My Introduction Into the Poker World
Hmmm…. Where to start?
As you can tell, this is my first post at this forum but I’ve been lurking here for almost a month now, reading other people’s posts and gathering tons of information.
I’ve known how to play poker almost all of my life, and I use to play when I was younger, but I never played for money and I never took it seriously. It was just something fun to do. But sometime in early July, I decided that I wanted to learn the game seriously and become good at it, so for the past month or so, I’ve been taking a “crash course” in the World of Poker, and I must say that I am beginning to see the results of the work.
Currently, I am grinding it out at the .5-.10 No Limit tables at Ultimate Bet and I plan to stay there until I can consistently win. Once I get my bankroll built up enough, and once I’ve shown that I can handle the swings at this level and be a consistent winner, I guess I will move up to the .10-.25 tables, but I’m comfortable for now. I want to do this right.
All of this wouldn’t be possible though, if it weren’t for you guys and this website in particular from whom I’ve learned a lot from. When I first started playing in early July, I had no clue about the value of position, what check-raising was, what “outs” were, and I had a very elementary understanding of odds.
Okay, okay. I’ll say it. I was a fish.
I was the kind of guy who would stay on a straight draw, call pot sized bets, and lose half of my stack because “it’s just one more card”, and I would hardly ever hit that one card.
But thanks to some heavy reading, and some live experience, I think its safe to say that I’ve moved out of the “fish category”, but with plenty of things still to learn.
Already, the valuable information I’ve learned on this site and a few other sites, have helped me immensely in home SNG’s. About once a week, there’s a group of anywhere from 6-10 people who get together and play, and ever since I’ve started my Poker Education, I’ve finished in the money consistently, and won it a few times.
It’s not that I’m that good of a player, its just that these guys are just that bad.
If ten people show up, you can be guaranteed to make it to at least the top six by just being patient and folding crappy hands that have no chance of winning. Most of them play way too many hands and they can’t sense a trap to save their lives. To be open about it, setting traps is the best strategy in games like these, because they don’t really understand the game, and I win big pots off of them by doing it. But I do understand that you have to change your strategy depending on the table you’re sitting at, but I think that the most important thing is that I would NEVER have noticed ANY of these observations without starting my Poker Education online and at this site.
Due to these studies, I can objectively grade my playing.
I now know when I should’ve folded but got lucky on the turn.
I now recognize when I played it well and just took a bad beat.
I now recognize that position is everything.
And now I’m grasping the concepts of bankroll management.
I guess I share the same goals as most people at this forum do: become a good, consistent profit making poker player, and maybe one day be good enough to hold my own at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. I hope these aspirations are not out of my reach.
I know that I have a long way to go, and a long way to grind it out, but I must give a thank you to the fellow players at this site for spreading their invaluable knowledge.
If someone has any suggestions or constructive criticism, please do share. I'll do whatever it takes to become a better player.
And if anyone else here plays at Ultimate Bet, let me know!
Thanks
