Hello!

I've seen the introduction topic, but I decided to go a bit more briefly in my introduction so I'm setting up my own thread. I'm going to use this thread as a record keeping for myself, since I'm starting online cash game playing soon. If it is a rule breaking, just give me a warning and I'll move my post in the introduction topic and make a new topic for the records. Thank you.

Here it goes.

I stumbled across this forum by googling some poker stuff, can’t remember what exactly. So I registered and lurked, watched, read and came to a conclusion that this might be a very healthy resource of poker advices that I might use in my future poker games. Since I made a few posts I realized I should introduce myself and explain why I am here.

When it comes to my poker knowledge and experience, I should mention that I am 19 and that I started playing Hold ’em about 8 months ago and that I mostly played SnG tourney based home games (no cash games, I’ll explain why later in the post) and freerolls on various online poker clients just to get a grip of online MTT. I never played any other “gambling” game (“gambling” because I, like many other, consider poker to be a game of skill including many factors and not a “game of luck”) except Hold’ em because, like I mentioned in ( ) it’s a game of skill and knowledge.

From the start I took the game seriously. I downloaded various books like Harington’s volume 1, 2 and 3, Doyle’s Super System, and many other random books and started reading and exploring the wonderful world of poker. I tend to improve my skills each day by reading, playing, and watching. In such a short amount of time a managed to read a vast amount of quality discussions, collected many helpful advices that will help me improve my game as a Hold ‘em player and I thank all of the members for their advices. That’s why I’ve come here, to learn to learn and to learn!

I haven’t started playing online for cash because I live in a shitty country “Bosnia and Herzegovina” (most of you probably didn’t hear about it) where financial problems are something normal and where “not having money” is something quite usual, and where having a credit card is like having a space ship! We have only 1 casino in town and there is a 20€ BB cash table set up each month or something like that and some freezeout tournaments with 50€+ buyins or 30€+ rebuy tournaments. Considering the usual salary of one citizen which is around 300€ those prices are ridiculous and there is no room for us “ordinary” players to play there. Same characters are always playing there and that’s not poker at all. Most of them just play Hold ‘em like it’s a slot machine, they just don’t understand the complexity of the game and they play it on a luck factor, but they have the money, while others don’t, and thus play.

That’s the main reason I’ve only been playing home games, tournament based, because it’s affordable for many of us who love this game here. Our buy-ins are like 5€+ for freezeouts, or 3€ - 5€ for rebuy tournaments. If we have more than 10 players we tend to play the game on two tables and then moving on a final table when enough players are kicked out from the game. Not some major money but we like the game and from my modest opinion I think we play a pretty nice poker.

I have a friend who has a credit card and is willing to add 50€ on my stars account so I should be playing 2€nl in quite short amount of time so wish me best of luck.

So, that would be it, I am proud to be a member of a top quality poker board!

Thank you for reading!

Good luck. You should come into IRC.

Originally Posted by nish81

Bosnia as in the recently seceded country? Cool. I also wish you good luck, and agree that you should come in IRC to chat to us all

Well, depends on what "recent" is to you .

Yes it seceded after the war, well when the war started exactly.

Now it's an independent country for arround 14 years.

Welcome to FTR, it's a great place to be. Make sure you sign up to ICR (if you haven't already).

Poker, contrary to popular belief, IS gambling. Wikipedia's (very good) definition for gambling is: "the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome". That's exactly what poker is. "Gambling" and "game of skill and knowledge" don't exclude one another. On the contrary - successful gambling TAKES a lot of skill and knowledge.

By the way, there's a "Blogs and Operations" forum under "Poker Etcetera"; you might want to move your thread over there.