I am also a beginner, probably about 6 months too, so pretty similar to your situation. I don't own machines of my own, though, I play on public machines. I look at the high scores and realize that, right now, they're unobtainable, because the people with the high scores have been playing for years. Sometimes they are the owners or employees who have access to the machines every day for free, so of course they have the highest scores. I'm much more interested in learning the rulesets of the tables, techniques, trying to get to the wizard mode, etc., than high scores right now. I figure the high scores will follow eventually if I keep working on my gameplay. So that's my advice to you, is to just keep playing. And as others have said, if you're having fun, that's the most important thing.