My first exposure to poker was when I was probably around 8 years old. The youngest of my brothers taught me how to play 5-Card Draw and 7-Card No-Peek (if that's even a real poker game, I'm not sure). I think he was bored babysitting me that summer while my parents were at work. (He also taught me how to make smoke bombs and we shot BB guns inside the house. Yes we got in trouble for that.
) My family had always played various card games while I was growing up, but that's about the extent of what I played with them.
Enter Harlequin. I had never even heard of Texas Hold Em until I met him. We were watching tv one day and he flipped on some old WSOP reruns. I get sucked into absolutely anything on tv somehow, so I watched as he explained the game. He started playing in a home tournament every Sunday and after a few months of watching it on tv, he convinced me to try it out too. I think that was the winter of 2004. I didn't do so great, but I was learning and it was fun. I started reading "Play Poker Like the Pros" by Phil Hellmuth, and sort of got some basic strategy out of it, but never finished reading it. We started playing the Catholic festival "circuit" during that summer. That was pretty bad. I can't remember for sure what the game was, but I think it was $2/5 Limit. With a ginormous rake. We went to one around town every Friday and Saturday night. I don't think I had a single winning session and was getting pretty discouraged. We finally ditched the festival poker. Or, maybe it ditched us when the season ended.
We made a couple trips to Vegas in the following year, where I was nervous to play in my first real casino NL cash game at the Tropicana. I did alright with it once I got over my nervousness. Then we started playing all over Vegas whenever we would visit. The only place we haven't gotten to play yet is Bellagio – maybe next trip.
Eventually Argosy Casino, which is about 20 minutes from us, opened a poker room. It is a whole different game than the ones in Vegas. This is where I first found out how bad my game really was. It's been over a year since we've been playing there and the majority of my sessions there have been losing ones, unfortunately. We also play in a weekly home cash game. The same is true of that one though, I started realizing how bad I was. Eek. A few months back I saw people recommending on here Sklansky's "No Limit Hold Em Theory and Practice." I bought it and started reading it and almost immediately started seeing my game improve. I feel like I need to read it again to really absorb it, but it's been very helpful so far.
I've tried the online thing. I played mostly low buy-in SNGs or micro-stakes NL games. It's okay as a time filler, but I much prefer live casino play. I hope to improve both my cash game skills and my tourney skills to the point where I'm overall a winning player. It just takes lots of hours of practice and experience. I'd like to be able to have poker as a sort of second income, where I'm winning enough to buy some fun stuff or something like that. I guess that's my goal with it. I doubt I'll ever go pro unless I have some huge streak of luck.
