Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Final Post for 2008

Well, this has been a pretty fun adventure so far and look forward to moving ahead in 2009. I think I'm going to change some of the stuff around as well by trying to do a weekly video and have a post dedicated to it for comments. We finish out the year with a pretty descent run near the end and post a solid profit for the month. From my first post back in April with pretty much no bankroll to speak of I now am currently bankrolled for 100nl (for the time being) and have been playing some here and there throughout my time. Today was spent playing at solely 100nl and had a descent day of it. I don't think the players are that much better than me and just need to keep the game to a simple game and not try and get cute. For some reason, every time I try and move up in levels, I alter my game wayyy too much and get away from the basics and it quickly sends me packing back to the level I just came from. I'm hoping that I can keep this under control. I'm also on the verge of actually pulling out some of the funds I have and stay at 50nl and I'm torn a bit right now as to what to do. My goal is to have my poker fund my family vacation this year, which I hope to take in 12/09 to Disney. Having a $1k jump on it would be nice but would also like to move up to higher levels too and do it in a faster manner :) Not sure here for now, but here's the numbers:

Cake: $1149.80
FT: $788.27
Stars: $199.50

Total: $2137.57

Rakeback:
Cake: $407.69
Tilt: ~$125

That puts me at roughly $2670 and easily the best bankroll I've had this year.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Yea for Slugs!

Well, I had the fortunate opportunity to be backed in the Stars Million yesterday and started off really poorly when my JJ went down to TT on the 2nd hand and dropped to 6200 chips from 10k. I was able to claw back up to almost starting stack by the first break. Had QQ double through 78o on a 287 flop when the turn and river were both Kings and was sitting above average at 20k at 2nd break. Third hour is where it broke down on me when AK ran down my QQ on the turn after he floated on a J47 flop and the turn gave a K. Unfortunate, but that's trny's. The good news is that while I was registering for that, I saw that a bunch of people from ITH were playing the Holiday 100k on Tilt. I decided to join in and we decided to chop it up as a team. The agreement is that 50% of the winnings go into a pool to be divided equally among all in the group, except cashes over $1k only get 30% of the winnings into the pool to reward the player more. Well, Matthew Hilger (Author of Internet Texas Holdem and The Poker mindset) was one of our sluggers and ended up winning the whole thing. 10k players and he cashes for $10k which nets me $500. Nice boost there to the bankroll :) That helps recover from the downswing for sure.

Stars: $172.02
Cake: $649.09
Tilt: $809.72

Total: $1630.83

Rakeback:
Cake: $344.28
Tilt: ~$140

Total: $485

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

A tumbling we will go!

Soooooooooooooooooooo frustrating. Back to where we started once again, but this time I take most of the blame myself. I decided, for some reason, to jump into some 3/6 6max limit and promptly dropped about 50bb's which puts a pretty good hurting onto the bankroll. I've also been running below expectation at 50nl as well. I also put up another vid for you all so feel free to rip me apart on that or comment on the good things.

Cake: $501.01
Tilt: $335.79
Stars: $172.02

Total: $1008.82

Rakeback:
Cake: $307.13
Tilt: $126.63 (roughly)

Total: $433.76

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Spotcheck

Well, been a little bit since my last update so I wanted to put a quick one out there. So far this month, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25k hands already. Quite a bit even for my standard. Been doing ok as well. I had one of my best days ever yesterday, with an 8 buyin session, which I dropped about 1.5 buyin later in the evening. Rake is kicking up quite a bit as well. Not sure how much I have at Tilt as I'm pretty much playing there now. There just aren't enough tables with fish on cake any longer at 50nl. I just keep seeing the same regs over and over. I also think I may cash some funds out once I get the rakeback from Cake this month. Would be nice to pull $1k out and put it into my pocket for once. That should leave me enough to still play 50nl. Will evaluate in another 2 weeks to see :)

Cake: $732.31
Tilt: $805.74
Stars: $172.02

Total: $1710.07

Rakeback: Cake:$274.53 Tilt: ~$125????

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Mindset???

The last few days have been quite weierd as I'm really having a hard time focusing on my direction. I am finding myself not thinking about the hands as they occur and not staying focused. To try and help with that, I decided to play some tournaments yesterday and played 5. 2 were on cake, one on Tilt and two on Stars. I was able to cash in both of the cake tournaments but not any of the others but still felt very good about my play. The first on cake was a 5r that I was able to get in for the minimum of $15 and cashed for just over $25 (3rd level). The other was a $3 6max trny that had 104 people and I was able to actually win that one. It really felt good to take down a tournament as I haven't been playing them at all lately. The cash games were very up and down over the last couple days. I was pretty much breakeven on NL50 but somehow ended up playing some 2/4 limit and 3/6 limit yesterday and I think I finished down about $150 or so overall. Looking forward to tonight as I have a coaching booked and lookinng to plug some leaks in my nl game. I am working towards being able to drop my second job and replace it with poker because I'm not making any money (serving and bartending) with the downturn in economy. If I can get myself to a descent winrate (3-4ptbb/100) I could easily drop it. Playing certainly is not a problem for me and I could easily play 5-6 hours daily. Here's to moving on and getting better!

Cake: $806.06
Stars: $161.62
Tilt: $384.04

Total: $1351.72
Rakeback: 10,243 hands for $180.76 at cake.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Up and down week

Well, things have been kinda weird since the last update. I went on a pretty good run and was able to move up to 100nl and layed a couple thousand hands or so and dropped 4 buyins due to some coolers. Without those coolers, I would have been pretty much break even. I also spent a bit of money on some personal stuff so that took a bit out of the account as well. It's weird how 50nl now feels comfortable to me when not that long ago, it was a foreign land to me and I was scared of it. Anyhow, I'm hoping to be able to continue building from where I am currently.

Cake: $946.58
Stars: $185.02
Tilt: $529.16

Total: $1660.76

Rakeback: $117.61 @ 6140 hands

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

New vid up!

Ok all, put up a new vid today playing 2 tables of 50nl at Tilt. I'm working on expanding my game quite a bit and thought that a video would do some good for that. Theres quite a few interesting spots that come up. Overall video is about an hour long with some PT analysis at the end.

On a seperate note, I played a few trny's over the last day or 2 and had a lot of fun. I played a .25c r on Cake and finished 4th and while playing that I got into some 100 PLO8 and finished up 4 buyins after an hour and quietly left the table :)

Overall, has been a fairly good start to the month:

Cake: $1440.51
Stars: $185.02
Tilt: $300.05

almost there.......

Monday, December 1, 2008

End of month bounce

For once I ended the month on a positive note. I decided to play no more than 3 tables and to really think about each and every bet that I made or didn't make. It also helped to run really well and get lots of good hands. I'm also staying true to my commitment to myself this month with my study. I'm going back through and watching a lot of the micro vids on Pokertrikz and trying to focus more on the strategies being taught versus just watching. I saw a post recently on pokertrikz about moving up and what sites would be recommended for training. One of the members commented that Pokertrikz would be more than sufficient up to 200nl if we implemented the concepts illustrated in the videos. I don't think I ever really comprehended this totally. I look back now and think that I thought I could become a winning player just by watching the vids but now as I mature, realize that is all I was doing, watching. I wasn't learning. This is what has brought me to where I am now and wanting to actually improve my knowledge of the game. Anyhow, the last day of November went really well for me and I finished up ~7 buyins yesterday. That is going to go a long way to getting me to the monthly goal of taking a shot at 100nl again.

Cake: $842.32
Stars: $185.02
Tilt: $205.54

Rakeback coming: $357.55

Total: $1590.43