Here in Belgium, casinos introduced Texas Hold'em poker into their offerings. After learning the (fairly simple) rules and looking up some strategic hints on the internet, I started playing free (i.e. play money instead of cash based) online ring games at Unibet, and sometimes also at Titan Poker. After that, I switched to Poker Stars.
On 2009_11_11, I made it to my first final table (placing 7th out of 55 participants) at the 4th (of 10) 'Pokerkampioen van Vlaanderen' official live tournament in Sint-Amands, Belgium. I had never played live tournaments before, and I must say I immediately got the hang of it. Next target (winning a tournament) almost achieved: 2nd place (out of 60 participants) at the 5th live tournament on 2009_11_25.
After that, I obtained a 351 on 591 (= 59%) score on the Harrington 'poker exam' Workbook, qualifying as 'a player with a solid base of skills to build upon' (i.e. level 3 of 5).
I earned my ticket for the 2011_11 Belgium Open Freeroll main event by placing 3th in the 2011_05_30 live qualifier (after only 1 unsuccessful previous try on 2011-05-08). Half a year later, I definitely had big fun (and learned a lot) during the entire Wednesday 2011-11-09 to Sunday 2011-11-13 poker happening: 8 poker tourneys (including the individual main event on Friday, the team event on Sunday, and several side events), plus some electronic poker tables. I managed to make it to 1 individual side event's final table (finishing 10th place after a bad beat). Our 'Poker Rail Radio' team, consisting of PokerwhizPro, niki_vegas1, A'rijn, and ericbaes (i.e. myself), made it to the team event's final table (unfortunately also finishing 10th after a bad beat).
Instead of playing regular card games with friends, I always try to convince them to try out Texas Hold'em. I never seem to have any trouble getting the rules explained. We sometimes start out by means of a 'Limit' game until somebody runs out of chips. After everybody has firmly grasped the rules of the game, we then advance to the more common but also more explosive 'No Limit' variation. We never bother about 'Pot Limit' games, since all the counting would spoil the tempo and fun. In case I happen to be with poker savvy people, we usually apply a custom HomePokerTourney Create-a-Blind schedule, starting with 12000 chips overall (so 3000 per player at a table of 4), using only 4 chip colors (valued white=5, red=25, black=100, and green=500), and increasing the blinds every 10 minutes (starting at the 10/20 level).
Basically, to enjoy Texas Hold'em, one should frequently accept small losses and remain calm until some opportunity arrives to gain a bigger pot. Therefore, patience and discipline are a couple of useful character traits when playing this game. Online, the patience aspect can easily be overcome by playing multiple tables simultaneously (whether ring games or tournaments). For me, 4 tables is the limit. Since having completed my Harrington tourney books, though, I now prefer to focus on a single (or at most 2) tourney(s) at a time, so that I can pay detailed attention to betting patterns, etc. (and actually learn something in the process ...).