Quote from gotmessner:
Now could you answer my question:
For someone who wants to get into poker, where should i go to learn? Could you give me a list of books to get? (From beg-advanced).
Thanks!
I started off playing real money poker about six months ago at Paradise Poker, when they had a promotion offering a free $2 account to try out their microlimit tables. At Paradise Poker, they had $0.02/$0.04 tables, so you could actually play with only a $2 account balance.
Obviously, the weakest of all players can be found at their microlimit tables, but I was an extremely weak player as well. Over a month or so, I began to learn better play, and got my balance up to about $10 (not a very good hourly rates, lol). Slowly, I was able to progress from the $0.02/0.04 tables up to the nickel/dime tables, then to the $0.10/$0.20 tables, and the $0.25/$0.50 tables... Note: For good poker money management, they recommend your bankroll be at least 300 times the size of the big bet at the table. So, to play at a $0.50/$1.00 table, you should have at least $300 in your account.
Anyway, to make a long story short... I am not playing at the $3/$6 tables and my account (after peaking at over $1900) is now at about $1650, not a bad return on a free $2 initial account. Note that I switched from Paradise Poker to Party Poker one my account got above ~$200, as I figured Party Poker had more weak players due to their extensive advertising.
For someone wanting to get started in online poker, I would recommend starting out at a place like Paradise Poker, with extremely low limit tables (and weak players). Only move up in level once you can consistently beat the players at the lower tables, and only once your bankroll can handle the increased risk of the higher limit tables. In order to better learn the game, I recommend buying Turbo Texas Holdem software (~$99) and PokerTracker software (~$80) is a good program to track your performance, as well as the tendencies of your opponents. In terms of books, I have heard that the books by Sklansky are very good, and I've just ordered two of them myself.
To summarize, online poker is very beatable at the lower levels. As you move up, your game must be consistently better, or you will lose money. This is a great self regulating process, as you can move back down a level or two in order to build back profits that were taken away from you at higher levels. As your game improves, then you will be able to profit at the higher levels, as well. I am currently finding that the $3/$6 games are about the best competition that I can handle. Overall, I am slightly profitable at this level, but not nearly as profitable as I was at the $2/$4 tables. I suspect that I would be getting my butt consistently kicked at the $5/$10 tables, so clearly, it would be stupid to go there for me. Anyway, fun game... good for building discipline... good diversion from trading, when needed... potentially nicely profitable...
-Eric
P.S. I've got a tourney at Party Poker tonight. ~800 people entered, top 2 finishers when paid trips to Vegas and $10k entry fees for this years World Series of Poker. My odds of finishing in the top two? Probably about 1 in 50,000... But, fun to dream.
