Where did you learn to play?

Well my grandparents would always hold a family poker game when I was a kid. My grandma is the shiznit when it comes to poker, she makes so much money in poker it's unreal. I dont know what she does but she can play and she's not afraid to put her chips in the pot, lol. But she taught me, although I dont seem to do as well, mostly do to the fear-factor of losing money

I started playing low level limit holdem in Las Vegas back in 97. The game wasn't fast enough and bankroll swings were too frequent, so I got a friend of mine to send me $10 to start with at Paradise Poker. I slowly built that up to $100 and starting playing 1-2 limit, amazingly reaching $1500 before losing a few hundred playing BJ there and then cashing out. Using the money to hone my tournament skills.

It all started at a freinds house when i was 12 yrs old we would all meet on sat. with a jar of pennys an play all sorts of goofy games, dime store, baseball hi=lo jacks or better etc. We did that for years then we grew apart an went our seperate ways so no poker for a long time then i saw my kid playing on the computor one day an i was HOOKED! still learning this sly game of texas holdem but i love it!



Wiz!

Learnt how to play poker at littlewoods play tables but didn't stay long as it was all in every hand.Then looked for a micro limits site and ended up at the old paradise site playng 1c/2c limit which was fun for a while and a good place to learn but too slow eventually.
Deposited then at Bodog and played lots of 10 man sng paying 5 places which is great if ,like me , you play fairly tight ...you have to be bad to lose heavily in these.
All that was about 2 years ago. Am still learning everyday and enjoy playing other variants such as razz and stud at Stars.

I learned of the game during the last NHL strike but really started learning how to play proper poker here at CC through alot of questions and the posting of HH's.

i learned tp play 2 years ago,,, online at home...a friend taught me the basics...and then i played a lot,, and watched shows on tv,, and read some books,,, and quicky got better than that friend LOL....

own my own..

my first experiences of poker run back into my childhood.....im sure many of players remember ducking down behind some building at school with a group of kids which was anything but descreet......online my first experience was in my brothers house ,cant remember what site i played but i was hooked.....had to get this into my house....began at pacific poker in december 2006 ,knew nothing about mtt's and headed straight to the play money cash tables.....won a few ...lost a few ...but had learned of these games where thee were lots of players,and you could enter for free.....and win real money......wooo this is for me.....2 weeks later and many finishes so close to payouts,combined with my hunger..maybe impatience......no greed to play in the bigger buyin tourneys i decided to deposit via my credit card....5 instalments of £20 later....i am begining to "feel the burn"....and i know i must close this down......thankfully i managed to do so,dont like to think what damage i could have done....after some thought i decided to return to the free games and if i couldnt win there i was giving up..........this is maybe a bit long winded but if one person who is new reads this then i will be happy one person has been saved from the trap.....i then discovered new sites and my knowledge of the game improved,i leaned a lot in other forums from players who had been successful.....and have never deposited again to this date....and do not intend to again.... ....but as for learning how to play poker.....do we ever stop?

My father taught me the rules when I was young, but I was lousy.
I got the poker bug by watching the WPT on TV.
I didn't really learn to play until I entered a $100 charity tournament and knocked out on hand #5. After that my wife bought me a book, which lead to another book, and another, and then third place in my next tournament.

Used to get drunk as a kid and play stupid poker a lot, but just got into playng "real" Holdem for play money about two months back, trying to weed through the all in idiots in the freerolls is super annoying, and I get sucked out pretty damn quick. Although since joining CC I have placed in the money four out of fifteen sit n go's I've played in the past 6 days.

I first started playing with some former co-workers, but really didn't have a cle at the time. Obviosly I was the scker at the table back then. Eventally I started playing online at partypoker with free chips for qite a while, then started to read everything I could find. Now I actually do well at the home games, and am slowly improving my online game. My sites now are Ultimatebet or Fulltilt.

Started playing poker way back in ’81-’82 when I was 16. The family started holding a Saturday night poker night and when I was 16 I was invited in on a few nights. I mainly learned 5 and 7 card stud games along with draw games and there was always the BS wild cards, which at 16 was actually fun because I really had no idea what I was doing. After a few nights of Donking out a few wins, the family decided I didn’t need to keep playing and since my Mom was bankrolling my buy-in I didn’t have a lot to say about it.

I inevitably found a few games here and there in High School after that, but not many people that interested, so my interest started to drift. After High School I found a few games here and there but most of the time they were too few and too far apart to keep my interest. So as result I drifted into and out of gambling throughout my 20.

In my 30’s I really had no connection to anything poker related until one night in 2003 when I was flipping around and stumbled onto one of the first WPT shows. I caught it right at the beginning while channel surfing with my wife and boys and when it was finished I remember looking to my wife and saying, “Did we just watch 2 hours of poker?!”

That new format of seeing the whole cards snagged me and I finally had the bug bite me hard. I jumped onto the bandwagon along with everyone else. Right off the bat I knew that many of the hands being played out were really iffy, but seeing the big bluffs really did spike my interest. I started to read Sklansky, Harrington, along a few others and I found many worthwhile articles through Google searches. Today I am working on my own poker web site and still learning.

A buddy and I co-host a Home Grown Poker night that we hold every other month and we get between 30-40 players. I look at poker as a cool personal puzzle and a great social tool that brings people together. I have only met a few people at the card table that I wouldn’t call a friend and I can’t say the same about people I meet at work or anywhere else.

learned to play with my DAD and his buddies when I was about 15 years old.

I learnt to play poker from friends and now just been playing online and watching few pro's to try and get better

my first experience playin was on ultimatebet freeroll 5 yrs ago.......its kinda been a whirlwind since then but id like to think i learned a thing or 2 in my experiences there

I started playing poker over 4 years ago after watching WPT and WSOP on TV. I played my first game at Clicks Billard in Texas.

Watching poker on TV then Doyle's and Harrington's books. Went on to play money on the internet (Full Tilt, Pokerstars, UltimateBet). Then on to real money games where I successfully lost $500.

I first learned to play in family gathering games at 11 years old. In high school I used to play my biker uncle at lunchtime (my house was a block from school) winning some extra cash from him. I played in jail and prison. Dangerous place to gamble and be a big winner. I learned to shear sheep not skin them, to skin them is to place your life on the line. So I would stick to small stakes never over a hundred dollars in cash,trade or canteen. When i was beating someone bad I would soft play and dump some back to the guy if he was somebody. I would never do that now. Only in that situation.
I played in small cash games with friends or when i was invited. I would always be a consistant winner. I played loball in California card clubs but I never really liked to play that game all the time. When the laws changed I played holdem and stud 2-4 dollar range every once in awhile.
I've been playing online seriously for about 4 mos and for the first time that I can remember I'm down about a $1000 over that time. It sucks for me because I'm not used to losing in poker. But online is a different beast and I feel the last few months my game has vastly improved. Ive been learning the math and odds. My play is starting bear fruit ( winning or placing big field tourneys)Keeping a small bankroll on microlimit cash games. I watch TV and see these young players that win or at least make final tables in major events and I feel that their play is at or close to my skill. I'm giving myself this year and another grand to see if I can get back even and maybe play for a small profit.

Started playing poker in college every Tuesday night with all the friends. Have not stopped since.

ive spent hours upon hours putting out rounds of hands and assessing the percentages and decisions associated with each player

learned alot from world poker tour played 3 finale tables at same time at absolute an learnd alot that day. but really learn most of real play at poker.com playing in freerolls building bank then playing 25$ nl tables an 3000$ freerolls everyday an 20,000 freeroll.

I Learned To Play At School In My English Class. And i Wondered Why I Hold School Record Gettin A negative 2 Percent in His Class And Had To Go To Summer School.. Lol

I learn from my father who pass away 15 years ago

i started to learn how to play limit in a casino the upgraded to 4 / 8 pl d/c aka dealers choice witch means hm om pineapple or crazey pine but it was mostly omaha those pot odds are hard to calculat then i whent on to learn bacarraatt omg amazing hahah but i prefere tourneys or 1/2 nlhm or 4/8 omaha hi i hate h/l i think it is so stupid its like lotto but i hate most freerolls online cause its just allin allin allin in the begining which blows but i think the most warm friendly site is eaither tiger gaming first choice then pokerstars Ultimatebet is wayyyyy to loose with there chips

kai

Learned it from TV then read a book and practice loads

I guess I should finally post on this thread. I learned to play hold'em by watching it on ESPN back when I was a freshman in college. I then began playing play money games online. From there, I went to playing small buy-in tournaments with people in my dorm.

I learned to play all other poker games by playing them for play money online and watching WSOP coverage. I also read up on the rules for the games online.

Yo to all cardschat people

The place where i learned to play poker:
It was at my brothers house when i turned 18, about a few months after i saw a television show where they played poker at the world series event, and i saw people playing i thought hey, why dont i start playing poker and see how good i am, as it turned out im a very good poker player , then i started to get involved in poker allot, i love poker so much , i had to see it everyday , haha, and then :

after seen the movie ROUNDERS, i started playing it . So im playing for about 1 and a half year now



One day Hall of poker fame.

My poker started in the family kitchen, HEHEHE.

I really started to learn though, in the pool hall and then the charity casino events in my city. Finally they opened real casinos here in Canada and that was the best and worst time of my life LOL.
There was no internet when I started so the learning took a lot longer than it does today, and you had to worry about some of the people that you beat on a good day(bad day). There were a lot of beatings that took place after the games back in those days.

i learned it on europoker. then i began to play home games with my friend and as i got 18 i started to play at pokerstars for real cash.

i learned to play from a girl
she played sometimes with her brother and teached me
never stopped since then

as this is my first post on the forum ill have to say:

I never really had a teacher in poker stuff or sumthing, been watching bit of televised poker and started playing online, now also more live poker and had a good success last year with 2 live money finishes

playin 3 years now and learned all by my own and by the lot of hands that i am playing, guess it was not too bad that way

well i learned playing poker at a site called stayonpoker,but like this forum wery much to.

My father in law taught me the hand rankings and then watching the world series of poker on tv helped. But i really started getting in depth with poker when i started playing the freerolls at ultimate bet. Now i have been playing for 4 years and it is my favorite pasttime.

Watched loads of it on tv when it first came on skysports, poker million and stuff. I was about 15 and really enjoyed it, and tried to convince friends how good it was but they ignored me until they actually gave it a chance and realised how exciting it could be. Couple of months later we had our first few games and they started getting bigger stakes as we got jobs and could afford it, lol, and they got more regular.

Wasn't until a half year into playing with my mates, just after I turned 17, I discovered online poker but obviously it was tricky finding sites that you could get round age restrictions. Pacific poker play money was the first place, played there for a few months until I went on pokerroom. Funnily enough, now I have turned 18 and have got an account at pokerstars I have played very little as the mates I played with got spread about at uni and neteller won't take my card just now.

I learned to play poker in the army. Not holdem 5 & 7 card stud & 5 card draw. 1955- 1958

Duane