I'm still in the micros, but I'll let you guys in on my beginnings. If you don't want to read this, I totally understand, as it's the long version of a really useless story, other than a few paragraphs:
Paragraphs that aren't boring are denoted by a '*'.
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*At 10 years old, I played 5-card draw at the cottage for monopoly money. I loved it. We played 3 draws of 3, with sometimes up to 10 wild. We also played it no-limit or extremely high stretch limit. My strategy was to keep pairs in an effort to make full houses or better, fold to heavy betting if I had little, and to bet like hell if I made my hands. My friends' strategy was to call me whenever I bet. Needless to say, I won quite often.
*At 17 years old, I saq the WSOP on t.v. for the first time, watch it for 5 min or so, then got bored because they only have two cards. Logged onto yahoo games... damnit, same friggin game! Logged off.
21, do the same thing, but watch for longer, and decide to try it out on yahoo. "WTF? 2/5 limit, who the hell invented this crazy betting format... oh well, it's free, and I don't have to download a client, which will infect my computer with some weird casino disease..." I broke even for 400 hands (an eternity). I then read
nofoldem hand strengths. I started playing the top 20 hands (5%ish-12%ish vpip), and improvising from the flop forwards. I still break even for the next 4k hands.
Eventually, I get my buddy to play NLHE HU SNGs with me for free. It took him a while to catch onto the whole two-cards thing.
I got fed up of weird 2/5 yahoo poker, so it's off to Empire to play play-money NLHE and STTs. Go to pokerfunclub to play play-money MTTs, have fun there. BTW I really recommend that site: best play-money games out there, if you have friends that want to learn to play. The players seem pretty serious and it's competitive for people starting to play poker.
I heard about paradise offering super-low buy in cash games and initial deposits. I bought in for $30 CDN after making a neteller account, play 0.02/0.04 LHE. Both my buddy and I were unemployed, with myself having some credit card debt... so it was important to me that I at least break even with this deposit.
I read the website
for winning low limit holdem and started to play ace suited cards and SCs, small PPs, etc.
I lost a few bucks playing LHE, got frustrated, played NLHE and ran my way up from $20USD to $25, hopped in the $10 game, ran to $45, hop in the $25 game, ran it up to $120, into the $50 game, up to $260, and down to $2, stopping at each level on the way back, all the way down to the NLHE $2 game, and all the way down to a bankroll of $2. Yes, $2.
However, while I was winning, I had the wisdom to withdraw my original deposit as well as enough money to buy HPFAP, which I'd heard was a good book.
I struggled at the $2 nlhe table for maybe a few weeks, gave up, and deposit on empire to play in their loose $0.5/$1 games. Break even there for many months. HPFAP went way over my head at this time. Eventually I read SSHE, and started to win.
*Some months go by, and I move to find work. I find out about a local NLHE cash game (live)... some of the characters are interesting people with interesting criminal records. I learn the fine art of humility, repeatedly. But I make enough cash that I can pay off my debts and quit the tech support job I was working, in order to start to study more on holdem.
*The game started with buy-ins of $100, rake of $2, eventually grew to buy-ins of $200 and rake of 5% max $10. In maybe 3.5 months to 5 months of playing 3x weekly, the game breaks. The owner probably made 10-30k. Another game is started, this one with a rake of $2, but the damage is done and most of the players are gone.
Eventually I 8-table the $0.5/1 game for a profit of something like $12/hr with bonuses/rb (and maybe more if you count a winrate higher than $2). I do this for a few months, then go to the $2/4 table, get beat down, back to the $0.5/1, and finally up to the $2/4 game for a few months.
Which brings me to today, asking you guys where you got your knowledge/skill/cash/emotional control. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]