I love beginnings, when everything seems so open and new, so full of possibility (cue sunshine and rainbows). Meh, who am I kidding? Like any typical Gemini, I will probably fixate on this for a while, then it will slowly trail off into wherever land these things end up. However, I am giving myself the following hard and fast guidelines: I will keep this up regularly for a minimum of 6 weeks, with at least 2 posts per week. Following this I will conduct an internal examination, and if I find that my motivation is still high and I think that I am perhaps even posting things that others might want to read, then I will humbly come before IGGY and ask that he peruse my humble beginner blog and perhaps mention it to others so that they may read it. Upon successful completion of this task I will then start to improve the blog with linking and other such things. Let us hope that the stars and poker gods align so that all goes well.
Perhaps I am motivated to do this because I am currently running on 1 hr. of sleep in the last 36. I certainly hope not as that would be a true shame. Perhaps it would be a good idea to try and post only when I am as exhausted as possible, as I seem to be frequently hit with nasty bouts of insomnia. NOTE TO SELF: EXAMINE THIS IDEA AFTER SOME SLEEP.
OK, so now a bit of background, stay with me I will do my best to be brief (who am I kidding? It will not be). I began playing poker in late September of '03, so that would make what, 14/15 months now? There were a couple of month long periods in there where I played no poker, so let's just call that thing under my belt a solid year of experience. My very first playing experience (and I mean FIRST at 27, how sad) I played for about 3 weeks in early September with simply play money and grabbed ahold quick, playing every chance I got and doing pretty well. So before I decided to start playing with real money, I figured I needed to get a book and better learn some basic strategy. WARNING: Before I continue I have to give fair warning lest you fall from your chair groaning or piss yourself laughing at my beginner naiveté, STEEL YOURSELF.
I purchased Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Helmuth Jr. YET ANOTHER NOTE: This is where I would love to say "Oh, the humanity." However it belongs to the great IGGY so I shall have to think of something clever for me to say at the appropriate points later on down the line.
So, continuing onward, I read the book and then proceed to take Mr. Helmuths advice (STEEL YOURSELF AGAIN) to start out with $100 on the $1/2 limits and follow his book and you should be just fine. Now, while this was not the worst advice in the world (although it MUST be ranking in the lower third as far as advice rankings might go) it was certainly not good advice, as risk of ruin for a rank beginner such as myself is pretty high. Luckily, I was smart enough to do a bit of bonus whoring at InterPoker, caught some nice cards along with super tight play, and have not looked back. During this time, I also discovered PokerStars (a wonderful site, especially for tourneys), and ground out some nice money on Sit-n-Gos and cheap MTT's. Now, let me briefly touch on time spent playing. Of course, it was hot and heavy at first, utilizing every spare second to play poker, but then tapered/surged/tapered/surged. My actual play has tapered BIGTIME in the last couple of months due to a new job (sysadmin), a lot of schoolwork (approximately 7 mos. away from my B.S., better late than never right?), and what I feel is the need to spend more time diligently studying the game (I'm currently working through SSHE for the second time).
I am going to stop here lest this turn into an uber-posting, which I never so brazenly try to do on my first time out, so let me wind up with this:
I love the game of poker because it is a pursuit of something in which perfection can never be achieved, and that alone makes it a worthy pursuit. It is similar to the reason that I love the IT field, because there is always something new to learn, regardless of your level. Remember, if we stop learning new things, we risk becoming VERY lame as people (crap, I think I just described the public at large, especially those who support G.W., but that is for another post I guess). Poker has enabled me to support many other habits, namely video games and the never-ending pursuit of building the perfect powerful PC, and while it is modest, I will tell you that over the last year farting around, experimenting with my game, and generally wallowing in my own initial inexperience, I show a profit of $1500. Yes, I know that others have done more and done it faster, but it makes me no less proud, and I will continue to talk about the who, what, why of it all future posts.
Look out for the next one, where as always, I will be Thinking Big, but my head will be Much Bigger. (I may have forgotten to mention earlier that I have a HUGE melon. I'm not kidding, ginormous. Not the biggest mind you, but definitely up there)
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