Where did you learn to play?

i grew up playing with family and friends

I have to agree with you there Lavitz. It might only be nickle and dime poker but just knowing that the money is real does affect how people play. I learned on Poker Stars a few years back (NHL Lockout) but I quickly threw in $50 to give it a go and started playing $5 SNG's with 9 players. In three weeks I cashed out $150 and left my original $50 in there. Since then however the competition has incresed exponentially as poker has continued to grow.

Newfyninja

Initially I learned poker among my friends and when I became familiar with the game then I joined the
online poker room.

i learned to play in college at home games....i got hooked and have been playing in casinos and online forever

Started live 1 & half year, and didn't knew anything about it.
Some friends played sng at a bar, in a land where poker is ilegal and nobody knows anything about poker, except it's brings disgrace.

Loved the game and started well, beginners luck obv.
But those guys after all didn't know so much as I tough, it was a Hold'em without burned cards, without min bet = BB so when the blind were at 1000 we could bet 25!!! Also 1k chips and the blinds always doubled... 25-50, 50-100, 100-200, 200-400, 400-800, 800-1600... frequently when blinds got 400/800 everyone was at the table... and winner takes all was a rule. Rarely 2nd place was discussed.

Today live games are at my place, with high standards and good tables. Only one of those guys plays frequently with us, and the rest of them still complaint about the new rules lol

So, live for fun and online to quit job someday

I learned from playing freerolls on full tilt and pokerstars.
I still have a round 2 ticket on Poker stars that is like 2 years old.

The school of hard knocks lol best place to learn anything, I learnt nearly (i said nearly, the rest i learnt from here lol) everything i know from playing in a lil card school in a, now, friends attic, my other mate invited me along one saturday, got my ass handed to me and lost about €150, that was about a year or so ago and i haven't looked back since. Must've been a very good place to get my poker education because the group used to take regular trips to venlo casino to play in their €50 rebuy tourny every friday night, and out of the 5 or 6 that went there was always guarenteed to be at least 2 of us out of 50 entrants on the final table every week, it was generally a very skilled and clued up card school, those were some good times

On a side note and in reply to some other posts in this thread, My reccomendation would be to sack off the play money, i always try it when i sign up to a new site just to get a feel for the software and the standard of play never fails to amaze me, nowadays theres plenty of places that you can get live experience for cheap and i think thats the best way.
I think that knowledge learned in a live card room can be transfered online quite easily, whereas someone who learns online has to learn a whole lot more things when he goes into a casino for the first time, chip handling, string betting etc you see the casino newbie online players a mile off with their shaking hands and their huge grins, i was terrified the first time i went to a casino to play but when you start seeing the hands people are showing down you realise that there's just as many bad players in a casino as there are online, even if they do insist on talking the talk after every hand lol

i actually was playing hold em before it became so popular like 5 or 6 yrs ago. i was playing at my buddies house and he said lets play hold em, i learned and i was hooked. anyways ive learned a lot since then and im going to the wsop this year so everyone from cc i hope you guys cheer me on.

I 1st seen poker on tv I think it was WPT with in about 5min i was hook I did'nt know what beat what at that time but i just love to see how the hands played out and still do.. I if i dont have anyone to play with i will play hands by my self to see how it pan's out.. I will deal out lets say around 3 to 4 fake players and to my self.. Then i will play out the hand.. I will bet raise fold a few players hands and see what sort of hand i can make.. once i get good i might start playing for real money.. Well have a local live freerolls every night down here so i might go and see what there all about some time..

With my buddies from highschool. We all just started playing every weekend and eventually we all got the hang of it. Of course, some of us got better than others.

Well i saw my friend was playing freeroll on internet and thats the way how i interested poker. Now i am doing great 0.15/25 stakes

I have started playing small tournaments in betfair in which you can not lose a lot of money at once! I have found now a new site bet821poker.com in which the players are not experts and i can actually make some money!!! It seems to be a new site and there are a lot of players that are even playing for first time!
Still have a lot to learn but improving!

I learned to play poker in prison. Eight to ten hours a day for four years... I got out, rounded up a few games, and haven't stopped rounding up games since... Not quite eight hours a day anymore (who has time for that?), but still play a lot...

-Keebs212842

i learned to play poker on the tv seeing texas holdem poker. so i decided to play online, and learn more about poker.

I started playing at party poker and from there i now have about a dozen sites that i play at....

I wasnt into poker at all until a friend of mine showed me how. He brought me to Ultimate Bet and taught me the basics, got me to fold almost everything under A9 and I was folding everything under A10. Then I went and practiced on my own till because he intimidated me a lot. I just needed to learn on my own without too many pressures. After that, we played together and he explained certain plays and why I should play such a way or avoid playing in another way.

Not long after that I was winning tourneys and found that I had a great grasp of the games.

well i started play while i was in AIT which is after Basic and my battle buddy showed me a little bit..lol and now im a full blown poker junkie. When i got home my uncle took me to a poker club in my home town and I just loved it so much i started playing every tourney the had...of course i had about 8000 bucks from the army so i could aford it..now i gotta play a little more smart..but i do ok most times

I learned to play poker with my friends at our weekly home cash game.
I read a couple books on poker with The Theory of Poker being the most help. It really got me thinking into deeper concepts of the game and I think made me realize how poker has so much math involved in it. I then started playing online and have been hooked on poker ever since.

I used to play rummy and 5 card draw around 12 - 13 y.o.. From there I just matured into the all around good player that I am, lol.

HI IM 19 YEARS OLD I STARTED ABOUT 2 YEARS AGO FIRST STARTED PLAYING ON POKER STARS THEN MOVED ONTO FULL TILT THEN MANSION POKER THEN ALL THE POKERS TO TRY THEM OUT BUT I AINT GOT ANY CASH SO I JUST PLAY FOR PLAY MONEY BUT IM THE BEST AT POKER I WILL MAKE A DEPOSIT 1 DAY

Im sure this is all true but you need to fix your caps button

actually i started playing when i was 12 years old... on pokerstars.com...i played for about a year of g/l omaha and holdem for play money.. then i started to join freerolls.. won 2 in a row... got about 30$ and built it to 1000g then cashed it out through assistance of a friend.. beacaus i was 15 at the time and could not cash out myself.. ive been playing a for quite a long time now both on pacific and pokerstars Im Leagle to play today and just building up my exp

to be a good poker player u need lots of luck and know when to fold-them i played play money for years and still a loser

A neighbor pulled me in to his home game. I did pretty well- it was just limit hold em, $20 buy in to begin with. I learned as I played. Later it progressed to no-limit and the serious players began to show up.
Buy-in eventually went up to $200, and I decided that it wasn't for me anymore. I managed to stay ahead, but the players were there to win money, not to play poker.
This same neighbor introduced me to UltimateBet- more my speed. I greatly enjoy the freeroll tourneys.

Grew up in the working class Irish-catholic scene where every sunday nite and most holidays, the extended family broke out their massive buckets of quarters and dollar bills after a "few" drinks and started to throw down.

Didn't matter whose house we were at, someone always had the buckets!

I got bored with the "family games" drunken bickering and politics and bought a book on texas holdem and drove down to foxwoods on a regular basis to get my "education" on the game (<head kicked in repeatedly), so I PAYED for my lessons. It wasn't until the advent of online poker, when I got to play alot of hands and really start to learn the game properly.

Needless to say, when I look back at pre-online days of driving 2 hrs to the casino to make my deposits (occasional wins), I cringe. I've learned a ton about the game by playing thousands of hands online and devouring countless articles and forum posts.

Now, I'm a profitable poker bum who plays in his jammies till noon...

Even I dont learned , lol

I learned poker with my boyfriend, he is a litle shark!!!

chikiloka

I started playing poker in 1967 on the family kitchen table (at 4yrs. of age). Poker is what my family did at get-togethers (grandparents included on Sunday dinners).
As a young teen, I had managed to track down most of the players in my area, one of whom's father had a room set up in their home much like a mini-casino (a craps table always running, a blackjack table, and of course 'a poker table'). Buy-ins could be made by pawning off a bicycle (or whatever? in their three car garage,.. set up like pawn shop). There were 3 sons there, all very adept at poker, with their father travelling to Vegas regularly and often sitting in at the table with the rest of us.
Progressed from there in late teens and early twenties to more serious 'home games', high stakes and insanity.
Been playing online for less than a year now,.. had a recent surge of interest sparked inside of me after viewing a bit of tv Hold'em. Since then, have read umpteen books (the Harrinton Series, Sklansky, Gordon's, Brunson's, Helmuth's, and an ass't. of others,... I highly recommend anyone to pick up a few good poker books,.. will make a HUGE difference to your game for sure!!!).
Still workin' at trying to master the online game,... a pretty loose proposition in the micro stakes, a place I intend on staying at for awhile although am pretty certain the finer subtletys of the game would be appreciated more at higher buy-in levels,.. but what the hell, I still like playin' the game so much that I'll occassionally even go on 'freeroll mania'.
GL with your game,... 40yrs. now for me this year!.... still gettin better each day,.. knowing I have LOTS more to learn.
hope to see ya on the felt!

I learned to play poker from my dad. I used to sit behind him while he was playing poker and i eventually learned the game. I took his style and from it i made my on. Now my dad and I both do very well in most cardschat tournies.

Well, I learned 5 card draw when I was 7...but my mom was affraid that I got addicted so she hide the cards from me....few years later I remember that when I was watching WSOP on ESPN. So, in 2006 I had a decent internet connection and was able to download Partypoker and learn the game playing...Now I blame her for not be a millionare...lol

good luck you all

Reading the Phil gordon´s book

I learned by playing 5 card draw with my family, then seeing holdem on TV and looking up the rules.

hi,
i try to play poker. we play it at school break times. 30 years ago. but not for money. only for fun.
2007 i looked tv poker and the i tried a download.

i think you learn by playing every day. learning does not end.

with red race greatings

ferrari

i learned from a friend who explained the fundamentals to me, he was playing on PS at that moment, so i joined too. then i started to learn on my own, with some books, and tutorials etc.

I also learnt to play online, I like most played in free play money games to start and also agree that is a bad way to learn. Now I play online mostly and with friends sometimes.