When i was doing my apprenticeship in the early 80's i was taught how to play 7 card stud by the old boys and we would play for coppers.
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.
About 4 years ago I saw on my Facebook newsfeed that one of my friends had started playing Zynga poker. I'd never played poker before and did't even know the rules, but I'd always fancied giving it a go so I started playing it too. After a while I had millions of chips and started selling them on eBay. When Zynga made it almost impossible to sell chips I put £50 of the money I'd made on eBay on Sky Poker and tried real money poker for the first time.
Late Night Poker, like most of us 30/40 somethings I used to watch the show with characters like DevilFish and Hellmuth and thought I would give it a go, played a live game in a casino and did pretty well but out of convenience i started playing PLO on another site and made a good profit as the players playing PLO then didn't really understand it or had registered by mistake.
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.
Like quite a few on here i watched poker on TV usually channel 4 vvv late at night. Had a familly background of playing rummy american rummy and canasta which are sort of distant relations of poker. Started playing on various sites mainly just for the bonuses (must get all the money off them at some point).
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.
Late Night Poker has a lot to answer for it seems! And it just shows how useful 865 is in furthering our knowledge. By the way is Zynga poker purely a Facebook app?
i played on fb on zinga poker, not the best place to learn lol, watched loads on tv and got talking to a mate from work that played on here, deposited £25 pound to months ago, lost £20 straight off playing cash (not my game) went back to what i know ie sit n go watched all the poker school and online and picked up from there, have won the survival series and the deep stack £100 still got alot to learn but now going in the right direction, started getting annoyed with bad beats but i have had my luck and now i just think THATS POKER good luck to you all
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.
Finally after plucking up enough courage to escape from a not-so-pretty relationship, I found myself living in a tiny 2 bed flat with my twin boys. This was 3 years ago. My boys were 13, growing up quickly, sharing the bigger bedroom and it was cramped to say the least. But we were safe ...
I managed to scrape enough money together to buy a laptop between them for Christmas and they let me watch them use it until one day they surprised me with a facebook account of my very own. They had listed my interests as Tottenham and yoga and before long lots of fellow Spurs fans wanted to be my friend.
My life was my sons and football talk with people I didn't even know ...
Last May, my mum brought me a lovely letter she had received from one of my old school friends asking if I would contact her as she couldn't find me on facebook. This, I did and sent friend requests to some other people from our school year too. This name "Stephen Moss" kept appearing as someone I might know and as I saw that he was on some of my other friends lists, I figured that he must have also been in our school year so I sent a request to him too even though I had no recollection of him.
He accepted, well actually his daughter Kelly accepted me when she was using his account one day and hey presto, Stephen and I were friends. As it turned out, Stephen didn't remember me either ..
When he asked me who I was, I replied "I think we went to school together"
We chatted on line more and more each night and after swapping numbers, we spoke on the phone for hours, sometimes until the birds started chirping in the early mornings!
I enjoyed our chats, Stephen was making me smile again, he told me that very often he was playing poker whilst talking to me and one night he explained that he had just qualified to play in a live poker tournament in Swansea. I was pleased for him, it sounded like it was a big thing he had achieved. I later found out that it was the spt Swansea! He also told me that he played under the name "budgirl" and after a long pause from me, he went on to explain that this referred to his daughter Kelly who had a liking for budweiser beer! Phew, thank heavens for that ....
He rang me one afternoon and said he had just parked up in the village where I live and asked me if I would like to have a drink with him. Off I went to meet him, he was a perfect gentleman (not a bit like the gobby so-and-so some of you know from the poker chat box!)
We went out together a few times and I agreed to go to Swansea with him for the weekend, still not really knowing what poker was all about so he let me watch him play a few online games and he opened a skypoker account for me too.
yidette9 was born and budgirl created her ....
He was pleased with how quickly I picked up the basics of poker and it wasn't long before I started to practise on my own without bud's guidance .. and I was loving it!
Swansea was a brilliant weekend for us. Bud gave me some pennies to go shopping as he said I would be bored in the casino for such a long time.
I met Tikay, RichOrford, Gliterbabe, Dollie and a few others before he sent me shopping and maybe I should've stayed with him in Aspers Casino cos by the time I returned to show him what I'd bought, he had been knocked out!
Ahhh well, it meant more time for an evening swim in the hotel pool ...
We got married 3 months after this and I became "Mrs budgirl" or perhaps bud became "Mr yidette9". I'll let you decide that one ........
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
Finally after plucking up enough courage to escape from a not-so-pretty relationship, I found myself living in a tiny 2 bed flat with my twin boys. This was 3 years ago. My boys were 13, growing up quickly, sharing the bigger bedroom and it was cramped to say the least. But we were safe ... I managed to scrape enough money together to buy a laptop between them for Christmas and they let me watch them use it until one day they surprised me with a facebook account of my very own. They had listed my interests as Tottenham and yoga and before long lots of fellow Spurs fans wanted to be my friend. My life was my sons and football talk with people I didn't even know ... Last May, my mum brought me a lovely letter she had received from one of my old school friends asking if I would contact her as she couldn't find me on facebook. This, I did and sent friend requests to some other people from our school year too. This name "Stephen Moss" kept appearing as someone I might know and as I saw that he was on some of my other friends lists, I figured that he must have also been in our school year so I sent a request to him too even though I had no recollection of him. He accepted, well actually his daughter Kelly accepted me when she was using his account one day and hey presto, Stephen and I were friends. As it turned out, Stephen didn't remember me either .. When he asked me who I was, I replied "I think we went to school together" We chatted on line more and more each night and after swapping numbers, we spoke on the phone for hours, sometimes until the birds started chirping in the early mornings! I enjoyed our chats, Stephen was making me smile again, he told me that very often he was playing poker whilst talking to me and one night he explained that he had just qualified to play in a live poker tournament in Swansea. I was pleased for him, it sounded like it was a big thing he had achieved. I later found out that it was the spt Swansea! He also told me that he played under the name "budgirl" and after a long pause from me, he went on to explain that this referred to his daughter Kelly who had a liking for budweiser beer! Phew, thank heavens for that .... He rang me one afternoon and said he had just parked up in the village where I live and asked me if I would like to have a drink with him. Off I went to meet him, he was a perfect gentleman (not a bit like the gobby so-and-so some of you know from the poker chat box!) We went out together a few times and I agreed to go to Swansea with him for the weekend, still not really knowing what poker was all about so he let me watch him play a few online games and he opened a skypoker account for me too. yidette9 was born and budgirl created her .... He was pleased with how quickly I picked up the basics of poker and it wasn't long before I started to practise on my own without bud's guidance .. and I was loving it! Swansea was a brilliant weekend for us. Bud gave me some pennies to go shopping as he said I would be bored in the casino for such a long time. I met Tikay, RichOrford, Gliterbabe, Dollie and a few others before he sent me shopping and maybe I should've stayed with him in Aspers Casino cos by the time I returned to show him what I'd bought, he had been knocked out! Ahhh well, it meant more time for an evening swim in the hotel pool ... We got married 3 months after this and I became "Mrs budgirl" or perhaps bud became "Mr yidette9". I'll let you decide that one ........ Posted by yidette9
One of those moments when you look for the 'like' button. Happy endings ftw.
Finally after plucking up enough courage to escape from a not-so-pretty relationship, I found myself living in a tiny 2 bed flat with my twin boys. This was 3 years ago. My boys were 13, growing up quickly, sharing the bigger bedroom and it was cramped to say the least. But we were safe ... I managed to scrape enough money together to buy a laptop between them for Christmas and they let me watch them use it until one day they surprised me with a facebook account of my very own. They had listed my interests as Tottenham and yoga and before long lots of fellow Spurs fans wanted to be my friend. My life was my sons and football talk with people I didn't even know ... Last May, my mum brought me a lovely letter she had received from one of my old school friends asking if I would contact her as she couldn't find me on facebook. This, I did and sent friend requests to some other people from our school year too. This name "Stephen Moss" kept appearing as someone I might know and as I saw that he was on some of my other friends lists, I figured that he must have also been in our school year so I sent a request to him too even though I had no recollection of him. He accepted, well actually his daughter Kelly accepted me when she was using his account one day and hey presto, Stephen and I were friends. As it turned out, Stephen didn't remember me either .. When he asked me who I was, I replied "I think we went to school together" We chatted on line more and more each night and after swapping numbers, we spoke on the phone for hours, sometimes until the birds started chirping in the early mornings! I enjoyed our chats, Stephen was making me smile again, he told me that very often he was playing poker whilst talking to me and one night he explained that he had just qualified to play in a live poker tournament in Swansea. I was pleased for him, it sounded like it was a big thing he had achieved. I later found out that it was the spt Swansea! He also told me that he played under the name "budgirl" and after a long pause from me, he went on to explain that this referred to his daughter Kelly who had a liking for budweiser beer! Phew, thank heavens for that .... He rang me one afternoon and said he had just parked up in the village where I live and asked me if I would like to have a drink with him. Off I went to meet him, he was a perfect gentleman (not a bit like the gobby so-and-so some of you know from the poker chat box!) We went out together a few times and I agreed to go to Swansea with him for the weekend, still not really knowing what poker was all about so he let me watch him play a few online games and he opened a skypoker account for me too. yidette9 was born and budgirl created her .... He was pleased with how quickly I picked up the basics of poker and it wasn't long before I started to practise on my own without bud's guidance .. and I was loving it! Swansea was a brilliant weekend for us. Bud gave me some pennies to go shopping as he said I would be bored in the casino for such a long time. I met Tikay, RichOrford, Gliterbabe, Dollie and a few others before he sent me shopping and maybe I should've stayed with him in Aspers Casino cos by the time I returned to show him what I'd bought, he had been knocked out! Ahhh well, it meant more time for an evening swim in the hotel pool ... We got married 3 months after this and I became "Mrs budgirl" or perhaps bud became "Mr yidette9". I'll let you decide that one ........ Posted by yidette9
Finally after plucking up enough courage to escape from a not-so-pretty relationship, I found myself living in a tiny 2 bed flat with my twin boys. This was 3 years ago. My boys were 13, growing up quickly, sharing the bigger bedroom and it was cramped to say the least. But we were safe ... I managed to scrape enough money together to buy a laptop between them for Christmas and they let me watch them use it until one day they surprised me with a facebook account of my very own. They had listed my interests as Tottenham and yoga and before long lots of fellow Spurs fans wanted to be my friend. My life was my sons and football talk with people I didn't even know ... Last May, my mum brought me a lovely letter she had received from one of my old school friends asking if I would contact her as she couldn't find me on facebook. This, I did and sent friend requests to some other people from our school year too. This name "Stephen Moss" kept appearing as someone I might know and as I saw that he was on some of my other friends lists, I figured that he must have also been in our school year so I sent a request to him too even though I had no recollection of him. He accepted, well actually his daughter Kelly accepted me when she was using his account one day and hey presto, Stephen and I were friends. As it turned out, Stephen didn't remember me either .. When he asked me who I was, I replied "I think we went to school together" We chatted on line more and more each night and after swapping numbers, we spoke on the phone for hours, sometimes until the birds started chirping in the early mornings! I enjoyed our chats, Stephen was making me smile again, he told me that very often he was playing poker whilst talking to me and one night he explained that he had just qualified to play in a live poker tournament in Swansea. I was pleased for him, it sounded like it was a big thing he had achieved. I later found out that it was the spt Swansea! He also told me that he played under the name "budgirl" and after a long pause from me, he went on to explain that this referred to his daughter Kelly who had a liking for budweiser beer! Phew, thank heavens for that .... He rang me one afternoon and said he had just parked up in the village where I live and asked me if I would like to have a drink with him. Off I went to meet him, he was a perfect gentleman (not a bit like the gobby so-and-so some of you know from the poker chat box!) We went out together a few times and I agreed to go to Swansea with him for the weekend, still not really knowing what poker was all about so he let me watch him play a few online games and he opened a skypoker account for me too. yidette9 was born and budgirl created her .... He was pleased with how quickly I picked up the basics of poker and it wasn't long before I started to practise on my own without bud's guidance .. and I was loving it! Swansea was a brilliant weekend for us. Bud gave me some pennies to go shopping as he said I would be bored in the casino for such a long time. I met Tikay, RichOrford, Gliterbabe, Dollie and a few others before he sent me shopping and maybe I should've stayed with him in Aspers Casino cos by the time I returned to show him what I'd bought, he had been knocked out! Ahhh well, it meant more time for an evening swim in the hotel pool ... We got married 3 months after this and I became "Mrs budgirl" or perhaps bud became "Mr yidette9". I'll let you decide that one ........ Posted by yidette9
If I wasn't a super manly bloke i'd be in tears. It's like a Mills and Boon. No seriously it's a great story Lorraine
The first time I ever played poker properly was a couple of years ago. Me and my friends were waiting up for the Mayweather-Marquez boxing fight to start (it was in Las Vegas so wasn't starting til around 4am UK time) and we started playing a cash game. There were 6 of us playing and I think I was the only one who hadn't played before, but I knew most of the rules already from a few glimpses on TV so only had to get clarity on a couple of things (like whether a straight beats a flush etc.) Anyway I won some money, obviously without knowing what I was doing, so a couple of weeks later I started playing online for the first time, on skypoker (which is the only site I've ever played on in any real volume actually).
There was still a year before I was going to uni so I had a fair bit of time to play, and I started at the 4nl and 8nl cash games. I don't think I was winning anything (but not really losing much either) but I was having a good enough time to continue. I remember using that hot-o-meter thing to decide what starting hands to play lol. I started watching the skypoker channel, and I saw Tikay talking about the DYM's so I thought I'd give them a go. So far a while I'd just play those - my sharkscope shows I played about a couple of hundred of those for a small loss. I think I was playing mainly the £11 DYM's which means by brm was pretty poor given that I only had about £150 in my account at the time. It was whilst playing the DYM's that I first tried multi-tabling. The first time I played 2 tables it was soooo hard lol, I kept timing out on one of the tables. I remember one time I folded a flopped full house and was pretty angry with myself because it cost me a cash in a DYM.
One day I was playing a DYM and someone asked if I was going to play in the ME that night. It sounded like a good idea so I bought in and got a decent way through the field before crashing out. In one of the first main events that I played I somehow luckboxed a 2nd place finish for about a grand, and after I did that I thought I knew everything there was to know about poker. I withdrew a decent chunk of it and with my remaining couple of hundred quid I jumped straight into 50nl cash, one-tabling and buying in for about £30. I won a bit the first couple of times I played it, but then I got absolutely crushed. I think scotty77 stacked me a couple of times in one session when I still obviously a huge whale. I lost the money I had remaining and had to re-deposit.
After that I stopped playing cash and went back to DYM's, by which time I was able to 4/5-table them because you can pretty much play them even if you're brain dead once your used to them. But again I wasn't winning anything really. I told myself I'd give cash one more go and started back down at 10nl with about 30 buy-ins. At the same time I started posted on the forum on here, and that's the overwhelming reason that my game started to improve. I learned so much from the good regs that posted on there. One time in particular I posted something like 'you should have raised to find out where you were' and then ladyfingers got me to question why this was a good thing to do and then I realised what I was saying didn't make much sense. Beaneh and lol_raise were two of the other posters that I really learned loads from. After that I slowly made my way up the limits, and meanwhile I won my first ever tournament for about £1700. That meant a lot to me because I had previously been heads up in tournaments about 3/4 times but had never won, so that was a major confidence boost. I made sure I sky-plused the highlights of the final table so I could live the moment again lol.
I think the 2 most important reasons for my game improving was the advice on the forums, and also the fact that I was able to bink some cashes so early into starting to play poker, because that gave me some money to be able to experiment with different things in cash games. Like when I was first started playing I used to be very passive but then after a while I experimented with being more laggy and found that worked for me. The best piece of advice that I ever got though was to always stop before you clck buttons, and think what you are trying to achieve, because when I first started playing the game I would do things without knowing why I was doing it, and so as a result I was making loadssss of bad decisions.
Anyway this had turned into a bit of an essay lol, hope it's an interesting read!
I first played poker in my local pub. Believe it or not I never gamble on horses, football or in casinos. All the guys in the pub had been watching the poker on television and decide to start a game. I was roped in because I drank with them. At the start I considered my £10 to be a donation to whichever one of them won.
After a couple of months of this, I started watching late night poker on the TV and gradually got a little better at the game, even winning on the odd occasion. The odd occasion got more frequent and we sarted to go to other pubs for their games, and found that I was cashing on a regular basis.
After a year or so I ventured into tournaments in our local casino and cashed in a chop for the final 3.
I started online poker after discovering channel 865 about 3 years ago. In that time I have had a winning ROI, but most of all have enjoyed the social side more than anything else.
I may be wrong, but I still don't consider myself a gambler!
In Response to Re: How did you get started in poker?: .. We got married 3 months after this and I became "Mrs budgirl" or perhaps bud became "Mr yidette9". I'll let you decide that one ........ Posted by yidette9
Just came back to this thread and what a GREAT post Yidette!
I first played poker in my local pub. Believe it or not I never gamble on horses, football or in casinos. All the guys in the pub had been watching the poker on television and decide to start a game. I was roped in because I drank with them. At the start I considered my £10 to be a donation to whichever one of them won. After a couple of months of this, I started watching late night poker on the TV and gradually got a little better at the game, even winning on the odd occasion. The odd occasion got more frequent and we sarted to go to other pubs for their games, and found that I was cashing on a regular basis. After a year or so I ventured into tournaments in our local casino and cashed in a chop for the final 3. I started online poker after discovering channel 865 about 3 years ago. In that time I have had a winning ROI, but most of all have enjoyed the social side more than anything else. I may be wrong, but I still don't consider myself a gambler! Posted by 67Bhoys
We're thinking from the same mindset. Like you i have never bet on ANYTHING not even the Grand National I think poker is a bit different because you are "gambling " on your own ability and you have some semblance of control over it. With horses or football your relying on other peoples ability. Because I don't have a gamblers mentality I think it helps me manage my bankroll and keeps me playing at a level I am totally happy with
Always been a gambler since I moved to Blackpool at 12
Poker was inevatable as i,d gambled on just bout everything else. I ws living in Lanacster when i got my first computer about 10 years ago - wow - wheres the time gone - It was alao on dial up and used to crash a lot
Signed up for a cpl of bonuses and found I liked FL cash, so plyed that $1/$2 and hit a bit of success but lost overall. I then had break for a cpl of years when my girlfriend moved in and wasn,t to thrilled with me plying poker on a night , when I was working 12 hour days as well
i moved to Preston about 6 years ago and started playing recreationally again , mainly in sit and goes and in my local pub. still waasn,t that good
Started watching Sky 865 when i saw it at one of my m8,s and decided to join up. Lost again for acpl of years but had a cpl of results and started to learn more up until the last cpl of years where I,ve turned it into a small steady side income
One of the biggest things for me laerning was attending 3 SPT,s , the last been in Leeds. I learnt different stuff at each one and m tryting to keep on learning.
The best thing is that its taught me about Bankroll Management , which can be used in life as well as poker
I ply on 3 other sites occasionly, depending on the games but over 70% is on Sky and its a buzz trying to improve my sharkscope graphs and seeing them all in the black
I don,t make a lot but enjoy it and see it as the best hobby ever
Finally after plucking up enough courage to escape from a not-so-pretty relationship, I found myself living in a tiny 2 bed flat with my twin boys. This was 3 years ago. My boys were 13, growing up quickly, sharing the bigger bedroom and it was cramped to say the least. But we were safe ... I managed to scrape enough money together to buy a laptop between them for Christmas and they let me watch them use it until one day they surprised me with a facebook account of my very own. They had listed my interests as Tottenham and yoga and before long lots of fellow Spurs fans wanted to be my friend. My life was my sons and football talk with people I didn't even know ... Last May, my mum brought me a lovely letter she had received from one of my old school friends asking if I would contact her as she couldn't find me on facebook. This, I did and sent friend requests to some other people from our school year too. This name "Stephen Moss" kept appearing as someone I might know and as I saw that he was on some of my other friends lists, I figured that he must have also been in our school year so I sent a request to him too even though I had no recollection of him. He accepted, well actually his daughter Kelly accepted me when she was using his account one day and hey presto, Stephen and I were friends. As it turned out, Stephen didn't remember me either .. When he asked me who I was, I replied "I think we went to school together" We chatted on line more and more each night and after swapping numbers, we spoke on the phone for hours, sometimes until the birds started chirping in the early mornings! I enjoyed our chats, Stephen was making me smile again, he told me that very often he was playing poker whilst talking to me and one night he explained that he had just qualified to play in a live poker tournament in Swansea. I was pleased for him, it sounded like it was a big thing he had achieved. I later found out that it was the spt Swansea! He also told me that he played under the name "budgirl" and after a long pause from me, he went on to explain that this referred to his daughter Kelly who had a liking for budweiser beer! Phew, thank heavens for that .... He rang me one afternoon and said he had just parked up in the village where I live and asked me if I would like to have a drink with him. Off I went to meet him, he was a perfect gentleman (not a bit like the gobby so-and-so some of you know from the poker chat box!) We went out together a few times and I agreed to go to Swansea with him for the weekend, still not really knowing what poker was all about so he let me watch him play a few online games and he opened a skypoker account for me too. yidette9 was born and budgirl created her .... He was pleased with how quickly I picked up the basics of poker and it wasn't long before I started to practise on my own without bud's guidance .. and I was loving it! Swansea was a brilliant weekend for us. Bud gave me some pennies to go shopping as he said I would be bored in the casino for such a long time. I met Tikay, RichOrford, Gliterbabe, Dollie and a few others before he sent me shopping and maybe I should've stayed with him in Aspers Casino cos by the time I returned to show him what I'd bought, he had been knocked out! Ahhh well, it meant more time for an evening swim in the hotel pool ... We got married 3 months after this and I became "Mrs budgirl" or perhaps bud became "Mr yidette9". I'll let you decide that one ........ Posted by yidette9
Nice story _ You,ve certinly picked it up quickly as well - you can probably beat him now
Comments
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
*thumbs up*
There was still a year before I was going to uni so I had a fair bit of time to play, and I started at the 4nl and 8nl cash games. I don't think I was winning anything (but not really losing much either) but I was having a good enough time to continue. I remember using that hot-o-meter thing to decide what starting hands to play lol. I started watching the skypoker channel, and I saw Tikay talking about the DYM's so I thought I'd give them a go. So far a while I'd just play those - my sharkscope shows I played about a couple of hundred of those for a small loss. I think I was playing mainly the £11 DYM's which means by brm was pretty poor given that I only had about £150 in my account at the time. It was whilst playing the DYM's that I first tried multi-tabling. The first time I played 2 tables it was soooo hard lol, I kept timing out on one of the tables. I remember one time I folded a flopped full house and was pretty angry with myself because it cost me a cash in a DYM.
One day I was playing a DYM and someone asked if I was going to play in the ME that night. It sounded like a good idea so I bought in and got a decent way through the field before crashing out. In one of the first main events that I played I somehow luckboxed a 2nd place finish for about a grand, and after I did that I thought I knew everything there was to know about poker. I withdrew a decent chunk of it and with my remaining couple of hundred quid I jumped straight into 50nl cash, one-tabling and buying in for about £30. I won a bit the first couple of times I played it, but then I got absolutely crushed. I think scotty77 stacked me a couple of times in one session when I still obviously a huge whale. I lost the money I had remaining and had to re-deposit.
After that I stopped playing cash and went back to DYM's, by which time I was able to 4/5-table them because you can pretty much play them even if you're brain dead once your used to them. But again I wasn't winning anything really. I told myself I'd give cash one more go and started back down at 10nl with about 30 buy-ins. At the same time I started posted on the forum on here, and that's the overwhelming reason that my game started to improve. I learned so much from the good regs that posted on there. One time in particular I posted something like 'you should have raised to find out where you were' and then ladyfingers got me to question why this was a good thing to do and then I realised what I was saying didn't make much sense. Beaneh and lol_raise were two of the other posters that I really learned loads from. After that I slowly made my way up the limits, and meanwhile I won my first ever tournament for about £1700. That meant a lot to me because I had previously been heads up in tournaments about 3/4 times but had never won, so that was a major confidence boost. I made sure I sky-plused the highlights of the final table so I could live the moment again lol.
I think the 2 most important reasons for my game improving was the advice on the forums, and also the fact that I was able to bink some cashes so early into starting to play poker, because that gave me some money to be able to experiment with different things in cash games. Like when I was first started playing I used to be very passive but then after a while I experimented with being more laggy and found that worked for me. The best piece of advice that I ever got though was to always stop before you clck buttons, and think what you are trying to achieve, because when I first started playing the game I would do things without knowing why I was doing it, and so as a result I was making loadssss of bad decisions.
Anyway this had turned into a bit of an essay lol, hope it's an interesting read!
I first played poker in my local pub. Believe it or not I never gamble on horses, football or in casinos. All the guys in the pub had been watching the poker on television and decide to start a game. I was roped in because I drank with them. At the start I considered my £10 to be a donation to whichever one of them won.
After a couple of months of this, I started watching late night poker on the TV and gradually got a little better at the game, even winning on the odd occasion. The odd occasion got more frequent and we sarted to go to other pubs for their games, and found that I was cashing on a regular basis.
After a year or so I ventured into tournaments in our local casino and cashed in a chop for the final 3.
I started online poker after discovering channel 865 about 3 years ago. In that time I have had a winning ROI, but most of all have enjoyed the social side more than anything else.
I may be wrong, but I still don't consider myself a gambler!
.. We got married 3 months after this and I became "Mrs budgirl" or perhaps bud became "Mr yidette9". I'll let you decide that one ........
Posted by yidette9
Just came back to this thread and what a GREAT post Yidette!
Poker was inevatable as i,d gambled on just bout everything else. I ws living in Lanacster when i got my first computer about 10 years ago - wow - wheres the time gone - It was alao on dial up and used to crash a lot
Signed up for a cpl of bonuses and found I liked FL cash, so plyed that $1/$2 and hit a bit of success but lost overall. I then had break for a cpl of years when my girlfriend moved in and wasn,t to thrilled with me plying poker on a night , when I was working 12 hour days as well
i moved to Preston about 6 years ago and started playing recreationally again , mainly in sit and goes and in my local pub. still waasn,t that good
Started watching Sky 865 when i saw it at one of my m8,s and decided to join up. Lost again for acpl of years but had a cpl of results and started to learn more up until the last cpl of years where I,ve turned it into a small steady side income
One of the biggest things for me laerning was attending 3 SPT,s , the last been in Leeds. I learnt different stuff at each one and m tryting to keep on learning.
The best thing is that its taught me about Bankroll Management , which can be used in life as well as poker
I ply on 3 other sites occasionly, depending on the games but over 70% is on Sky and its a buzz trying to improve my sharkscope graphs and seeing them all in the black
I don,t make a lot but enjoy it and see it as the best hobby ever
Nice story _ You,ve certinly picked it up quickly as well - you can probably beat him now