How did you get into chips/gambling? (1 Viewer)

[cyoung]

Was wondering about peoples stories about how they got into the whole game/collecting... For me, my father would go to in home cash games. I was about 10 and he'd bring me along to sit at the table with him, showing me his cards, even though I knew nothing about what was going on... i guess 8 years down the road... i wanted to be just like him and thats when it all started, lol.

 

[Oryx]

I started about 10 years ago at a home tournament. I watched videos before going and ended up getting 2 out of 8 guys. It felt good. Small stakes fun. We played a couple more times I even ended up winning once. The guy I went heads up against was so tilted and drunk it was a slam dunk. I took a long hiatus and about 2 years ago decided to host a $40 buy in .25/.50 cash game. Bought some cheap ABS metal slug poker knights and had an absolute blast playing cash. I lost the $120 I brought but I didn't care it was for fun. Now I play two or three times a year mostly $20 buy in .25/.25. I'm trying to get a regular bi weekly game going but we'll see how that turns out.
As far as chipping goes well I stumbled on this site. Skipped buying the bicycle chips and went for the afformentioned poker knights. Now after a couple years I'm looking at some ceramics or CCs. Waiting on some samples. Then I'll slowly replace my cash set.

 

[allforcharity]

Organizing themed fundraising parties.

 

[Chris Flynn]

For me it was a golf trip about 12 or so years ago - wasn't much of a gambler and knew even less about poker. After our round of golf 4 guys went to the casino and myself and 3 others went back to the rented townhouse to clean up for dinner and wait for the gamblers to come back - they ended up being gone for over 12 hours and came home just before dawn with on of my buddies booking a $15,000 blackjack win. That got me to learning blackjack, ended up being more intrigued with poker as I came to see blackjack as largely a mechanical game of following basic strategy and poker seemed to reward skillful play more.

Back at the time Paulson was still selling to the public so I sprang for 1000 WTHC chips from Apache for the ridiculously expensive price of $1.29 a chip.

 

[detroitdad]

I didn't read the OP. Just the title. I have always been a "gambler", because, fuck it. Gambling on shit is more fun than not gambling on shit. @WedgeRock is the reason I am addicted to poker chips. FU for the endless thousands that I spent of chips

 

[WedgeRock]

I didn't read the OP. Just the title. I have always been a "gambler", because, fuck it. Gambling on shit is more fun than not gambling on shit. @WedgeRock is the reason I am addicted to poker chips. FU for the endless thousands that I spent of chips

 

[detroitdad]

The first time I ever played with high end chips was at your place. TRks I believe. I have been ruined ever since.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Played poker for money for the first time when I was 15, with my family. Didn't take long for me to realize it was beatable, and the rest is history.

As to chips, over the years, I had squirreled away a lot of random $1 chips from wherever I played, but it wasn't until about 2013 that a player in my home game told me about ChipTalk and a game he had attended with nice custom chips and soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooft players who quintuple straddled with some regularity. I met @bergs a few weeks later, and that's when I realized there was a whole community of collectors.

 

[MeridianFC]

It probably started when my friend Lester "Worm" Murphy introduced me to gambling while attending Dwight-Englewood Preparatory Acamdemy in New Jersey (my dad worked there). We'd run all sorts of scams but it eventually he taught me the ins and outs of various cards games. Sometimes we'd sneak into the underground clubs in Manhattan and run drinks or errands for the players at the Chetsterfield and such until we were old enough to play. I remember being really impressed with the cool chips they had a the Chesterfield and a place run by this Russian dude called Teddy. I think all of the chips were made by the same company from somewhere up north (Maine?). Anyhow, been a fan of gaming and collecting since then, with one short break when I was driving a delivery truck for a while.

 

[davesilver88]

My parents and grandparents. They’d like to go to the casinos- so when I go / when I play cards it’s like they’re with me.

 

[chipchipchip]

When I was in high school in the 90's they used to show the WSOP on ESPN, one of those obscure "sports" things they used to fill time because that's the way tv was back then. My buddies and I watched and there was a short interview with Doyle and he just sort of shrugged and said something like "if you put me in a game with amateurs I could beat them without ever looking at my cards...." And I believed him, and shortly after I was reading Sklansky (Super System was super hard to find and way more money than I had in high school). I probably had several hundred hours of study in before I played a hand for real money. Weird start for sure, and not gambooooly at all lol. But I was a bookish nerd and fascinated and here we are.

I sometimes lament not jumping in sooner with real money, I would've ridden the online wave at mid or maybe high stakes rather than micro. But oh well. I then realize that if I'd had six figures of income in my early 20's things might not have actually ended up good for me.

But I am very proud to be able to say that every dollar I've made playing poker has been a freeroll. First "real money" was with a no-deposit bonus on some obscure site. Ran the free $10 into $250 playing $1 SNG's and cashed out to go to a "real" site and it's been profitable ever since.

 

[seyff45]

The first highly televised WSOP with Moneymaker winning def had a lot to do with it for me.

 

[Moxie Mike]

How I got into gambling? Aside from poker I'm not really into gambling too much. I like the Horse Race Game and I'll buy the occasional scratchers if I'm feeling the itch... but that's about it. My interest in poker was piqued when the World Poker Tour was airing on the Travel Channel circa 2001. Characters like Hellmuth, David 'Devil-fish' Ulliot and Scotty Nguyen were fun to watch and the game was intriguing. It evolved from there.

As to chipping... around that same time I played in home games back when the metal slugged dice chips were considered 'nice'. I spend $100 on a set of the suited slugged chips. Paulson chips were on the market as a consumer brand at the time but they were out of reach financially - as were the Nevada Jacks and other premium products.

I got away from hosting poker games for several years until 2013 when I picked up some Empress Paulsons and some BCC Garden Citys on eBay - some of which I still possess today. In more recent times I've bought and sold all sorts of racks and sets in an effort to assemble a pretty complete ensemble of playable sets that include a mixed Paulson TH&C big-bet set, a $2 Paulson limit set, a $3 Paulson limit set, a semi-custom tournament set comprised of China Clays and a small DDLM set used exclusively for Chinese poker and the Horse Race Game.

 

[BPTDirector]

When I was 12 my dad had a monthly dealers choice game with 5 or 6 other friends. I would get drinks for them while they played and my mom would provide a cold cut tray with chips and dip. This went on for years until they began letting me play a little when I turned 16 - man I was so excited and enjoyed mixed results. About that time I started working at a local bowling alley and the other guys there already had a game going at one of their houses where the dad was a state policeman who had a game room, poker table, shuffleboard, and foosball table. We gambled for small stakes at all of those games even pitching quarters seeing who could get closest to the wall and in the summer free throws, best out of five for a buck a time.

Joined the Air Force and played double deck pinochle penny a point for years. Got into IT when I got out of the service and played cutthroat spades at lunch for $5 a day after that.

Casino boats came to Illinois and I got hooked on blackjack quickly followed by the poker boom attributed to the moneymaker run at WSOP. I was hooked and remembered my dad’s hosting so began hosting Holdem tournaments with friends and invited my Dad who was still alive at that time. Wanted chips and knew how good chips felt and that they usually had hats and canes on them

Downhill slide into this addiction from there. Thousands of chips later, at least 60 sets come and gone and I still cannot get enough. Thank God my wife tolerates me. For no good reason really every set I have has at least 1,000 chips. Monthly games are around 16 players now but at one time I had 40 a month coming.

 

[Mike Wells]

I owned my first Paulson chip when I was 8 years old. It was a 50c peach hotstamp from Circus Circus. My friend's mom brought it back from Vegas. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Carried it everywhere I went. To this day I never leave the house without at least one chip in my pocket.
As for playing, my friends and I played stud for quarters in high school.
During the boom, some friends took me to a packed riverboat poker room on a Friday night. I left a winner, and was instantly hooked. Within a year I quit my job to play full time.

 

[BukNaked36]

Gambling boat blackjack => Moneymaker => Online poker => Black Friday => Live casino poker => @Trihonda home game => Love of Sweet Sweet Paulson Chips

My first casino game I pushed KK into AA preflop and sucked out for a $500 win. I often think if I had lost that hand, I never would have played poker again.

 

[exodus]

The most vivid memory I have was when I was in Vegas as a kid and I asked my dad if he could bring the casino chips up to the room for me to look at. Since I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch the table action or even stand near the tables or slots. I'll always remember the mountain of chips my dad brought up to the room at the Mirage. He dumped them on the bed and I loved the design and look of the chips. I was hooked ever since.

 

[Coyote]

Fethishism.
Fethishism for cars urged me to have several "post graduate" courses in sports driving.
Fethishism for chips urged me to learn some decent (elementary?) poker.

 

[Lil Tuna]

As far as gambling goes and getting into it, probably mostly has something to do with spending weekends at my grandmothers when I was young.

Whether it was betting on a televised ball game, playing cards or shooting pool in the front yard, it’s what we always did at grandmas and I loved it. I didn’t get into collecting chips till much later in life.

 

[Coyote]

As far as gambling goes and getting into it, probably mostly has something to do with spending weekends at my grandmothers when I was young.
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Whether it was betting on a televised ball game, playing cards or shooting pool in the front yard, it’s what we always did at grandmas and I loved it. I didn’t get into collecting chips till much later in life.

Where can we now find the grandmother?

 

[Lil Tuna]

Where can we now find the grandmother?

Unfortunately she passed in 2005. I have nothing but fond and happy memories of her though. She was one heck of a lady.

 

[Coyote]

Unfortunately she passed in 2005. I have nothing but fond and happy memories of her though. She was one heck of a lady.

I 'd love to see you in Athens one day, Sir!
Only temporary problem is that I 'm working abroad and won't be back to Athens till this time next year.

 

[Lil Tuna]

I 'd love to see you in Athens one day, Sir!
Only temporary problem is that I 'm working abroad and won't be back to Athens till this time next year.

Greece is on the bucket list of places I hope to visit at some point. Will definitely look you up when I do.

 

[TonyZur]

I was about 10 years old, at my buddies house. His older sister was hot. I suggested we play poker. It was awesome.

Chips more recently, and especially after finding this forum. I like history and quality, and so have started seeking out and playing with nice chips.

 

[cyoung]

I didn't read the OP. Just the title. I have always been a "gambler", because, fuck it. Gambling on shit is more fun than not gambling on shit. @WedgeRock is the reason I am addicted to poker chips. FU for the endless thousands that I spent of chips

I agree with this, me and my buddies will bet on the dumbest things.

 

[cyoung]

When I was 12 my dad had a monthly dealers choice game with 5 or 6 other friends. I would get drinks for them while they played and my mom would provide a cold cut tray with chips and dip. This went on for years until they began letting me play a little when I turned 16 - man I was so excited and enjoyed mixed results. About that time I started working at a local bowling alley and the other guys there already had a game going at one of their houses where the dad was a state policeman who had a game room, poker table, shuffleboard, and foosball table. We gambled for small stakes at all of those games even pitching quarters seeing who could get closest to the wall and in the summer free throws, best out of five for a buck a time.

Joined the Air Force and played double deck pinochle penny a point for years. Got into IT when I got out of the service and played cutthroat spades at lunch for $5 a day after that.

Casino boats came to Illinois and I got hooked on blackjack quickly followed by the poker boom attributed to the moneymaker run at WSOP. I was hooked and remembered my dad’s hosting so began hosting Holdem tournaments with friends and invited my Dad who was still alive at that time. Wanted chips and knew how good chips felt and that they usually had hats and canes on them

Downhill slide into this addiction from there. Thousands of chips later, at least 60 sets come and gone and I still cannot get enough. Thank God my wife tolerates me. For no good reason really every set I have has at least 1,000 chips. Monthly games are around 16 players now but at one time I had 40 a month coming.

wow! Great story, and thanks for your service.