should i keep playing serious poker?? (very long)

[DCWildcat 0]

You made the same two mistakes I, and many others, have made: 1. You played games for which your bankroll was woefully insufficient2. You made way too many judgments of your own, and everyone else's, ability, given your extreme lack of experience both online and in personIgnore what your mom said. Every poker player has to do that at some point. If you feel you want to try again--and it seems you have the talent to make money at poker--deposit something small, like $100, and--this is extremely important--play pames relative to your bankroll size, not your perception of your opponents' ability. If you are far superior, then your bankroll will grow and allow you to play against the people you should play.

[ddudley 0]

You made the same two mistakes I, and many others, have made: 1. You played games for which your bankroll was woefully insufficient2. You made way too many judgments of your own, and everyone else's, ability, given your extreme lack of experience both online and in personIgnore what your mom said. Every poker player has to do that at some point. If you feel you want to try again--and it seems you have the talent to make money at poker--deposit something small, like $100, and--this is extremely important--play pames relative to your bankroll size, not your perception of your opponents' ability. If you are far superior, then your bankroll will grow and allow you to play against the people you should play.

Great advice there, read that one at least twice.I would also add, it seems like you are quite impatient. Maybe it's just the way you wrote about your experience but, it sure seems like you jump around from table to table every hour or two. Why would you ever leave a game with 75% PPF and a pot average of 12.5 big bets? I would have stayed in that game until all the bad players left or I was too tired to keep my eyes open. Besides that, at 3/6 HE, it seemed like you had actually settled into a limit that was at not going to bust you in 5 hours. Pretty much after your AA went down in flames to a 200 to 1 shot, it seemed like you never came off tilt. You have to remember that you are going to take a lot of bad beats in games like this but you are also going ot make a lot of money over the LONG run. The long run is at least 1000 hours of play.If you are as good as you say, you'd be an idiot to quit poker just because you lost your first $100. Even if you play as a hobby, you can expect to make hundreds of thousands of dollars over a life time. But, when you buy in again, slow down, you've got the rest of your life to play poker, it's all one big long session. If you are making 2 big bets per hour you are crushing the game. It took me almost 150 hours of play before I started winning consistantly.

[karasz 0]

the sense of walking into a room... or clicking on a seat is needed to be a great one... but you also gotta know that you are NOTHING yet... poker you gotta take babysteps for the 'roll to build, cuz lets face it, you had no experience what-so-ever and your playing in some pretty big games right after a huge win, $700 bucksbut i gotta ask- why leave the game you made 7x your buy in?you're 19... no need to totally jump into the deep end of the pool yet... yeah you gotta take some risks, but they have to be selective and well thought out... you screwed up, its part of being human... just learn from it instead of falling into the trap again

[koolromeo 0]

For the guys that play and win at a level consistently, I have a question for you. What percent of total money is inserted into your regular games by guys who just take a stab at a level and are hoping for short term luck, to hit it big? I'd propose that poker would be ridiculously difficult to be a winner at if it weren't for these people. In short, don't be that guyi think this is a great point. if u replay one of your big winning sessions in your mind, i'd bet that the table was full of these types of players.for the original poster. it never occurred to you that maybe the reason you lost your money was because of your arrogance? " I made money, lost it, made more lost, it, and after 5 hours comming out even (with what i considered horrible luck) moved to the omaha high table (my first time at this game but i've thought a lot about it and seen it at the WSOP and figured correctly i would be better than everyone there). I lost 150 dollars at this game, varying limits, on some of the worst luck i've ever seen. " you sit down to play a game you've never played, think you're the best at the table, and are suprised that you lost your money. if you ran into jackie chan, would u think u could beat him in a karate match because you liked to watch kung fu theater on tv?

[Filesharer 0]

My 2 cents would be: stick to one game and one limit. Beat .25-.50 LHE, then move up to .50-1 when you have 300 BB. If you can beat .25-50 you can probably beat .50-1.don't:learn to beat .50-1 LHE, then start playing .50-1 NL Omaha H/L. Instead, play .10-.20 Omaha H/L.That's if you insist on switching games. I would really advise you though to stick to one game, e.g limit HE, and play nothing but that one game until you're playing 15-30. Ignore you're curiosity about other games. Don't even try shorthanded limit HE. When you're established and have a strong bankroll, then pursue your interest in other games, but at much smaller limits.don't:get impatient. This is the cardinal sin. You'll probably read about some guy in some college who played poker as a hobby and manged to turn his original $100 in $20,000 by the end of the year. Remember that this guy probably indulged in his 'hobby' for about 60 hours a week all through that year. I know when you're playing small limits it can seem like it will take an eternity to ever build a bankroll. Build a plan, using estimates of how much you intend to make per table, how many tables you play, and how many hours you expect to play a week. You'll see that, for example, 15-30 is only a year away(just an arbitrary example).

[LeeDanger 0]

There's nothing wrong with exploring different games. Sometimes you can find out that you are much better at one game then another. My brother started off playing hold'em(as I'm sure most do) and then started exploring some other games and found out that he was a great stud player. However, if you're going to do this just play for a very very small amount to see if the game is for you.

[Alcatraz 0]

You made several mistakes.Mistake 1) You played emotionaly.How do I know this? Day 2, you skipped skiing to play more poker. You had a great day on day 1, and couldn't wait to keep on playing. You were so excited to play that you blew off your friends and jumped right back in to the game. Mistake 2) You let your ego rule you.You brought your friends back to watch you play. I refuse to believe this had zero impact on your game. You also considered 1-2 to be "beneath you", another sign of ego. Throughout your post you consistently assure us of what a prodigy you are, even though you've admittedly never played most of the games you were playing.Mistake 3) You were playing games you had not masteredYou jumped from game to game, playing games that you've never played before. Undoubtedly your math skills served you well and helped compensate for the experience gap you were facing, and I'm sure that the reading you've done also helped. You probably have a great deal of what I call "card sense" as well, which helped. However, you could not possibly have mastered even one of those games, let alone all of them. Mistake 4) You turned it into an endurance sessionYou're young and active and bright and that will compensate for a great many things. But you can not be on your best game when you're tired. It will affect you, even if you think it won't.Mistake 5) Unrealistic expectationsYou went into your first day of serious poker playing expecting to be able to quit your job tomorrow. That's an unreasonable expectation. This doesn't mean you can't be a profitable player -- but you should expect to spend some time seriously playing and learning the gameMistake 6) You discounted the impact of experienceI've no doubt that your math abilities are all you say they are, along with your ability to count outs and figure pot odds. You're not alone in these abilities, and the intrinsic math ability can be countered by any player that keeps a pocket calculator next to their computer.There's more to poker than that -- a lot more. An experienced player will run circles around you, even if they have one tenth your math abilities. The best player I know can't figure odds out in his head to save his life, but he absolutely crushes the math wizzes in our home games. He simply out plays them.Your math skills won't tell you when to call with an ace high or when to fold your second nut flush. They won't tell you which players will call your bluffs and which you should never bluff into. They won't tell you if the person betting is on a draw or playing a made hand. They won't tell you when to vary your play or how.Mistake 7) You played well beyond your bankroll. That one has been covered to death.Mistake 8) You lacked consistencyThis is similar to earlier points in some respects. By jumping from game to game you denied yourself the chance to book players and play against them again and again. A great deal of my online profit is derived from my player notes. If you're never in the same game twice, you lose that edge.I'm going to go out on a limb here for my last point, and this one isn't a mistake so much as a failure to compensate for something. From reading your post I would lay heavy odds that, like me, you have ADD and further more, also like me, you have the kind of ADD that allows for hyperfocus (thus allowing marathon poker sessions). If I'm riight -- ok, I'm sure I'm right, but for the sake of argument we'll keep it hypothetical -- then you are letting the ADD control you instead of the other way around. We have tremendous advantages over the so called normal people if we can harness them, but instead you're letting the negative side of ADD control your game.The evidence for this is overwhelming. Marathon sessions, bouncing from game to game, your dog eared copy of Sklansky, hypermath skills, adrenalize inducing behaviour, jumping in with both feet only to be ready to quit 3 days later, etc.. etc... All symptoms of ADD, and I should know. I suggest for your next book you get "Killer Online Poker" which is written by another poker player with ADD.If you're like me, you can hyperfocus, sit at the computer for 12+ hours on end without needing to get up and eat. You probably also need a LOT of mental stimulation, which poker can provide in abundance. Play much chess? Ever read a book cover to cover in one sitting? I find that in order to play good poker online, I need to have 2 or 3 other things going on at the same time to distract the wandering roaming part of my brain so that the rest of me can focus on the game. Usualy I have the TV on in the background for starters. Then I'm either taking hyper amounts of notes on other players, or I have this forum up, or another mindless game (solitaire or the like) up in the background. Alternatively I'll run 3 to 4 games at once. Lastly I keep my player stats window open so I can constantly monitor my game. All of this external stimulation would crush the weak (that is to say, the poor fools that aren't blessed with ADD) but for me it totaly frees the rest and best of my mind to play poker.So... do I think you should quit? Yes, because you crave the thrill too much and that's going to constantly push you into games that you can't beat. You're going to become addicted to the game and you'll always wonder what's keeping you from winning. That said, I love poker and will never quit, so if you decide to keep playing you need to find ways to get your adrenaline thrills without it costing you your bankroll, and then enjoy the hell out of the game.