I've played live poker games off and on for most of my adult life, but it's only recently that poker has become my main leisure activity. It started five or six years ago when they started showing poker tournaments on ESPN. This was my introduction to Texas Holdem, which I'd never heard of before, and also to the tournament format. Not long after that the poker boom hit New Zealand; all the pubs chucked out their karaoke machines and started running Texas Holdem tournaments for bar tab prizes. I played in a few of these and even went up to the Auckland Casino a few times to try my hand at the games up there, but it wasn't till I read my first poker book that I really got the bug.
After reading a few poker books I realised that there was actually a lot of theory and strategy to poker play and that there were even people who made a living out of playing the game. Well, I read a lot and played in as many games as I could find. Fortunately, a local pub started playing regular low buy-in cash tournaments and my wife and I went to quite a few of those. After about nine months of steady losses I actually started winning a few games.
Then, at the start of last year, I finally entered the 21st century and bought a computer! One of the first things I did was to download a poker program and start playing online. Although its become quite hard to find live games at a reasonably low buy-in, I can play online anytime I like and, most importantly, at any buy-in level I like.
So that's where I am now. I play every Wednesday night and I try to fit in at least one other session during the week if I can. It's my intention to post something on this site every time I play. I hope you'll join me as I try to climb the poker learning curve.
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