Background
I first started playing poker in College we would play your basic 5 card stud betting for small amounts of money, usually just to fill in the time between lectures, tutorials and social events that usually involved the university bar. While we did play some poker we mainly played Black-Jack which got quite out of hand were paychecks were swapped at the end of each week, with $200+ changing hands on a regular basis.
In terms of poker, particulary Teaxs Hold'em, my real introduction was November 2004 when I joing pokerroom.com and deposited my first $20, but started off playing the 'Play Money' tables. This taught me the basics of the playing the game, the rules and gave me an understanding of basic strategy etc. I played around a few of the $0.25-$0.25 games and lost my first $5.00 quite quickly, so I realised that I needed to get a better understanding and went in search on a few articles on how to get a better understanding of positions, pots, odds and the plays involved. I started to hold my own in the low-limit tables, losing some and winning some but essentially staying even.
Then I found tournements, for $5+$0.50, I had the opportunity to win a couple of hundred, first place with 300+ people will get around $400-$500. So I entered, this was still November 2004, and in my first tourney somehow managed to get to the final table and finished 8th and got about $50, more the doubled the money that I had left in the account.
Unfortunately it did not take long for this money to go as I dabbled around with other games, Pirate Poker, Blackjack and as I had never played Roullete or Craps I had to have a plnuge on them also. So within the month of November I had lost my inital deposit and winnings of $69.05, leaving $0.95 in the account and I forgot about Poker until May 2005.