Quote Originally Posted by crispzilla View Post
My first experience with online poker was with some crappy site that gave you $10 BR free for signing up. I remember having bought a poker strategy book and being really confused because it was about limit poker and not no limit which was what I wanted to play. So I would use the limit starting hand chart to decide my preflop raises and I was actually able to grind that 10 to 200 before going broke in a day from tilt. Then I would play freerolls and tourneys and had my first tourney win for about $180 going out with JJ vs AK (like always). Eventually I realized that the poker books I had were about limit holdem so I started playing limit games and was doing really well.
I played a very small amount on the 1st Online site Planet Poker around 1998/1999. Compared to today's sites it was like caveman software and only had cash games no MTTs.

My 1st online site where I played a significant amount was in 2001, Royal Vegas Poker, where they gave you a free $10 and you did not have to deposit any money to withdraw. I can not remember my first cash on it, but it ended up being a fantastic experience as I went on a tremendous 'cant lose' run where I cashed out 6 figures and funded online poker without a deposit for years and years. I had fans, I was a celebrity (lol), people asked me to train them (I declined because I knew better), it ended up I was just super lucky for an extended period.