebook. 

In 2007 the age of 40yo I'd never played a single hand of poker in my entire life, I didn't know anything about the game. One day I saw a Facebook friend had installed the Zynga poker app, I thought it looked like fun so decided to give it a try too. I didn't even know the hand rankings, I just started playing and worked it all out as I went along.

I played exclusively on Facebook for a couple of years, eventually getting up to something like 100 million playchips. At that point I started selling them on eBay at £12 for 5 million, undercutting Zyngas prices hugely, then going back to win more chips each time I'd sold a few batches (yes, people really do pay real money for valueless playchips). I made a couple of hundred quid pretty quickly like that, but the fun soon ended. Zynga got wise to what me and many others were doing, they quickly shut down the chip-dumping by closing private HU tables and all the other ways you could easily transfer large amounts of chips to other players.

At that point (Autumn 2009) I decided to deposit £50 of the moeny I'd made off Zynga here on Sky, initially playing micro-stakes DYMs. I expected to be eaten alive in real money games, but it never happened and I'm still here today.

MP33

Started about 9 yers ago but just for fun and spewed my money on Fixed Limit on various sites. Had a few more commitments then so kinda left it for a few years then got back into it when my m8 introduced me to Channel 865 .

Gradually got back into it and started playing live at pubs , clubs and occasionly casino , as well as a few SPT,s so gradually got a few friends now who are into poker and basically just learnt of them,- talking to them about hands etc and playing togethor online discussing strategies and  watching Sky ,and this forum and started to learn about BR mangment which is when i decided its something i enjoy and have been a consistant  winner at the micro-low stakes ever since

Its a gr8 hobbie

unknown_username

I was interested in chess as a kid and various other board/card games. When I left School in 97 or 98, the movie Rounders had just been released. My friend got me a VHS copy from his Dad who sold copies on a stall at the Barras in Glasgow. I loved the movie and watched it a bunch of times. Soon after this my friends and I started messing around with home games and also around this time we watched some tv poker including LNP in 99. They got bored quickly, I stayed interested from that point on and I continued to watch as much poker on tv as I could find.

In November 2005, I went to PC World to buy a poker computer game. While the guy was showing me where the games section was in store, he mentioned I should just download VC Poker online and play free games rather than buy a poker computer game. I did that as soon as I got home. Shortly after I joined the Blonde forum and have played on and off since that point. I am still terrible though even after years of trying to improve :-)

unknown_username

Going back about 30 years, played the odd game brag, stud, and 5 card poker.

a friend of ours went away to sea, and showed us a game called "southern cross".

You got 2 cards delt then shown 3 cards down and 2 across to make a cross,

you made your hand out of the 3 going down or the 3 across we were hooked lol.

Never played then for years, then about 3 years ago some guys playing in a club

and i asked could i play next week, and it started again.

now just play on-line.

Sky_Poker

Interesting to hear where it all started for people.

RLT16

i started playing about 3 years ago just a £5 buy in 6 player game where winner took it all while on holiday, i then played facebook poker for a while but i was awful at it so stopped and decided to play on a proper website. then i started dabbling on alot of sites on and off but I was one of those really bad players who assumed it was all fixed and didnt look at how bad i actually was, then things started to turn round after finding this forum and channel 861 (even though i was abit to stuck up to listen ot the advice at first), hell im still not a good player but i have defiantly improved. looking to attend my first live tournament sometime soon but need to find someone willing to come to the casino with me

NColley

Was flicking through Sky Sports a few years back, remembering catching something like the 5-0, or 5-0-0 on Sky Sports a few times and eventually started to watch the channel a bit more. Can't quite remember when I began playing but it was before the site had the forum! 

bearlyther

Started playing in an underground game in Orlando when i lived in America for a year.  They had a guy at the door who used the spyhole to let people in and out and had a gun incase there was ever any trouble.

Wilhelm

It all started for me after I saw Daniel Craig in Casino Royale.  Looking back it must have been the apparent glamour that attracted me to the game, because when I asked all my mates round for a home game I told them to wear suits.  Everyone thought I was taking the biscuit though, so I was the only one dressed to impressed.  I even tried my hand at making a Vespa, the cocktail Bond invents in the film.  If memory serves me right it was 3 parts Vodka, 1 of Gordon's, and 1/2 of Kina Lillet, poured over ice, served with a thin slice of lemon peel.  I was up all night peeling lemons.  It was disgusting.

Shortly after I discovered then cannel 865.  I used to watch it religiously and I improved enough to beat my mates over a decent sample.  I must have been winning a bit too much because after a while they stopped inviting me to play.  I don't think they play much at all any more.  I wish I'd let them win a few pots now...

So, like most, I started playing online on facebook.  I had been playing on there for a couple of years before I won one of their shootouts where you had to win three 9-handed S&Gs to go into a draw to win a WSOP package.  I never won the package, but after besting a field of around 500runners I decided I was good enough to put some money on the line. 

I started the next day.  I remember depositing £5 (the minimum allowed) and sitting down at a NL4 table with £1.  I spun it up to £20, then back down to nothing.  I remembered Ed Giddens had said you are 18-1 to be dealt a pair, so when you are dealt one you have to make it count.  Using this knowledge, I was routinely making it 18x the big blind every time I was dealt a pair.  I got a bit of stick for it, but I didn't care; I was enjoying myself.  I still am.