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Old 11-20-2007, 11:49 PM
pepitannikita pepitannikita is offline
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Default My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

Hi, everyone!

I remember about 4-5 years ago or so, I had just begun playing poker. Female, 50 years old, didn't even know that a flush beat a straight. LOL.

I played a bit of fake money online poker and began to learn what the blinds were. My first games were at YAHOO-- OMG and most of the people at the table who I asked about what that BUTTON thing was, didn't know either! I went to COSTCO and bought a POKER FOR DUMMIES book.

I started watching the WPT on TV. Began to learn some terminology. Woo-hoo, Big Slick and Cowboys. the nuts. Saw the WPT final at Bellagio and was online doing my practice thing and heard some folks talking about the World Series of Poker. Confused me and I asked them if that was the same thing as the World Poker Tour and they didn't know! So I said, it was in Vegas at Bellagio, right? And they said, no, at Binion's but I had no clue what Binion's was and they had never heard of the WPT.

It wasn't more than a couple of more weeks of watching TV that I decided to get the hell off of the YAHOO site-- LOL-- (okay, I am a slow learner) and so I signed up for fake money games at POKERSTARS.

I had also heard from watching the WPT about other poker books so I began amassing a collection. I started to read but could not decipher the Sklansky and Brunson books so I then got into literally DOZENS of others, some of which I scanned/thumbed through, others of which I studied, underlining and highlighting and making notes in the margins. Decided to focus on learning about playing low limit stakes.

So I go to the only casino near where I live in San Francisco and sit down at a $3-6 game, the lowest they spread. Don't know how to ocunt out or hold my chips. Can't follow the action or tell when it is on me. Everything seems like it is going so very fast. LOL.

I am there at the table for 45 minutes and I don't think I exhaled since I sat down. But now I am up $87 from my $60 buy-in and I think I have hit the jackpot so I get up and leave.

From the very beginning, I keep detailed records. How much I am up/down, in what game, how many hours played, etc. I have no clue that there is software that does this and I don't even use an EXCEL spreadsheet but I am calculating $ per hour, and charting out what days of the week, times of day are my best wins, how big my fluctuations are, etc.

At this point, I should say that I am poor. On SSI disability and barely scraping by. So I'm keeping real close tabs on the money because I don't HAVE the money to "play" with but I figure I am "paying for lessons" and will be for awhile.

But funny thing is, I am winning. Very slowly because I am so cautious. But I'm logging a $43 win here and an $18 win there and every now and then a $99 or $108 session. And my sessions are all about an hour or two.

After about a month of this, I start to calm down enough so that I can BREATHE at the table. I even learn how to pick up chips without needing to awkwardly count them out one by one. I learn that just because I had "the nut flush" (Ace high), it didn't mean I was going to win and since it was down to only two of us in the hand and the raises kept going raise/reraise/reraise/reraise.... I was waiting for the dealer to say "capped" like they always do but it didn't seem to be going that way...MY opponent must have felt sorry for me because he finally called while I still had some chips left....and turned over his straight flush. It had never dawned on me.

So I learned. Slowly. Had a pocket pair of tens one hand. Showdown and board was paired and guy flips over whatever his hand was and says "two pair." I am confused or distracted or whatever and I just muck my hand and as next hand is being dealt, mumble something about my pair and guy is amazed to find out I had pocket tens because I had mucked the winning hand. Somehow it had just not occurred to me, I was thinking he had two cards in his hand, and had paired both his 7 and his 8. So he had two pairs and I only had my pocket tens, but totally overlooked the two threes on the board.

So I learned. Slowly.

But eventually I am up six hundred dollars and so I take out the original three hundred dollars that I had told myself was my limit to use for learning to play the game and I begin to play with my winning money.

I never spend any of my winnings. I faithfully remove ten percent of everything I win form that point on and go home to put it in a jar and begin to build that. So that if I ever lose all of what I am using to play with, I will have a litle nestegg to use to begin building a bankroll with again.

I read in some book somewhere that if I were going to play $3-6 limit for a lifetime and not go broke that I might need about $1800. I figure I am a retardo player because I am such a newbie so I am trying to learn. But I am real passive and never bluff or reraise so it's all just basically check and call. And I am sure I end up folding the best hand lots of times.

But then, hey. it's $3-6. These people don't play POKER. They're playing card slots! I've started to learn who the regulars are now. I've begun to expand my sessions. I start to pick my games and I change tables not to get away from "an unlucky table" but in order to find a game that I can beat.

I start to get a little bit better. I play all night sometimes, when it's the beginning of the month and a weekend and the drunks are out and the gambling addicts have gotten their government checks in. I get a bit more aggressive. More importantly, I am beginning to be able to identify people who play worse than me and I am learning how to take their chips.

I get a $25 free money postcard in the mail to sign up an account (no deposit required) at a new site just starting out. It's the first REAL online poker games I've tried. I turn that $25 into a couple of thousand over the next month. I cash out a thousand and I run the remainder up again to over $4k. But I am still stupid and I blow most of it in one short session by sitting down at some high stakes game where I get run over like the idiot I am.

In the interim, I found RGP. This is about end of 2003, beginning of 2004. I was still trying to read every poker book I could find and that's how I found out about RGP because it was mentioned in a book. But when I start posting there, it's not long before I get disheartened at all the spammers and trolls, the nasty posts and endless political discussions.

I have AOL and no clue what a newsreader is, nor a killfile.

Seems like I stumbled into that newsgroup during a time when there's heavy ongoing discussion about developing another newgroup-- something called RGP moderated. Sounds good to me, RGP without the non-poker stuff and none of the flames and other abuse.

But after several weeks, a couple of months, all this huge DRAMA about the "to moderate or not to moderate" discussion, I kind of quit paying much attention to RGP. I'm beginning by now to log 60-80 hours per week at the poker tables, making more playing my little $3-6 games than I get from my monthly disability checks.

Okay, flash forward to the present. Due to some personal circumstances, mental and physical health issues, etc. I suffered setbacks wherein I quit playing poker for a couple of years. End up moving across the country to be with family and guess where they are? Right within a half-hour's drive of Atlantic City. No kidding!

I think about how neat it is to have so many casinos nearby since where I had been there was only Lucky Chances. SO I go to check out Cesars and Showboat and Bally's. Because Cesar's is where I went first and they gave me a player's card and you never got comps in California and all these casinos are linked up together so I want to get credit for the hours I expect to be logging so I want to go to the places on my TOTAL REWARDS card.

But they don't have $3-6 games going there. They have these horrid $2-4 games that mostly play like those old fake money YAHOO games I used to play. I always put my name on the $3-6 interest list but only once did they ever get a game going and it broke before one round was completed.

So for the first time in my life, I decide to start playing No Limit. Just measly little $1-2 NL games. I log 100 hours and I'm up $1400.

Not the best stats by any means but again, I am still poor, and timid and I am playing cautiously.

I decide I want to try to begin all over again, maybe go back and read some books again that might make more sense to me than they did the first time around when I didn't even know a flush beat a straight.

I remember RGP and so I sign up there again and ask what I thought was an innocent question.

Here was my post verbatim:
"I remember reading RGP about 3-4 years ago when there had been much discussion and even polls/votes regarding a moderated version of RGP to eliminate much of the trolling, off topic discussions, etc. although I am sure there were many other considerations and factors than those. I see that the membership in RGP has swelled considerably since that time and I am wondering whatever became of that initiative? Does such a moderated group exist?"

A nice person replied: "I think they started to create one and it got [censored] on and they gave up. I think the voters that said unmoderated went to the moderated and swamped the
moderator."

So I responded with: "Thanks for replying. That's a shame if, rather than simply leaving it alone and staying here, that people who didn't want something had to go and ruin
something that people who did want it tried to make. Are there other newsgroups that anyone knows of for non-professionalm(recreational) poker players who want to learn/discuss poker-related issues where there aren't so many spammers, trolls and off-topicmthreads as what is found here? (Although I must say, it is nice that
so many of the OT threads are so clearly labeled as such-- that is very considerate of the original posters to do!)"

Well, then someone actually said that there WAS an RGPM.

So I found it and checked it out then went back to post my final message "Oops! But not exactly. Sigh. Saw your post here and was excited (had previously done a search and
for some reason that group had not come up, hence, my original post here). But I just went there and it seems to be nothing more than a repository for spammers, too. Oh well. Perhaps what I had envisioned when I had been here on RGP four years ago was the wrong idea of what people had in mind who were campaigning for the moderated group."

Now, you see, nowhere was I demeaning, degrading nor insulting to anyone. I didn't say I was waging a campaign for RGPM. I didn't say I was against RGP. I was just asking if there was an alternative to RGP that was what I had THOUGHT that RGPM was supposed to be.

You wouldn't believe the replies my post (titled MODERATED RGP) got. Someone said I was like HITLER. Others started talking about me wanting to BE a moderator. Another said that the unmoderated RGP should be let be. ANd others told me to learn to use a killlfile.

Excuse the #@%^#& out of me.

Then Carson comes out with his lame remarks of ridicule.

However, one person, named OrangeSFO did reply and said simply: "Yes. It's called 2+2"

So I googled 2+2 and in a little while managed to find my way here.

Thus, here I be. LOL. Now I've read a few threads already and it seems as though THIS forum is not without its own problems, either. However, it is very nice to find that the threads here seem to all mostly be about POKER.

And even though I am on a way different level than most of the folks who play here for way more money and with much more skill and knowledge, I think that people won't mind if I post here every now and then and maybe ask stupid questions in my effort to learn a little something to help me make ends meet a bit more.

I mean, I SAY "make ends meet" but since I never SPEND my poker money, it's only about making them meet trying to build up enough of a bankroll to where I will be able to play better and more comfortably at some point in the future.

I'm the old, fat gray-haired lady who is fun to be with at he tables, making jokes (and luaghing at your lame ones) and quietly taking chips when I can. I also donate my fair share to those who have got me pegged! LOL. But I am doing what I came to do and I like the game and it helps the time go by and I make a few dollars usually each time I go. I've only begun playing again so I am not even thinking about an average hourly wage and I am still trying to build up to where I am loggin my fulltime hours at the tables each week. But while I do have losing sessions, my worst being two nights in a row with $600 and $500 losses respectively, I expect to be up each month and am. At the end of a year, I am hoping to be logging more consistent stats.

Meanwhile, this is about it.

I am pleased to be able to have found this forum even if it came about in a roundabout way.
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  #2  
Old 11-20-2007, 11:52 PM
EWS87 EWS87 is offline
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Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

tl;dr
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  #3  
Old 11-20-2007, 11:52 PM
limon limon is offline
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Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

how many cats do you have?
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  #4  
Old 11-20-2007, 11:57 PM
The B The B is offline
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Location: North Carolina
Posts: 1,632
Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

[ QUOTE ]
Hi, everyone!

I remember about 4-5 years ago or so, I had just begun playing poker. Female, 50 years old

[/ QUOTE ]


quit reading here, but welcome to 2p2 lady....try keeping your posts shorter than a f'ing Grisham novel
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  #5  
Old 11-20-2007, 11:58 PM
Sailboats Sailboats is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Sailing into the city
Posts: 425
Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hi, everyone!

I remember about 4-5 years ago or so, I had just begun playing poker. Female, 50 years old

[/ QUOTE ]


quit reading here, but welcome to 2p2 lady....try keeping your posts shorter than a f'ing Grisham novel

[/ QUOTE ]
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  #6  
Old 11-20-2007, 11:58 PM
zmigsthatkid zmigsthatkid is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 269
Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

welcome to the forums. if working on your poker game is what you are here to do there is a lot to be learned in the strategy forums of this site, if ur playing a lot of live nl i suggest the micro and small stakes nl formus. good luck to you its nice that you are so excited about poker and i wish you continued success.
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  #7  
Old 11-20-2007, 11:59 PM
a nonymous a nonymous is offline
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Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

TLDR

But News, Views, or Gossip?
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  #8  
Old 11-21-2007, 12:02 AM
Hklm8383 Hklm8383 is offline
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Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

welcome2u
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  #9  
Old 11-21-2007, 12:03 AM
gregorio gregorio is offline
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Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

Welcome to the forums. Hope you get to spend some time in the strategy threads. People can be pretty sarcastic in NVG, but you'll get a lot of help in the strat forums.
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  #10  
Old 11-21-2007, 12:03 AM
corpseartist corpseartist is offline
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Default Re: My 1st post & how I found this place (warning VERY LONG)

Way too long, doubt anyone will read it, welcome to the forum anyway. Try and keep your posts to a couple sentences at the most.
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