It took me about 4 months to casually get from $.5/1 to $15/30 skill level. I was able to so quickly because of a great teacher. He showed me the proper system and critiqued hand histories that I sent him. This is by far the fastest way to learn. If you want 2 high level players to look at hundreds of your hand histories check out www.pokermentor.net . Here's a link of the forum so you can see some of the work we've done: http://www.pokermentor.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=1