Diaries from the black hole of poker.

I signed up to the forum a few days ago whilst trawling the net looking for some poker tournaments, seems like a good site with plenty of friendly people on it so I thought I would introduce myself in here and make the start of what I hope to be a successful diary of tournaments.

I learned to play poker about seven years ago at a friends house, his parents had gone away on holiday and he decided to host a home tournament. There were over twenty people in the house and three tables on the go and I won the first and second placed the second, with that I was hooked. Fast forwarding a few years with very little poker when a change in workplace introduced me to a crowd of people that also like poker and that's how my love of the game really started to take hold.

We had a few home games and a trip to the local casino for a £10 re-buy donkfest and it started to set in badly, I signed up to a few online poker sites and started to learn the game a bit more. I started to make vague notes on how much I was spending and how much I was winning in December last year just as I entered a local £50 double chance tournament where a final table deal saw me take second place and £1000 I was over the moon, not only had I outlasted a lot of the regulars I had chipped up to second place and managed to negotiate the best deal at the table at only £200 short of the actual second place prize.

A couple of bad tournaments followed with what was to be, and still is, a very steep learning curve. Having said that it gave me the chance to try out cash poker which I was always too nervous to sit down to and with my bankroll back up to over £1000 after a few successful weeks I decided to look for a tournament at a different card room. So my first what I would call proper tournament is on Friday, I've booked the day off work and will be taking a trip to DTD to have a go in their £250 event. I'm really looking forward to it, at the moment I'm thinking that I will be way out of my depth but the starting point has to be somewhere.

I expect I will make a few stupid mistakes, lose concentration at points where I should really be making mental notes on play and trying to not get bored and start playing on my phone. Obviously my main goal is to win but being realistic, if I am playing cards for longer than I am travelling then I will be pretty pleased with myself.