Online Poker

I've been flirting with this for a while now, i'm not by nature a big gambler. I've only rarely ever put a bet on the football over the years, i've never bet on the horses not even the Grand National.

However i did play a wee bit of poker back in university, just among friends and for small stakes but we took the trouble of customising our flat. What had been the dinner table got a layer of green felt put on top of it and even more worryingly one of the lads messed about with the overhead light so that we could raise and lower it above the table for added atmosphere. Added to the conveinent wall mounted optic it made for some fun poker evenings before we'd go out on the town.

Poker has increasingly being coming into the mainstream in this country and you can now quite easily watch the World Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker, and various other events on television. It's been watching these over the last year or so that has slowly but surely rekindled my interest in the game.

So seeing that many of the people on these shows qualified from online tournaments i thought i'd have a look. I checked out a few and found one that seems coshure and easy to use and started off using their play money tournaments. Designed to encourage those nervous to part with their cash it's a free way of praticing against real opponents. Lost all my chips a few times before started doing a little better and after taking my $1000 starting bankroll to over £26000 i thought maybe i should start playing for real cash.

I was well aware however that playing for kiddy on money and playing for real money was two entirely different things. People will play a lot looser than when it isn't their money their losing and i'd certainly be a lot warier playing No limits Texas hold em with my own cash. So i took a bit of time to think about it, being naturally quite cautious. Eventually however i succumbed to temptation and signed up for $30 worth of chips. Just enough to have a decent stab at the low limit games. If i can keep my money and build on it then i can think of tournaments and bigger prizes.

So how is going so far? Not to bad as it happens, i registered back on the 6th of June or something and even with the holiday break in the middle i've not played a great deal. I'd find it hard to justify putting in more money if i lose my stake so i've only really played a few times and for an hour or so at most. I got about $5 up after my first sitting, not much but i was happy with that. After my second sitting though i had lost that and about $5 more. I was annoyed with myself because i knew that after losing a few hands i'd played some bad poker and just exacerbated my orignal mistakes. So i stayed away for a bit, read up a bit on strategy and came back to the tables just the other day.

So i know i got quite lucky with the first few hands i got dealt but i played much better over two sittings and i found myself almost $25 up for the day and $16 up from where i started. If i can consolidate that and slowly but surely get up to about $100 i shall think about entering a tournament and maybe go all the way to the World Series of Poker?