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How did you get started in poker?
I'll go first. Caught a programme on tv by chance (might have been Late Night Poker) and loved it. Watched every poker programme I could and that's how I learnt the game. I eventually joined a site but only played fun money as I was never a gambler so it was a pastime. After at least 2 years made my first deposit, which was very small and lost the lot within a week. Made another deposit and this one lasted about 2 months. I was awful so I gave it up as a bad job and quit the site. But I wanted another go. So bought a cheapo book (Texas Holdem Poker Win Online) joined a different site and started earning money. By this time I had Sky tv and was watching 865 all the time and picking up hints and tips. Eventually I felt the lure of Sky Poker so here I am.
Comments
At 13/14 i was playing with my dad in the house. He explained the rules, and to be fair to my dad he was a pretty good teacher. hard to teach someone your playing sometimes. When i moved in we set up the internet and i sat watching him after my sister had gone to bed and at 15 i set up my own account on a different site. Unlike many i jumped straight into low stake money games. I quickly lost as i hadnt taken alot of my dads advice in and i quit thinking the game was pure gambling.
At 18 my uncle phoned me stating there was a Free poker league in a local pub. I refused to go at first but the first day of the second season i went down and again everyone was helpful. They reminded me of the rules and i started to get slightly better. At this point my dad invited me to a home game, £5 half turbo structure. There where 2 games played that night and i won them both. I came home loaded my winnings onto Sky Poker and havent looked back since.
I know play on different sites for different needs, but Sky Poker is like my home base. The people here have molded me into one of theirs, and although at times i can ve the most horrible poker player of all time, everyone still looks after me.
Poker
It is a strange thing but the emotions that Poker can instil in people are effected very little by the amounts of money that are involved.
I have seen a player thump the table, throw his drink to the floor and storm out of a Casino, all because he has crashed out of a £10 tournament. At the same time I have seen players sit calmly waiting for their next hand to be dealt....... After losing £500,000 with a turn of a single card. So what is it that attracts us to this roller coaster ride. This game that Doyle Bruson describes as "The Greatest Game In The World"
Poker has a mixture of elegance, aggression, raw emotion, subtlety and slam you to the deck shock that can be provided by no other game in the world. Name another game which you can play perfectly, make all the right decisions..... And still lose. If you want to know what gets people playing this game than you will get a different answer for every person you ask.
A big pair
Yup that about describes what first attracted me to poker. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. It can be argued that all events can be traced back to a single event that starts everything in motion. In chaos theory there is a very technical name for this. In the real world it is called the "Butterfly Effect". The butterfly for me was the guy who invented the TV Remote Control. That then led to the ability to change between all "three", that's all there was when I first started watching TV, at the touch of a button. However even though we only had three channels to chose from, that didn't stop the male psyche from developing that bastion of male control....... Channel hopping.
Channel Hopping. That most amazing of male past times. Women just don't get it. Why watch one channel for an hour when you can watch several in 30 seconds. Well that's what got me playing poker. Channel hopping. It was late on a sunday night. I was flicking between channels, the wife had gone t bed early so I could get away with it. When i suddenly found myself looking at a rather attractive women, leaning forward over a table. Showing a large percentage of her, not inconsiderable, cleavage to the TV camera. No it was a soft adult channel that I had discovered. She was leaning forward so she could scoop up the mountain of chips that appears to have become her property. At the same time as this lovely lady was scooping the chips, two male commentators were going insane..... At first i thought they were being rather crass, and quite frankly rude. How she had faked it with just a big pair. I mean come on guys...... How could they tell they were fake they looked plenty real to me. As i continued watching I realised that they were making reference to the cards that were lying on the table and not the amble bossom that had first caught my attention. So there you have it. Every time I win a pot i thank god that it was Vanessa Russo that had won that pot and not Texas Dolly. I can assure you that doyle's sagging face leaning across the table would not have caught my attention nearly as effectively
From that point on I was hooked. I didn't have a clue what was going on, i just knew this was one of the most exciting things i had ever seen. In the coming nights I channel hopped like a man possessed. Searching for more poker. Eventually I came across Sky Poker. Not only did this channel show you poker being played. It showed poker being played by me....... Well not literally me, but lots of other "me's". Players up and down the country were sitting at their computers playing poker and the guys on the TV were talking about it. How cool was that. Now all that was needed was to learn.... "how to play the game" ;o) (Still working on that )
will post later.
In Response to Re: How did you get started in poker?: Who's got the best pair in poker ?
I got into poker much the same way.
I used to watch Late Night Poker. Even after watching a few series of this i'd picked up the basics but still didn't know much about the game, especially all of the nicknames for hands.
I then decided to buy a chip set and setup some home games for me and a few mates to play after our sessions in the pub.
I didn't play online for at least a year later, and tbh when I first tried online poker I wasn't a fan. It all seemed too fast.
Now when I play live I sit there wishing everybody had a 15 second clock to make their decisions.
Was a Mental health nurse in acute treatment centre and only way to calm down one very violent individual was to play cards with him. So HE taught me. Follwing that found I had an affinity, played online and a local franchise. Won that more often than not and then won one of the regionals and went deep in a national. Figured My job was ruining my health so started playing 50/1 in a few local casino's. Took a long time to get any where near as good as I had lead myself to believe I was, but got there (or closer). Resigned from job, stayed on agency as a back up and pretty much rely on live poker for a living now.
We used to just all put £1 in, (4 or 5 of us) and winner takes all. We'd play from about 4pm when we got home from school til about 11pm virtually every night of the week and did that for around 3-4 years. When I say we palyed from 4pm-11pm, that wasn't 1 SnG lol, obviously we'd fit a ton in per night.
Got into the world of online poker when I moved away and didn't know anyone in my area who played poker. Just started out on freerolls on FullTilt, won a few quid (well...dollars) and then the highlight on my poker career (definitely in terms of ROI), I bought into an MTT for $0.10, yes 10 cents, with a field of just over 3500, came 2nd and won just over $200. Started the tourney at 8pm and didn't finish til about 6am (about 2 hours before I was due in for work! lol) and then I was hooked again.
I hadn't played much for a while but I started seriously again in May 2011, deposited £20 and managed to get it up to £180, just trying to work up my BR and work up the levels (mostly a cash game player these days)
My dad played poker all his life. Mostly small live cash games with friends/family. There were tourneys 2/3 nights a week in our house when I was growing up. I, however, had more important outdoor pursuits so didn't get involved!
Anyway, he passed away recently and at his wake/funeral in Ireland there were card schools running 24/7 for 3 days! I watched as grown men laughed & cried in equal measure!
The night I returned home I was flicking through the TV channels and came across 865! I reckoned it was a sign? Been hooked ever since!!
pad
Lovely post glenelg and also sorry for your loss.
not often that looking at posts on a poker forum can touch your heart but this definatley does.
Hope you go on to be very successful at poker
I got started because my ex boyfriend was a high stakes reg player on a different site and instead of becoming a poker widow i decided to try to learn the game myself.
That was over 7 years ago and ive been playing ever since
Started with a £5 deposit 18 months ago playing stt's and freerolls and haven't bust it yet. Today prefer playing the £1 & £2 evening deepstacks when I can.
I hadn't played freeplay anywhere before I played real money, and personally I think that's helped because there were less bad habits to put right.
The forum & channel 865 have been a big help in improving my game, but there's still a long way to go.
started out playing on zynga and building up chips and selling them to an american guy when i was 16-17 when i turned 18 deposited on here and been donating ever since
) ok thats a lie not ever since just every now and then
also play on a couple other sites but at the moment doing nothing but trying to better myself playing a few live tourneys, will probably go back on to online poker after my operation 30th August and give it a serious go and see where i end up.......... nice short and not so sweet story
I moved on job wise and stopped playing and it was only after i had cable installed in mid to late 90's that i came across late night poker, started watching, it was texas holdem and i could'nt understand how they where playing it to start with as i had only ever played stud but soon figured it out.
Decided to play some, typed poker sites into search engine and wow so many to choose from, all based in america, picked one which had all forms of the game stud, draw, omaha, holdem and been playing ever since.
Took that profit and loaded it onto Sky (I hadnt seen the TV channel), just preferred the £ sterling option and no need for any downloads, other than top ups to the bankroll as I have steadily moved up from 30p STT to £11 tournaments I have never busted to zero!
I do much prefer playing live though and do so most weeks.
Dave
Was mates with the landlady of our ,local and she knew i played and asked if i wanted to run a agme in the pub which i declined at the time due to the law meaning you could not play for money/prizes at the time. About 4 months later the law changed so i started running a game on a sunday night starting of with 5 people turning up and me running a game i sort of understood the rules of (ha ha ah). The game sort of grew a bit (this was just at the start of the poker boom where every pub was trying to get a game going).
Qualified for the regionals numerous times but as they were not offering prizes never went until they started doing it as a £1000 freeroll. One of my regs at the pub mentioned he had been featured on Sky (luckbox aka phil12uk) and we watched a bit of 865 one night at a home game and i decided to start playing more seriously online on sky.
Mainly mtt's although i occasionaly donate at 25/50 but withdrew my initial stake in the site after binking one of the opens and have since grown the br to about 4k.
Still play the pub games about twice a week which gives a break from the ME's on here and a night out socialising with friends for a buy in of £5 and the game i run on a sunday has upto 30 players turning up.
I tried to teach my Dad how to play 5 card stud when I was 7, just from what I'd seen on TV. There was no dealing involved, I just looked through the deck and chose the hand I wanted. I won a lot. 9 years later my mates invited me for a home game, which came a week after I had seen Casino Royale. I was hooked. I used to play on zynga when I was supposed to be doing homework. I discovered Channel 865 and started winning against me mates for the first time. I soon won a huge tournament on Zynga for about 10 million play chips and decided that I might be able to make a little bit of money online. I played for about 7 months on Sky until I actually started winning money consistently. Oh, and by the way, I am the unluckiest player on here. Period.
Me Doctor said i needed to give my Liver a rest from Beer so i stopped for 3 Months, then i needed to find something to do flicked through some channels & started watching 865 i had always been interested in card games but had never played Poker before so went online & joined Sky Poker 8th June 2009 best thing i've ever done