MX's NL Journey

Transition to tournaments

2010-06-18T13:27:00.003-04:00

While the NL Journey has basically stopped, I've been grinding out a bunch of tournaments on Full Tilt since April. They recently introduced Rush tournaments that have 135 entrants. I started playing the $4 ones and have gotten in over 400 of them and recently have moved up to $11's. In total I have almost 500 of these in the books with an ROI of 60.5%. I'd love to keep it up that high :) Here's an overall snapshot of where this has gone:

Not sure how active I'll be in keeping this up, but just maybe....

NL Journey at an end???

2009-10-15T16:48:00.002-04:00

Well, I hate to admit when I feel beat but that is where I got to with NL cash games. I took a break for a while and I'm just now starting to get back into playing but I'm primarily playing 9 person sng's for now. Currently playing the $24's on FT and after the first 100, things are going better than they should honestly. I'd like to grind through about 50 or so per day with a 10% roi, which will net me about $110/day plus rakeback. I'm currently running at better than 22% roi which is great but know it's not sustainable long term. I won't be posting as much as I used to but will pop in every once in a while.

Rough weekend

2009-09-14T09:12:00.002-04:00

After a few good days, I moved up to 200nl for a bit on Friday and came crashing down with some bad beats and some bad play as well. Spent the weekend trying to recover but was unsuccessful overall. Got a lot of work to do this week now, which is good for my mindset. I'm needing to cash out a bit more this week for my wife's trip to NYC but unsure how much I'm willing to take at this point. Will depend on overall play. Off to the races!

FT: $2718.36
Stars: $433.17

Total: $3,151.53

Another up day???

2009-09-10T16:58:00.002-04:00

What is this world coming to!

I haven't been getting the volume of hands in that I would like to overall but it's ok. I need to keep the mind straight first and foremost. When I grind to just grind, I don't play well and it costs me. Played just under 1k hands today for a +$361 so a great day (helps to suck out a couple times too)

FT: $3,501.39
Stars: $433.17

Total: $3,934.56

Will he crack $4k tomorrow???? Who knows! Tune back in to find out!

I Feel Dirty....but I don't care :)

2009-09-09T19:08:00.002-04:00

After booking the decent win yesterday, I was following Yankees in his trny last night and ended up dropping it all back and finished out the day ~even. I was helping out a friend that wanted me to review a couple sessions for him this morning so I wasn't able to start up any tables until about 12:30 this afternoon. My very first hand of the day was one that made me want to just shut the tables down and go home with my tail between my legs. Here's the hand:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (5 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB ($100)

Hero (BB) ($100)

UTG ($100)

MP ($102.85)

Button ($183.75)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 10, 10

2 folds, Button bets $3, 1 fold, Hero calls $2

Flop: ($6.50) 7, 10, Q (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $4, Hero raises to $15, Button raises to $43, Hero raises to $97 (All-In), Button calls $54

Turn: ($200.50) K (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($200.50) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $200.50 Rake: $3

Results:

Button had 7, 7 (four of a kind, sevens).

Hero had 10, 10 (full house, tens over sevens).

Outcome: Button won $197.50

After that hand, I was just sitting there shaking my head. I couldn't really feel bad as I played the hand perfectly and got super unlucky. I went on to play through a good session and pick up 2.2bi overall. Then later on, I was sitting and watching some 1k nl and a friend said to me...

"You are due to do something stupid, jump in!" Told him he was FOS and did think about playing higher than my normal stakes. I ended up shortstacking ( I know, I know) 400nl and was amazed at how poorly people adjusted to me. I managed to take $660 out of that (buying in for $80) and made 2 bad calls the whole time I played which cost me another $140 or so. Anyhow, today ended up being a great day and +$889.45

Until tomorrow....or whenver I update this again.

FT: $3,139.94
Stars: $433.17

Total: $3,573.11

Cashout complete

2009-09-08T19:18:00.002-04:00

After a long day of playing, I managed to scrape out $270 in winnings after being down almost $500 about 1k hands into the session. Was quite nice to finish out on top. Processed my weekly cashout at the end of the session and leave myself with the following:

FT: $2,534.04
Stars: $433.17

Total: $2,967.21

Yankees is playing the $1k NLHE WCOOP tonight so hope to have some great news from that as well. Stay tuned...same MX time...same MX channel!

Holiday Weekend takes it's toll

2009-09-08T07:45:00.002-04:00

Well, the holiday has now passed and it has put a bit of a damper on my play. I haven't gotten in the hands the past week that I normally would and this is causing my rakeback to drop fairly significantly so I'll have to really cram the rest of the week. Friday's rakeback is going to be in the neighborhood of $130 so I need to get an extra buyin this week to put me over my $500 mark. Still doable, but puts a bit more pressure on me. I was able to play a tiny bit over the weekend and pick up 1 buyin and a tiny bit playing 25nl on Stars. Here's to a good week!

FT: $2,763.79
Stars: $433.17

Total: $3,196.96

Let's go Terps!

2009-09-05T09:01:00.002-04:00

That's right everyone, College football is back! I had a special request for a bit of a twist on the journey and wanted to comply. I'll be spending the evening drinking and partying with some friends and then watching some of the game tonight. It doesn't start till 10pm since it's playing in California. They are a fairly large underdog but hope to overcome that.

Now, onto Poker. I had an opportunity to back Yankees31 again. He is the guy that I backed in the wsop which gave quite a nice return. He is playing a bunch of events in the WCOOP for total buyin of $10,700 so I have 1% again. First trny is tomorrow. He played in an event on Thursday which was a $215 buyin 6max event. ~8500 people and he finished ~350 for a $700 cash or so. Unfortunatley, I didn't have a piece of that one.

Rakeback hit yesterday for a total of $209 and play this week has been pretty good (once Monday is taken out :) ) Tuesday was a +5 bi, Wed -4bi, Thurs +2 and yesterday +3.5 so total of +6.5 since my cashout.

FT: $2657.14
Stars: $414.22

Total: $3,071.36

Finally....

2009-09-02T07:35:00.002-04:00

After starting the day out with a $500 cashout, I left myself with $2307.93 as a bankroll. I made a promise to myself that this will be a weekly thing and look at it as I have to play xxx to win my cashout back. With ~200 coming Friday in rakeback, I know I need to earn 3 buyins to get back to my starting point. I was able to grind through a couple thousand hands yesterday and things finally got back to a winning day. After two weeks of struggling, it was really nice to see an uptick in my graph. I found myself being very focused in my play which was very comforting. I was able to pick my bankroll from $1786.71 on FT to $2344.81 so about 5.5 buyins. Also helped stacking AQs 180bb deep with AA on A242x board when it was 4bet pre, then checked to the river where he pot bet it and I shoved and he called. Also had a couple of quite laggy guys that I had position on and 3bet them mercilessly and when called (rarely) they would play fit/fold poker so I was able to take a lot of pots on the flop with a cbet. Today is my long day so I should be able to get a lot of hands in and hopefully push that bankroll up some more.

FT: $2344.81
Stars: $521.22

Total: $2866.03

September Already??

2009-09-01T08:14:00.003-04:00

My how time flies. It seems like I was just posting about the August new month and here we are again looking into September. The month was a relative success in terms of cashouts but play was not great. Thank goodness for rakeback! The month started off fabulous and then went downhill from there. I was getting sucked out on quite a bit and played poorly as well leading to a loss of much of the profit I started the month with. Goals for this month and moving forward is to cashout $500 per week. This should easily be doable with the rakeback as it only needs 3 buyins per week to accomplish this as I'm averaging close to $200 per week in rakeback. So, off we go!

FT: $2,286.71
Stars: $521.22

Total: $2,807.93

Month end coming

2009-08-29T15:13:00.002-04:00

Can't believe this month is almost over and I have to say it has been quite a ride. Lots of new high's and low's. Doubt I'll be able to get much in the rest of the weekend so I wanted to give a quick update but nothing really to comment on other than how badly I ran for about 15k hands. AK was a huge loser this month with winning way less than it should :(

Ft: $2882.23
Stars: $521.22

Total: $3403.48

Have a great weekend!

Down week

2009-08-25T07:31:00.002-04:00

Sorry for not posting lately, but I really haven't felt like posting. I've been in quite a rut the last week and it has me second guessing my play. My biggest nemesis has been AK as I don't think that I have won with it in the last week when AIPF. Approximately 8 times I found myself all in pre and lost every single one of them where I either didn't hit or when I did, my opponent hit sets. It's been quite depressing. I'm continuing to play through it and know that it will rebound soon enough but it's difficult right now. Thankfully, rakeback has helped keep things from being really bad. Just have to keep plugging along.

FT: $2,391.27
Stars: $789.22

Total: $3,180.49

Refreshed

2009-08-17T09:32:00.002-04:00

My play lately has really not been going too well, so I took a few days off to do other stuff besides think about poker. I spent the day Friday fishing for Marlin and Dolphin and didn't get a thing. I also just signed up for the Philadelphia Half Marathon and started running again yesterday. I put in 2.75mi which was once an easy run that has turned into a workout. I should rebound pretty quickly however and look forward to the challenge. Not sure how much poker I will play today as I found myself playing just to get hands in and my mind was not focussed. If I start to feel that way again, I'll shut down. Going into the week, I'll be focussing on 100nl and rebuilding.

Tilt: $2595.17
Stars: $943.33

Total: $3538.50

Humbling day

2009-08-13T09:14:00.002-04:00

Well, I guess I can't always post wins and yesterday hurt quite a lot. I put in a LOT of hands overall and variance crushed me. I ran 10.5BI -EV which put a dent of about $2k into my bankroll yesterday. I've moved back down to 100nl and will try and rebuild. This also goes into my reasoning for withdrawing a portion. Had I not done that yesterday, I would likely still be playing 200nl and not have those funds to be able to cashout. I have no problems playing 100nl as I still think I can grind a decent side income from it with rakeback. Variance can be a bitch, but geeeeze!

FT: $2787.85
Stars: $943.33

Total: $3,731.18

Even with that horrendous day yesterday, I still find myself with a $3.3k profit for the month so I can't complain too much.

Cash for Clunkers???

2009-08-12T08:12:00.002-04:00

Not quite, but profits for bills is nice. As I've gone along this journey, my goal was to get to 200nl and play profitably to bring in a decent side income. I got to that point this month (at least profitable so far) and was thinking how high do I want to go??? I was rolled for 400nl and was contemplating moving up but then got back to reality and looking at my bigger priorities and decided to pull out some funds which will make my life easier in the short and long run. It was a smart financial move for me as it will allow me to get some money put into the bank for savings as well as paying down some debt. I figured that if I'm not planning on moving up from 200nl for a while, there wasn't a need to keep the roll online when I can use it for other things. So this morning I cashed out another $2500. I have 3 kids to get school supplies for in the next two weeks which is always frustrating for my wife and I when we are scrimping by. I'll still be playing 200nl and using a 20/17 BI for now. This extra money in my account is going to bring me some peace of mind overall and is a +EV in life for me.

FT: $4809.10
Stars: $943.33

Total: $5752.33

Really good Monday

2009-08-11T06:49:00.003-04:00

Clearing out the cobwebs from Saturday and becoming a card rack made yesterday my largest winning day to date in terms of $$$ outside of a couple of tournament wins I have had. I hit numerous sets that got paid, flopping nut flush vs K high flush on flop, just stuff like that all day long. At ~1k hands in, I was up 7 buyins. Having such a great run, it was difficult to want to keep playing and have the proper mindset. I had to fight that and continue through. I peaked at just under 10 buyins and then dropped a little bit before finishing at 8.5 buyins for the day in about 1800 hands. I'm going to post a graph of the day later on even though it will probably doomswitch me :)

FT: $7,241.90
Stars: $943.33

Total: $8,185.23

Saturday Stupidity

2009-08-10T07:48:00.003-04:00

Well, I was able to squeeze in a few hands on Saturday morning and played really poorly. I played too agressively postflop vs fish that aren't going to fold and it cost a bit. I ended up losing about 1.5 buyins overall and didn't need to. Will start this week fresh and spend a bit more time thinking about what reactions my bets will most likely get as I just wasn't doing that.

FT: $5540.80
Stars: $943.33

Total: $6484.13

This week in review

2009-08-08T10:17:00.002-04:00

What a wild week this has been. I've pulled out some money, playing 200nl consistently, having huge swings which I don't like and won my biggest pot to date where I was 215bb deep and flopped set over set on him. Ended up being an $872 pot! Thankfully, that put me even for the session however as I played 3800 hands yesterday to finish up a total of a whopping $65. I was able to rack up about $115 in rakeback however and almost finished clearing my bonus. My rakeback yesterday was nice as well for ~$250. So this week has netted me almost $3k. Not too shabby for a hobby :)

FT: $5838.70
Stars: $943.33

Total: $6782.03

Done for today

2009-08-06T16:56:00.002-04:00

I didn't get a lot of playing in today but still finished well. I broke a rule yesterday and ventured into some 400nl for a brief period after I went on a great run at 200nl. I ended up dropping ~1 buyin overall but still managed to finish up almost 4 buyins from 200nl after that. I spent a lot of time yesterday and today watching some videos on CR by Citizenwind and his current series "99 mistakes" is really good and I highly recommend it. So until tomorrow....

FT: $5272.66
Stars: $943.33

Total: $6215.99

Taking some profits

2009-08-05T06:58:00.002-04:00

After thinking about my long term goals, I decided to cashout some more funds here as it is in my long term interest to do so. I'm still leaving myself with a greater than $5k bankroll and will implement a 25/20 bankroll guideline so I'll still be playing 200nl for a while. I dropped 1.5 buyins yesterday and spent a lot of time watching some videos on both Pokertrikz and CR and have a series by Citizenwind to watch. Looking forward to that. I'm also liking the fact that I'm using some of this earned money to help me towards purchasing a house in the future. I'm going to watch this series today and then get back to playing. I still have $220 in bonus to clear and the rakeback is helping greatly :) I have a long day in my office today so I should be able to get in quite a few hands after watching the vids. Until later!

FT: $4,234.26
Stars: $943.33

Total: 5,177.59

So far so good!

2009-08-04T10:09:00.002-04:00

After a long day of grinding yesterday at 200nl, I found myself going through peaks and valleys which i really don't like too much as I'd rather have a steady flow. I found myself down about 1.5 buyins early on then ran up to almost +3 buyins then down almost 1 buyin then finished up almost 4 buyins so overall a nice profitable day at 7.5bb/100. A few monster hands really helped with that where I flopped a set of Kings vs set of Queens, flopped a boat vs an overpair who couldn't get away. I had a few bad spots along the way as well where I flopped a set of Tens on a QT9 board and opponent open raised with KJo and I didn't fill up. Had AK lose to AA and AK lose to QQ AIPF both times. I also called a shove from an aggressive BB on the button with 88 (not my best moment). I cleared $260 of the bonus and it doesn't appear to be effecting my MGR on my rakeback either which is really nice :) Rakeback this week should tally to around $280. I moved $150 for a friend also so my Stars money has increased there a bit. Definitely have hit an all time high here with my bankroll as well.

FT: $6,543.61
Stars: $943.33

Total: $7,486.94

Moving up???

2009-08-02T21:13:00.002-04:00

After having a great day on Saturday, I decided to start testing out 200nl again and see what we can gain from our last experience of dropping huge amounts tooo quickly. I found myself playing a bit cautious as the pot sizes still seem shocking to me. Having $200 at risk at any point is playing with my head a bit and only playing will take that away over time. Was able to put in almost 500 hands today and having a good run of cards found me up almost 3.5 buyins. Flopping 3 sets and turning a 4th with 2 of those turning into quads helps quite a bit especially when my opponents had a hand. Once my opponent flopped a flush and I quadded up on the river. I'm hoping to be able to stay at 200nl.

FT: $5,810.76
Stars: $793.53

Total: $6,604.29

July in review

2009-08-01T11:20:00.003-04:00

As we begin another month, I look back over the last year or so and realize how far I've come and how much I have yet to learn. July has been my best month ever allowing me to cashout $1500, put another $630 in the bank from the WSOP stake and start August with a very respectable bankroll with more than double what I started July with. Goals for this month include playing at least 50k hands and $4k profit. With that kind of volume, it should be doable when you factor in rakeback. I put in 40k hands at 100nl last month with another 10k hands at other levels. The 40k at 100nl netted me ~$800 in rakeback. I still have some leaks to plug and increase my winrate so I will be focussing on that a lot. I managed a meager 2.5bb/100 for the bulk of my play and I know I can better that with some work. So, here is where we begin August:

FT: $4130.76
Stars: $793.53

Total: $4924.29

I also received a bonus offer from Tilt this month for $500 in which I still have 27 days to clear and I've cleared $100 in the last 3 days so just an added perk :)

Edited after my 2 hr session today:
FT: $5080.76
Stars: $793.53
Total: $5,847.29

Lotta hands today

2009-07-29T21:03:00.003-04:00

Well, now that the bar job is gone, I'll be spending a lot more time playing in my office. Was able to grind out over 4k hands today with a great winrate. This week has been a bit frustrating overall and today really helped my sanity. Finished up today just under 12 buyins! So here are our totals:

FT: $4267.56
Stars: $792.53

Total: $5,060.09

Day off today

2009-07-24T09:16:00.002-04:00

Taking today to go to the concert and looking forward to spending some time with my wife and some friends partying. I was able to get off work early last night and get a few hands in and ran had a great run of cards and had them against uber fish. Finished up a few buyins which was nice. I have to bartend Sunday morning so I'm likely not going to be able to play until Monday. Have a great weekend!

FT: $3094.65
Stars: $792.53
Rakeback: $217.26

Total: $4,104.44

The ol Cashout Curse...

2009-07-23T14:14:00.003-04:00

Well, it's been a couple of days since my last update and primarily because I didn't want to post. This week has been pretty rough overall and the last 1.5 days I'm running about 6 buyins below ev. Just trying to grind through it at this point. Im heading up to Hershey Park tomorrow for a Dave Matthews concert so looking forward to a bit of a break from everything. Rakeback coming tomorrow should be ~$225 or so. Now to the numbers:

FT: $2837.45
Stars: $792.53

Total: $3629.98

Back to the grind!

Cashed some out

2009-07-20T09:36:00.002-04:00

Well, the time had finally come for me to take a bit of a withdrawal. I put in my 2 weeks notice at my second job and wanted to pay off my wifes van so I took out $1500 to do so. My wife was a bit worried about the loss of the extra income and wanted this burden off my back. A good use for the winnings IMO. After next Monday, I'll be spending more time in my office trying to grow my agency and also allowing me to get in a bit more hands as well which will bump up the rakeback as well as my winnings (hopefully). Friday was a grind day. Played a little over 2k hands for a net loss of about $85 so we start today with:

FT: $3,279.55
Stars: $792.53

Total: $4,072.08

Mid-Month overall update

2009-07-17T10:27:00.002-04:00

Well, I have to say things are going pretty well overall pokerwise. I wanted to get a good account of my stats/winnings/graphs so I exported my hands to my main pc this morning. As I had said in my June report, I wasn't sure why all of my hands were not importing and while loading this morning, I think I figured it out. With HEM, I was choosing my general report and choosing all hands and then exporting all hands to hard drive to zip and email. I just realized that this was only copying the limit that was highlighted (unknowingly) and just sent the hands for that. I'll be reimporting on Monday with an updated June graph. I'm missing about 3500 hands for this month right now but still want to post this up. My positional stats still need some working on and I am once again playing 200nl and hoping to stay there for quite some time. I'm not the type of person that has a desire to climb up too high quite honestly as it will just place too much stress on me overall. I've accumulated $791.57 in rakeback/bonus money so far this month with 2 weeks to go still so very happy with that as well. I also put out 2 stakes this month, one for $100 on TP with a partial loss and one for $100 in yankees31 for the WSOP which the stake has been deducted but still in the works on getting the funds back (not a complaint, just a fact). Overall bankroll now sits at $5,655.78.

Mid-Day update

2009-07-15T14:08:00.003-04:00

Well, I don't normally do this in the middle of the day, but had to post up a new milestone. I've been mixing in some 200nl the last day along with 100nl and I am happy to say that I have eclipsed the $5k bankroll!

back later

Ok, finished playing for the day. Pretty wild ride overall but finished the day up 1.75 buyins at 200nl and 2.25 at 100nl giving today an overall gain of $584.20. Pretty good day. Had quite a few AK vs AK as well so the site made out well on me from that aspect. Until next time.

FT: $4233.23
Stars: $792.53

Total: $5,025.76

Back to the grind

2009-07-14T10:37:00.002-04:00

Now that the excitement is over for the WSOP, it's time to get back to the tables. I'm sitting pretty well from a bankroll perspective and as I said, I'm going to be sticking w/ 100nl for a while. I just put in my 2 weeks notice for my bartending job and the time that I was spending there will be refocussed back into my office which also allows some more hands of poker. It will be a week or so before we find out how the $$$ from the ME will be distributed but it will be in the range of $640 (not sure about taxes yet). If we just say an even $500 for that, it gives me a bankroll to start taking more shots at 200nl, but need the buffer for now. I've got $200 coming this week in rakeback as well. I'm close to pulling some cash out since I have ditched the other job and basically pay myself in advance of the upcoming month. Still unsure there.

FT: $3813.63
Stars: $792.53
Current Total: $4606.16

WSOP: ~$500 (factoring for taxes)
Rakeback: $200 (Friday)

Total: ~$5300

Yankees finishes 76/6494

2009-07-14T07:53:00.002-04:00

Yanks finishes the tournament 76th for just under $70k! He played the last 2 days as a fairly short stack and was sitting on approx 20bb when a late position player opened the pot and he 3bet shoved his 850k stack with AJo. Unfortunately, the chip leader was in the BB and woke up with QQ and no A for hero and he is sent to the rail. My $100 stake is going to get me approx $640 so not too shabby on that return :)

Yankees on to day 6!

2009-07-13T06:58:00.003-04:00

Although a bit shortstacked at 413k, Brent Catalano has moved on another day. We are down to 185 players left with avg stack at ~1m. They only played 3 levels today due to faster bustouts than anticipated. They will play down to 99 players today and we will be looking for an early double from yanks. He is guaranteed at least $36k right now and the next jump is at 162 for $40k. It's shorstack Ninja time!

On a seperate note, I was able to get in a few hands while my wife was on the treadmill yesterday and was able to pick up a couple quick buyins with a good streak of cards and a crazy player :)

FT: $4,037.98
Stars: $792.53

Total: $4,830.51

$100 stake in Yankees- Current value: $329

Yankees on to day 5!

2009-07-12T10:49:00.002-04:00

This feels kind of weird to update the blog without having hands in....but wanted to post about my horse in the WSOP. He went into day 4 with double the average stack and made the first bustout of the day with quad Jacks and also won beef jerkey for life apparently for doing so. The bubble lasted for almost 2 hours and they played 12 hands hand for hand. He lost 100k with AA vs QJ at one point which was about the minimum he could lose there so happy with that. He goes into day 5 with 477k chips with avg right around 490k. He has a minimum cash right now of $27k which puts my $100 up to about $250 once he takes his cut (10%). Play resumes today at 3pm EST. I also found out that LOLTrickedU is also playing and has made day 5 as well. Go get em guys!

Wrapping the day UP!

2009-07-10T16:37:00.002-04:00

Good day on the tables today running a bit over EV which is nice to have for once. Was able to get in 2229 hands playing anywhere from 3-6 tables. Peaked at a little over +9 buyins and started getting tired and not playing well to finish up at +7.5 buyins today. Also got my rakeback for $177.88 pushing me well above the $4k mark and I think I am at a new high mark. I'm likely going to continue playing 100nl for a while longer and just try and grind up to at least $5k before moving up to 200nl again. That last stint stung me a bit and I'm a bit gunshy from it.

FT: $3,828.78
Stars: $792.53

Total: $4,621.30

Up and Down kind of day

2009-07-10T11:27:00.003-04:00

While my daytime play seems to be going pretty well overall, my nightime play still struggles. I'm having the same difficulty adjusting to loose passive players that just call call call with anything and unsure when to valuebet and when to just fold. Overall, yesterday went ok and finished up about 1.5 buyins overall but was up over 6 at one point and last night just stuck me. Rakeback should be hitting sometime today so that will add about $175 to the bottom line as well. Time to get some hands in!

FT: $2904.35
Stars: $792.53

Total: $3696.88

2 day update

2009-07-08T16:52:00.002-04:00

Well, yesterday was quite an interesting day on the tables. I got in a lot of hands (3k) and consider it a success finishing down $8 total. I say this is a successful day because at about the halfway point, I was down 7 buyins (didn't I have a 3 buyin stop loss???) where I was running about 4 buyins below EV and was able to claw back to almost even.

Today I got an unexpected $175 bonus from Tilt that I had no idea I was getting for their mid year Iron Man bonus. I had some internet issues today and was not able to log into FT but was able to get into Stars and ground out almost 3 buyins and then proceeded to lose them on FT when my AK < AQ AIPF and my AK < QQ AIPF and then I tilted off the rest so I'm stopping for the day. TTYL!

FT: $2758.50
Stars: $792.53

Total: $3551.03

Good day yesterday

2009-07-07T07:48:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a good day from a couple different aspects. Yankees played his first day in the WSOP and made it through to day to with ~50k chips(started with 30k) as well as 3-4 other players from ITH. My play ended with me being up about 7.5 buyins which is a nice jump in the bankroll. I really didn't play anything too speculatively and really just waited for others to give me their chips.

Stars: $500.58
Tilt: $2947.45

Total: $3448.03

I'm playing the Main Event of the WSOP!!!!!

2009-07-03T10:01:00.002-04:00

Well, sort of :) Yankees31 from ITH has opened up some stakes in the ME so I've put up 1% for a 0.9% return so he is getting a premium but he is super +EV player so I am fine with that.

On a playing note, I was able to get in a few more hands last night after work while winding down and was able to add another ~$50 so things seem to be going well still. Hoping to grind out 2k hands today and add my stake back into my bankroll. Off to the races!

Tilt: $2085.28
Stars: $500.58

Total: $2585.86

Refocussing

2009-07-02T16:54:00.002-04:00

After the horrid shot at 200nl, I moved back down to 100nl and dropped a buyin or 2 there so I decided to step back a little more to gain my confidence a bit and play some 50nl today. I also think I'm going to adapt a bit more of a conservative BR strategy and go with a 30/25 instead of a 20/15 (which I can never stick with). 2 bad plays at the very end of the day cost me 2 buyins but it was still a very good day finishing up 7. Total bankroll stand as follows:

FT: $2027.98
Stars: $600.58

Total: $2628.56

I'm also looking at adding ~$200 in rakeback tomorrow so that almost puts me up to 30 buyins at 100nl. We'll see how things go tomorrow.

A new month

2009-07-01T09:35:00.003-04:00

As we enter July, I want to post some goals for the month. I want to get in at least 35k hands this month and move back up to 200nl but I'm also going to stay a bit conservative on the bankroll before moving up to there. I want to have at least 25 buyins before making the leap. So I'm looking at doubling my current bankroll before taking that next step again. I'm also going to input a 4 buyin stop loss for any session to make sure that I'm not tilting subconsciously and to keep my game focussed.

Away we go!

FT: $1790.18
Stars: $600.58

Total: $2390.76

Humbly Stepping Back

2009-06-30T10:08:00.003-04:00

Well, so much for 200nl for now. Yesterday was absolutely brutal to me. 3 times I had either AA or KK where guy flops a set on me, flop tptk vs maniac who check raises the flop and then hits 2pr on the turn. Stuff like that all day and it ended up costing me about 7 buyins overall which it really should never have gotten to that point as I should have stopped playing at 4 buyins. So today we move back to 100nl and start to rebuild.

Tilt: $1976.83
Stars: $600.58

Total: $2577.41

Cooler Sunday

2009-06-29T09:26:00.003-04:00

Well, yesterday was a kick in the pants overall as I had great 2nd best hands and finished down almost 3 buyins overall and they all happened pretty much simultaneously. Ran AKs into AA, Then QQ into AA (same guy), 43s flops 2pr vs flopped set, KQs twice flops top pair and opponents hit sets on the flop. Just a crazy day. That puts me at a net loss at 200nl of $126 over 5k hands so nothing horrible, but not moving up either. Thank goodness for Friday's sessions! I just finished importing all of my hands from my other 2 pc's that I play on and I have an overall win for the month at $1332 plus another $575 in rakeback so far and another $110 in sng wins. Not really sure why my numbers aren't adding up to be honest as I started the month with an ~$1100 bankroll. I also staked a good MTT player yesterday for $100 in a bunch of tournametns which I'm getting back ~$25 after he took some horrid beats. I should be sitting around $3000 according to those numbers and I'm sitting at $3968.21 so I've lost almost $1000 in hands somewhere. Dunno....

FT: $3399.43
Stars: $568.78

Total: $3968.21

Calling it a night

2009-06-27T01:52:00.002-04:00

Well, as I stated before, I was going to really focus on playing solid today and not try a bunch of crazy crap and it paid off. During the day, I peaked at being up about $1200 and had 3 really bad suckouts that dropped me back to about $650 for the day. I got $185 in rakeback this week so almost a full buyin. When I got home from the bar tonight, I needed some time to wind down so I sat for about an hour and 45 minutes and went on a great tear. Finished that session up about another $650 or so ( no holdem manager on this pc) so overall was a $1300 day plus rakeback for almost $1500 overall! WOWOWOWOWOWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Until next time!

FT: $3942.33
Stars: $661.98
Total:$4604.31

200nl going the wrong way

2009-06-26T07:28:00.003-04:00

Well, my shot at 200nl has not been going so well. Im not down that terribly much (4.5 buyins) but I have made some really stupid plays thinking that people are bluffing and being much more aggro at 200nl compared to 100nl which doesn't seem to be the case. I've also had a couple of bad spots where QQ hit a set vs my AA, KK flatted my EP raise when I had JJ and board was all low. I rank QQ into AK and lost that flip and shoved AJo into AK in a button/sb battle. I think I am changing my game too much and need to get back to playing the way that I did at 100nl. If I drop 2 more buyins I'll be moving back down to 100nl again. Let's get back to solid poker! I should have close to $200 coming in rakeback today as well so that softens the blow a little bit as well.

FT: $2454.84
Stars: $661.98

Total: 3116.82

Shots at 200nl!

2009-06-24T13:11:00.002-04:00

Well, I played my first session of 200nl yesterday. I didn't play a lot of hands and only played one table to focus intently on that one as I slowly try and move into some real money. I was able to get in 224 hands and finished up $103 overall after I doubled a mega fish up with A6s vs his 77 for a $250 pot. We ended up all in pre as I was priced in to call his shove (long story) and I missed but would have done the same thing again. The only questionable spot was when I 4bet an obvious squeeze which I probably should have just let it go. Oh well, live and learn. I'm also realizing how much table selection is going to play a part in this as there seemed to be 5 descent/good players focussing on the uberfish and we pretty much stayed out of each others way. Overall, it was a positive experience and I'm looking forward to getting many more hands in and going to focus on playing solid poker.

FT: $3443.29
Stars: $661.98

Total: $4,105.27

Now what.....

2009-06-23T10:13:00.002-04:00

Well, yesterday was a weird day. Up a buyin, down a buyin. Lots of big pots and I literally threw away at least 3 buyins which I am not happy about at all. With that being said, I have reached another milestone. After 1280 hands and giving away $300, I finished the session up just under 4 buyins ($396.80) and have eclipsed the $4k mark for my bankroll. My goal yesterday was to pick off half of that and when I was floating around +3 buyins, with only 15 minutes to go in the day, I pretty much resigned that I wouldn't quite get there today. On my last orbit, I picked up KK in the big blind. UTG, who had been playing pretty tight, raised and I 3bet him and he called. The flop came out T72r and I made my normal cbet and he floated me. The turn came a J and now no flush possibilities exist. I decided to check to him as if I had AK and missed and was now giving up. He instantly shoves and I gladly call. He shows up with 44 and I take his full stack. I finish out that orbit and close my tables. When I look at my Holdemmanager I think I am a few dollars short of the $4k mark so I pull up stars to add it up and here is what I found:

Tilt: $3339.84
Stars: $661.98

Total: $4001.82

Now it is decision time. Do I want to start taking shots at 200nl..... I may play 3 tables of 100nl and throw in one 200nl table to try and start feeling out the pot sizes as I'm starting to feel a bit nervous over the amount of money in play. This is a good thing :)

Clear heads make all the difference

2009-06-19T16:42:00.002-04:00

Either that or I am just running like a goon! Firstly, I got my rakeback today which was a nice $147.15 today so I guess they did include my play from Monday (which I wasn't expecting) Was able to grind through a little under 1800 hands today and ran really well. Final bb/100 today was at 19.03 and calculated up that was a +$672.60 so today ended up being an $819.75 day! Not too shabby for a hobby. Was going to try and get in a few more hands but my mind was starting to waver a bit and thought it best to just wrap up for the day. I'll be heading to the bar soon to start serving drinks and make my piddly money doing that. I'm really toying with dropping that all together and replace it with poker but want some more time in to see if I can really sustain 2-3K/ month. Until the next time:

FT: $2943.04
Stars: $661.98

Total: $3605.02

Stupidity gets you nowhere

2009-06-19T09:33:00.002-04:00

Every once in a while, I find myself getting the itch to play limit poker again. I really don't know why, but I do. I played limit poker for so long and gave it up because the game had gotten much tougher and I went from being a solid winning player to being a losing player and that was when I switched over to playing NL. After dropping 2 stacks at nl yesterday, I decided that I can play 5/10 limit now and beat it. I threw away a bunch of bb's before just shutting down. I got ahold of myself and shut the site down. Decided I needed to stay away from cash games for a while and jumped over to Stars to play some $27 turbo sng's. I played 10 in total and was able to get 3 wins, 2 2nds and a 3rd. Finished that session up ~$125. Then had to head into work last night and I actually went home early after someone offered to close for me (thought they would make more money). I gladly said yes because the dinner rush had ended and I knew there wasn't going to be much business left. Was able to spend some time with my wife and gave her a good back massage since most of the time she is asleep when I get home. After a bit, she started fallign asleep and I fired up a couple tables. My head was clear and got that stupid crap out of my thoughts. Played for about an hour and a half and was able to grind out 1.25 buyins. So now it is time to get back to the plan of playing solid poker, taking time in my decisions and thinking things through properly.

FT: $2123.29
Stars: $661.98

Total: $2785.27

Learned a new lesson??

2009-06-18T08:03:00.002-04:00

After that horrid run on Tuesday, I posted 5 particular hands about whether or not I should be willing to stack off on both Trikz and ITH. Some I played properly and some I played poorly, but there was something that I learned that I was not looking for initially. The first is taking into account when someone donks the flop and what my donking image has been. This is an area that I don't focus on enough and obviously something that I need to start looking at. I see many fish donk minbet the flops and I just raise em up and they fold but when a descent player donks pot on a low flop, now what does that mean??? The second thing that I learned to try and think about more, is thinking about betsizing from the flop. There was a situation that came up where I was deepstacked and flopped a set and I didn't adjust my betting based on the stacks involved and kept it in relation to the pot more than I should have. Putting your stack size in correct ratio for either shoving the turn or the river is more important than I have considered in the past and I just want to particularly thank Given and Soultwister for their comments. These comments helped me get a 240bb stack in preflop yesterday :)

Recovery Day

2009-06-17T20:58:00.002-04:00

After having my largest downswing in terms of actual money, I think today was the best day I have ever had. I have to say that I had lost some confidence by the end of yesterday and was a bit reluctant to put the hands in today but I am glad I did. I was able to completely recover the losses from yesterday and put in a +7 buyin day today with only about 1200 hands. The biggest contributor to this was when I was sitting +300bb deep vs a 240bb stack and picked up AA utg. The button 3bet and I made a large 4bet to 55bb since we were so deep. He shoves! Now my heart starts pounding as I call. He has KK and I just need to fade an odd straight, flush or set. No help for him and we rake in a 480bb pot! Later on I had KK when utg limped, utg+1 raised and I 3bet to 17bb. Both call. Flop comes all clubs, 7QJ. UTG shoves (shortstacked) Utg+1 reshoves. I have an overpair plus the Kc so I call. Both utg and utg+1 flopped sets, JJ and QQ. So I have outs to my flush and my own set. Turn is a lovely K for about a 260bb pot. Nice to run good for once :)

Tilt: $2554.04
Stars: $557.98

Total: $3112.02

Rakeback coming Friday: $119.02 (did not include Mondays play for some reason)

Brutal day

2009-06-17T11:32:00.002-04:00

Well, we can't have good days every day as it seems that I have been having recently and yesterday put a hurting on me. I put in a lot of hands and ran into some sick sick hands as well as making 3 really bad plays that cost me 3 stacks. I've posted some hands for review on both ITH and Trikz for some situations that came up yesterday that were very difficult for me. I want to make sure that I am not stacking off too lightly as well and to confirm that i played my hands right (which I don't know if i did or not). Should be interesting to see some feedback on them. So overall, I ended down about 6.5 buyins. I am also moving some funds from Tilt to Stars for a friend so when you see the bump at stars, it's not from play :) Wanting to recover some today but want to focus on making the right decisions most of all and allow the money to flow from that.

Tilt: $1878.54
Stars: $557.98

Total: $2436.52

gotta get a quick one in

2009-06-15T16:55:00.002-04:00

Over 3k

Got in about 1200 hands today when I went on a 2.5 buyin hit.

Tilt: $2720.14
Stars: $357.98

Total: $3078.12

gotta run....cya!

Hit the $3k mark!

2009-06-15T08:05:00.003-04:00

But wasn't able to sustain it over that point. I was only able to get in about 1200 hands over the weekend between work and I've been sick as well so I've been sleeping a lot. I played one session Sat night after I got home from work and was down almost a buyin then played last night while laying in bed not able to go to sleep. At one point I was up about 3 buyins overall for the weekend and I had eclipsed the $3k mark but was then struck by QJ that hit a gutshot on the river and 44 who flopped an oesd and turned a set vs my AA. Only had one hand where I was AIPF and I lost a flip vs AKo when he hit a flush on the river vs my QQ. Oh well. It's time to get to work and hopefully we can surpass that 3k mark for good.

Tilt: $2443.14
Stars: $357.98

Total: $2801.12

Rakeback coming: $99.61 not including todays play

Down session considered an accomplishment???

2009-06-13T09:50:00.002-04:00

We all have down days and yesterday was one of those for me. I consider yesterday a victory as I started out down about 5 buyins early on when KK ran into AA, AK into KK, and TT flopped set runs into KK who hits his flush on the river. Being down 5 buyins is not something that I enjoy at all and with the move up, being down $500 didn't sit well in my stomach. I was playing pretty well and continued to grind and was able to recover a fair amount of it and finished with getting almost 3 1/2 buyins back. This weekend is kind of crazy so not sure if I'll be able to get much in. I was able to get in a lot of hands yesterday (around 2300) so I'm kind of poker'd out at the moment.

Stars: $357.98
Tilt: $2197.24

Total: $2555.22

Ho Hum Thursday

2009-06-12T10:13:00.003-04:00

I wasn't able to play very much yesterday and when I did, I didn't play very well quite honestly. I'm struggling with a cold and my head is not very clear. Not a good combination for playing poker. I had Colossas railing me when UTG raises (very tight player), button called and I have AA in the BB. The initial raise was to $3. My normal 3bet with a cold caller is 5x the initial bet but with utg being quite tight, I raised to $16. Both utg and the button called. The flop came down 4c6d8d. Not the greatest of boards for 2 callers. I wasn't too worried about utg as he would lay down those pp's but I was a bit concerned about the button who flatted a raise and then flatted the reraise. I was putting utg on an overpair to this board but if I got heat from the button I would consider laying this down. Anyhow, the pot contained $48.50 so my SPR was only a little over 2 so I'm going with this at this point. I led out for $27 and UTG raised to $60. Now it was up to the button who folded and I instantly shipped my remaining stack. UTG instacalled with KK so I'm a huge favorite now. Unfortunately, a K hit on the turn and I end up down $128 to the 2 outer. No worries there honestly. It happens and I got the money in way good. After that, I made 2 really bad calldowns and decided to quit after losing $185.90 total. I moved over to stars for a bit and played a couple of $6.50 turbo sng's. Took first in one and 3rd in another for a small profit. I was floating around $200 on stars and wanted a bit of a change in scenery so I pulled up 2 $100nl tables there with pretty much my full bankroll on there. Within 60 hands, I found myself up $153.75 and had to quit to go to work. Overall, was a positive as I only finished down $32.15. Looking forward to getting my rakeback today of $162.54

Bankroll prior to playing today:

Tilt: $2214.55
Stars: $357.98
Rakeback today: $162.54

Total: $2735.07

This is a high water mark for me for quite some time and hope this continues to flood!

Not a lot of hands

2009-06-10T23:45:00.000-04:00

Wasn't able to get many hands in today but I was able to scratch out some winnings. I would like to play some more but I'm feeling very tired and I know that I will toss it away so i'm doing the smart thing and going to bed. TTYL

Stars: $192.43
Tilt: $2400.45

Total: $2592.88

Well, no winnings to report....

2009-06-10T07:53:00.001-04:00

But no losses either. Kind of weird updating here with no play to report on at all. Had a wonderful day yesterday starting with my son "Graduating" from elementary school. It's really strange having no kids in elementary school any more. Today is the last day of school for my oldest son who will become a senior and my daughter who will be moving into 8th grade. After the graduation, we took my son out to lunch at Fuddruckers and then came home to get ready for a night at the ball park. I had received some free tickets from my work from a contest we were having a while back. We had a group of about 10 people that went to the game and it was a blast. Had a few beers and the O's actually won the game! The highlight came when Seattle was changing pitchers and they started playing YMCA in the park. We all got up and started dancing crazily and we ended up on the big screen! That was pretty cool. Well, it's time to get ready for work. Have a great day!

Deep in a donkament.....waste of my time :)

2009-06-09T07:36:00.000-04:00

Good morning followers! As I got into work yesterday, a friend of mine commented about playing some tournaments on Stars and I told him about the 10k guar which has a $5 buyin. I decided to play with him and we had ~2600 entrants. The real money was on the final table obviously and that was my goal. Trying to navigate through this is like a minefield and I happily did so. I ended up busting in 22nd when my AK ran into AA and pulled down a whopping $27! Took me about 5 1/2 hrs for that. Anyhow, after that I put in almost 2 solid hours and ~650 at 100nl and was able to pull down almost 2 full buyins. Had to work last night and had a couple beers after a busy Monday. I got home around 1am and pulled up my pc, read a bit on the forums and decided to pull up a couple tables for a bit. Glad I did as I played for about 35-45 min and pulled in another 2 buyins so it was a very good day on the tables yesterday.

Stars: $192.43
Tilt: $2174.60

Total: $2367.03

This weeks rakeback coming Friday: $162.54

Evenings and weekends......why?

2009-06-08T07:31:00.000-04:00

Well, I continue to struggle with evening and weekend playing times and I really am not sure why. I played Saturday for a while and found myself dropping 4.5 buyins rather quickly. Now, some of this was just variance. Twice I lost flush over flush. Once where I flopped a flush with T8s after I had raised from EP and a guy behind me had called with K9s. He claims that he meant to 3bet or fold and accidentally clicked call. The other one was when I had raised 56s from MP and got 2 callers. I made a cbet on A high flop and got 2 callers. The turn gave me an OESFD. SB checked, I checked (mistake) button bet, bb shoved. I thought long and hard before calling and button folded. BB had Q9s and I was drawing to 12 outs and missed. The other two were just bad play. Throughout the rest of the weekend, I was able to get in another 1.8k hands and was able to grind back 2 buyins so I finished down ~2 buyins. Rakeback should be good this week as well as I've put in quite a few hands this week. I'm starting to feel somewhat comfortable with the pot sizes but it still makes my heart flutter when I get all in. I'm sure that will pass over time, and I hope that it happens soon :)

Stars: $170.80
Tilt: $1801.95

Total: $1972.75

Solid Grind

2009-06-06T09:22:00.000-04:00

I was able to grind out 2k hands yesterday of 100nl and did pretty well overall. I went up 2 buyins very quickly but then went back to even and floated there for a few hundred hands. I tried not to let any emotions get involved which I have to say was a bit difficult. I just stayed focused and played solid poker. By the time it was done, I had finished up almost 4 buyins. I was very plesed with my play overall and for the first time, felt comfortable at 100nl. I am taking more time with my decisions overall and it paid off. I was able to lay down AA on the flop when faced with some heat when 3 handed and was absolutely right to do so. Probably won't get to play much over the weekend, if at all.

Tilt: $1976.10
Stars: $170.80

Total: $2146.90

Rude Introduction

2009-06-05T07:59:00.000-04:00

Well, after a little thinking, I decided to move up to 100nl while still being a little short on the bankroll and figured I would move down pretty quickly if I dropped more than 2 buyins. I loaded up a few tables yesterday afternoon and while waiting for my blind to post, I noticed that there was a guy on one table that raised every hand and had 4 bet once when he had been 3bet. This caught my eye very quickly and started to think about how I would play this guy. He had position on me, but was in the bb when I had the button. On the very first hand, I am delt AA! Mr. active raises from UTG+1 and it folds to me. I 3bet hoping he was going to 4bet. He flats my 3bet. Flop comes 8JKr so no flushdraws out. There is roughly $24 in the pot and I lead out for $18 and he raises to $38 or so and I shove. He thinks briefly and calls. He has T9s for a flopped OESD. The turn brings a 7 and I ship a buyin on the very first hand. I almost just shut my pc down right then and there. This obviously is about the worst thing to happen to me since I have had a history of getting crushed at 100nl in the past. I decided to work through it and ended up getting that buyin back and finished the session up about 3/4 buyin. Was very pleased with how I played. I played some more last night and ended down about 1.25 buyins and I'm realizing people are calling 3bets at this level much lighter. SC's in position seem to be the key. I had QJs call from CO to my AK (which he hit on the turn after floating the flop). It's going to take a some adjustments on my part to get used to this. I also had a guy flat w/ AQ on the button when I opened from utg and flatted both flop and turn on AdKd4c board. I barrelled my TT on the turn as I really couldn't place him on a very strong hand and wanted to get value out of the flushdraw. On the river, I checked to him and he checked behind allowing me to see his play and his cards. So this is going to take some more concentration on my opponents lines. I also received my rakeback this morning which made up for last nights losses but obviously didn't allow for growth of the bankroll.

FT: $1606.85
Stars: $170.80

Total: $1777.65

I'll continue to play 100nl and if I hit $1500 will drop back to 50nl.

hmmmmm......wow.....weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

2009-06-03T18:58:00.001-04:00

Well, as I said this morning, I hoped to get some hands in today and I was able to put in about 1400 or so throughout the day. The funniest thing is that I had my largest # of buyin win in a single day today. Last Tuesday, I started playing 50nl a bit short for my bankroll and had an almost 8 buyin day. Wednesday saw a 2 buyin day and then Thursday was another 4. I gave back around 5 on Sunday and then recovered Monday with around 3 or so. Wasn't able to play yesterday but then had today. 10.5 buyins up in that small amount of hands. Finished up $520 for the day! I started to mix in 1 table of 100nl but only had around 65 hands and really didn't get any cards and was down about $10 there (which was already factored into the total winnings). I am very very close to being properly rolled for 100nl with my rakeback coming on Friday and I'm a little aprehensive about it to be honest. Every time I have taken shots at 100nl, I have been bitchslapped and sent home with my tail between my legs. Hoping that this won't happen this time around.

Stars: $170.80
Tilt: $1686.42

Total: $1857.22
Rakeback coming on Friday: ~$135

YEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAA

Small recovery

2009-06-03T07:40:00.000-04:00

Well, I was able to grind through quite a few hands on Monday to recover a bit from the awful weekend. I am having difficulty adjusting to the really bad fish and need to figure that out. It could just be variance, but I think I'm bleeding some money away when I shouldn't be. I wasn't able to play yesterday due to taking a wonderful Rock Fish charter and spending the day with my dad and some of his friends. Was a beautiful day on the water and we brought in 18 nice fish. Was hoping to cook up some filet's last night but didn't have time due to my son's baseball game. Hope to get in some hands today. I have about $125 in rakeback coming on Friday so that will help also. Dont have much time to get into too many details cuz I have to get ready for work. See you all soon!

FT: $1166.37
Stars: $170.80

Total: $1337.17

A Yucky Weekend

2009-06-01T07:45:00.000-04:00

It's a really good thing that I had gone on that massive run because this weekend put a hurtin on me. I had massive fish tables and just got crushed every time I turned around. There was one particular player that was on my immediate right that just owned me over and over. He limped 88% of his hands and would call any raise preflop. He would then min bet EVERY single flop and call a pot sized raise with any piece of the board and then min bet the turn again. If he happened to still be in the hand on the river, he would just lead pot. He sucked out on me so many times, it was pathetic and I watched him just donk it away to the other players. It was so frustrating, and I have to say that it affected my play on the other couple tables I was playing. I ended finishing down about 5 buyins. Time to recover!

Tilt: $970.77
Stars: $170.80

Total: $1141.57

WOWSERS!

2009-05-28T22:19:00.000-04:00

First things first.....WOOOOTAAAAAA! I really felt like by posting that last post I was flipping the ever eluding doom switch, but alas, that has not happened. I'm having one of the best runs I think I have ever had and some of it is due to cards, some due to table selection and just overall descent (won't say good yet) play. After the 8 buyin upswing, I was ready to drop some or just stay where I was for a while, but that didn't happen. Wednesday led me to a 4 buyin win and today another 5 1/2. So in the last 3 days and ~6k hands, I'm up about 17 buyins! I've been joking around with my work partner and he keeps saying I'll be rolled for 100nl by next week and I keep telling him he's out of his mind. I hope I'm wrong. I'm playing anywhere from 2-4 tables and trying to keep up with my table selection and leaving when the table turns south. I'm also trying to stay away from playing too deep with other players as I'm not quite comfortable playing 200bb deep yet. It really changes your perspective on what you think are "strong" hands :) I should also have $50ish in rakeback coming tomorrow and likely hit $75-$100 next week. I really like the new weekly rakeback a lot. So, update.....(drumroll)

Stars: $170.80
Tilt: $1,339.98

Total: $1,540.78

End of May Rebound

2009-05-27T10:44:00.000-04:00

As I tend to do, I find myself once again on a rollercoaster of peaks and valleys. This time it is an upswing. While I don't advocate playing underrolled, I was playing some 50nl and had a great day yesterday. I was playing 2-3 tables and was really taking my time in my decision making and it really helped out. I've been able to lay down overpairs and ran into some rough river decisions where I had been calling too much and just let them go. My biggest problem is not giving my opponents enough credit and calling way too often when it's obvious that I am beat and I am really trying to work on that. I moved $100 from pokerstars over to Full Tilt recently and took some shots at 50nl. Full Tilt has also changed their rakeback structure to where they are paying it weekly rather than once a month which is very nice to have as it allows the bankroll to grow at a sooner rate. It's nice when the upswing hits at a higher level :)I finished the session up almost 8 buyins and I am now properly rolled for 50nl even after the following hand:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($46.25)

UTG ($60.75)

MP ($62.70)

CO ($55.25)

Hero (Button) ($55)

SB ($62.45)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 6, 8

UTG bets $1.75, 2 folds, Hero calls $1.75, 2 folds

Flop: ($4.25) 8, 2, 6 (2 players)

UTG bets $3, Hero raises to $8, UTG raises to $23.50, Hero raises to $53.25 (All-In), UTG calls $29.75

Turn: ($110.75) Q (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($110.75) A (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $110.75 | Rake: $3

Results:

Hero had 6, 8 (two pair, eights and sixes).

UTG had A, Q (two pair, Aces and Queens).

Outcome: UTG won $107.75

Full Tilt: $826.78
Stars: $170.80
Total: $997.58

Overconfidence is bad...

2009-05-19T09:40:00.000-04:00

After the great run I had over that 5k hands stretch, I began to think I was invincible. My how poker can humble you quickly. While having a friend sweat me yesterday, I proceeded to dump 5 buyins in a relatively short period of time and made some absolutely stupid plays (although one buyin was with AA vs T4s who called a 3bet...go figure) The rest was just pure bad play. On to a fresh new day is my motto for today!

FullTilt: $297.26
Stars: $293.22

Total: $590.48

On my way back!

2009-05-16T09:13:00.000-04:00

Well, at least I think I might be on my way back. The last few days have treated me very well and with my rakeback now being processed weekly, I am growing at a descent clip. I've been really focused recently and it has greatly helped my bankroll. Being on a nice heater doesn't hurt either. I'm also realizing how much playing out of position truly sucks and I try and avoid it at all costs now. I've found myself getting into some sticky situations while quite deep and kind of lost and have sought comments on a couple of hands. The biggest one was when I was 250bb deep with an utg raiser and I was in the BB with KK. I 3bet him and he 4bet and he was quite tight as well and I decided to just flat since I would be out of position the whole hand. I truly think he had AA and would have shoved over a 5bet and I chose the safe route. An A flopped and I was done.

The last 5k hands or so, the deck has hit me in the face hard and I have capitalized on it as best as I can with a great climb in my graph. Everytime I have posted a great graph, it has followed with a big downswing, but I'm still going to post it :) It's just nice to report something good every once in a while.

Bankroll #'s:

Tilt: $474.23
Stars: $293.22
Total: $767.45

Fading away

2009-04-30T07:48:00.001-04:00

It is quite amazing how much of an impact just the slightest offset in mood can have on your overall game. Since my last post, I was feeling good about where I was with my game with the recovery I made through the tournaments, but since then I have not quite been 100% at the tables mentally and it has taken a toll on the roll. I'm feeling very discouraged currently about the game in general as nothing I seem to do works and when it does, I get outdrawn. I can't even think about my opponents lines and hand ranges and it is showing. For some reason, I felt that I could refocus my game by playing some H/U NL which this does do, but it also tends to have huge swings and that hit me for 4-5 buyins at a level I wasn't rolled for. I then decided that I still wanted to play h/u, so I decided to play some sng's. Started at $20 and felt good through 6 losses due to suckouts which led to bad play. At this point, I really started tilting. I have to say I am very lucky to have a bankroll at all at this point because I was on my way to some 200nl games and did sit for a while but sat shortstacked. So I now need to refocus......AGAIN! and need to decide what I want to specialize in. I hate this game sometimes.....

FT: $19.48
Stars: $358.17

Total: $377.65

FPP Conversion Complete

2009-04-22T19:00:00.001-04:00

Well, after grinding through a whole bunch of fpp satellites, I have completed this portion of my journey...turning my ~20k fpp's into cash. I was able to do that with the following results:

Total Played: 96
Total FPP's spent: 20160
Total Won: 41
$T won= $451
Current $T to spend: $0

Trny's played with $T-

$12 turbo 180 sng= $23.76
$12 turbo 180 sng= $0
$12 turbo 180 sng= $0 77 runs into 99
$12 turbo 45 sng= $0 KK runs into a limp/shoved A6o utg
$12 turbo 45 sng= $22
$5 mtt= $0
$20.80 DON= $0
$10.40 DON= $0
$10.40 DON= $0
$12 turbo 180 = $0
$12 turbo 180 = $0
$12 turbo 180 = $128.70
$12 turbo 180 = $23.76
$12 turbo 45 = $0
$12 turbo 180= $23.76
$12 turbo 180 = $0
$10.40 DON = $0
$5.20 DON = $10
$5.50 MTT = $0
$10.40 DON = $0
$20.80 DON = $40
$10k guar $5mtt=$0
$50k Guar $3r in for $21.30= $38.94
$20 DON=$0
$20 DON = $40
$20 DON = $40
$20 DON = $0
$20 DON = $0
$5 DON = $0

$ won= $390.98

Now we move back to grinding away. My current bankroll now sits at

drumroll......

$526.57 at Stars
$374.93 at Tilt

$901.50 total bankroll

WOOOOT!

Oh yea, I have a blog.....

2009-04-20T14:05:00.000-04:00

Well, I hadn't actually forgotten about my blog, but was too embarassed to post anything to it as I was really tilting and just throwing money away in general. After a bit of recovery, I can hold my head high and start posting again. I had pretty much busted totally and was anxiously awaiting my rakeback from Tilt which was a much needed rebuild. I really am not sure if I will ever get to the level that I want to in NL poker. I've always found myself to be a better tournament player overall, but thought I could push my way into the NL world and make a descent buck off of it. I decided to take a bit of a break from NL cash games and set out on a new quest: Turn my 20k FPP's at Stars into a descent amount of cash. I'm playing the 210 fpp satellites to the Sunday 100k which has an $11 entry which gives me T$11 to use in regular trny's. I'm going to be focussing on this primarily until all my fpp's are gone. I currently have 8,412 fpp's left and I stand with the following results:

Total Played: 56
Total FPP's spent: 11760
Total Won: 23
$T won= $253
Current $T to spend: $62.90

Trny's played with $T-

$12 turbo 180 sng= $23.76
$12 turbo 180 sng= $0
$12 turbo 180 sng= $0 77 runs into 99
$12 turbo 45 sng= $0 KK runs into a limp/shoved A6o utg
$12 turbo 45 sng= $22
$5 mtt= $0
$20.80 DON= $0
$10.40 DON= $0
$10.40 DON= $0
$12 turbo 180 = $0
$12 turbo 180 = $0
$12 turbo 180 = $128.70
$12 turbo 180 = $23.76
$12 turbo 45 = $0
$12 turbo 180= $23.76
$12 turbo 180 = $0

$ won= $221.98

Here's hoping it continues well and I can get a couple more final tables going.

hohum......

2009-03-19T09:37:00.000-04:00

Well, after a bit of craziness, I've settled down a bit but not after taking a pretty severe hit on the bankroll. I went on a bad run at 100nl, then continued my downward spiral at 50nl then decided to just massively play 25nl and started off well for my first 10k hands but then went on a massive downswing dropping roughly 16 buyins at 25nl and tilted and decided to play some 5/10 limit and continued to throw my money away. I luckily was able to get my head straight and turn my pc off to keep myself from going broke. I'm going to take a bit of a break from my normal game and just go do something for total fun. I got an email the other day from AP claiming that I had $1.40 in an old account. I'm going to try and grind this up a little bit and see how far I can progress. I'll be moving up quickly as I grow but I stand to go bust by a large %. Away we go!

Current bankroll for Stars and Tilt: $426.23

Spring Forward?

2009-03-09T09:10:00.000-04:00

Spring may have sprung forward, but I fell backwards over the weekend. I seem to keep running into the proverbial calling stations and not hitting anything and trying to push too hard and they don't fold. That seemed to be the mantra for the last couple of nights and i ended up dropping a few buyins overall and I am now in need of dropping back to 50nl. I don't hesitate in dropping back, but I am feeling a bit frustrated to not be able to make the complete jump to 100nl and stay there. Oh well. So onward and upward from here.

FT: $1185.05
Stars: $245.58

Total: $1430.90

Couple new things

2009-03-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

Well, as you can see, I have listed a new video for review. The nice thing about this is that you can now stream the video instead of waiting an hour to download from megaupload. I'm hoping that this will make it a lot easier and pleasing to those of you following along. Secondly, I have been following someone that is doing a prop bet on 2+2 that is doing an amazing amount of sng's to the tune of about 600 per day. This pushed me to play some of the $6 18 man turbos on stars and I have had a fair bit of success there. I've also been dabbling at 100nl some although I have been a bit underrolled for it. I'm also happy to say that my rakeback has already hit for this month and it was a bit more than I had anticipated which is always nice. So, here is where we stand:

Full Tilt: $1669.50
Stars: $289.08

Total: $1958.58

So not too shabby after being down to around $300 at the beginning of Feb :)

Good Day

2009-03-04T07:40:00.000-05:00

I'm likely jinxing myself now by posting this, but I have to put out a rave. I had my most profitable day playing NL cash yesterday as well as my biggest pot won to date. Although not using the best bankroll management, I decided to play some 100nl throughout the day and night and finished up almost $500 overall for the day. Had some great draws that hit playing suited connectors and one gappers cheaply preflop and then was able to stack my opponents with them. This was even after having KK run into AA and AKs on the button run into KK in BB.

Bankroll:
Tilt: $1446.10 ~$225 in rakeback coming
Stars: $135.88

Total: $1581.98

Here is the wonderful pot. Villain was super super hyper aggro so the call was an insta-call :)

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG	rivichico	($314.90)
UTG+1	boogenfunk	($65.05)
CO	TheKwangsta	($132.80)
BTN	eastern motors	($100.00)
SB	Hero	($219.85)
BB	temple7	($100.00)

Pre-flop: ($1.50, 6 players) Hero is SB

2 folds, TheKwangsta raises to $3.50, eastern motors calls $3.50, Hero raises to $17, 1 fold, TheKwangsta goes all-in $132.80, eastern motors folds, Hero calls $115.80

Flop: ($270.10, 2 players)

Turn: ($270.10, 2 players)

River: ($270.10, 2 players)

Final Pot: $270.10
TheKwangsta shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $267.10 ( won +$134.30 )
TheKwangsta lost -$132.80
eastern motors lost -$3.50

Beginning of a new month

2009-03-03T09:52:00.000-05:00

Ok, February is now in the books and it was a descent month overall since I had pretty much crushed my bankroll from the cashout that I did. I started the month of February with a $307 bankroll and I begin March with $1030.64 before getting my rakeback. I really could use some of the funds but I'm going to try and not cashout right now. I'm looking at roughly $225 in rakeback which should hit around the 11th of March. I'm hoping to move through 50nl this month and get up to 100nl by the end of the month (wishful thinking) to really start to drive some monthly income from this.

Here are my totals for the month of February......

Steadily moving

2009-02-20T09:48:00.001-05:00

Well, it's been a couple weeks since the last update and the incredible run has sort of normalized. I was able to move up to 50nl when counting the rakeback I am earning and continued on a great run then the walls collapsed. I think I got overconfident and started pushing a bit too hard. I've been bouncing on the border of 25 and 50nl for the last week and feel my play has greatly improved overall. 25nl has been going wonderful and after ~15k hands, I'm running at 8.26 ptbb/100 with a total of 24 buyins up so far this month. I have close to 7k hands at 50nl and I'm down a little over 2 buyins there due to some stupid play and some suckouts. I'm very pleased to have the bankroll back up to the $1k mark so quickly when I started with ~$300 at the beginning of the month.

Totals:

Tilt: $947.11
Stars: $79.28

Total: $1026.39
Rakeback tally: ~$180

Run good?

2009-02-05T15:05:00.001-05:00

Well, I thought that my 6 buyin run "can't get better than that" comment was really true, but fortunately, it is false because it did get better. I'm on probably the biggest heater I have ever been on and just wish it had happened at 100nl but just overall greatful to have had it happen. I posted the other day about the great run so far this month and being up 6 buyins over ~1k hands. Well, I now have ~4k hands in and I'm up almost 20 buyins! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Everything is just hitting properly and hands are holding a bit better than normal. Great example is me with TT vs T7 on a 7 high flop where he shoved (total fish, insta call). I'm in great shape until the turn when a 7 hits. Of course, being the awesomest most fantabulistic player that exists, I hit my 1 outer T on the river and scoop another one. I then get AA in bb after lots of action pf and actually flat after utg raises, utg+1 reraises, button 4 bets to give the others a chance to shove. UTG folds, utg+1 shoves, button reshoves :) They both have KK and are drawing to a flush where I have 2 of them covered or a split pot and I stack both for a 3.5 buyin pot. I have to post it because it feels really good to actually post good stuff from time to time. Here is the graph for the month so far:

Start of a new Month

2009-02-01T22:32:00.000-05:00

As February rolls around, I needed to get a post up here for my own sake of accountability. The DON's on Stars took a horrendous turn and I ended up dropping back to around a $40 bankroll on stars. I decided to play some 180 sng's after dropping down to around $20 and ended up taking a 3rd place in one to boost me back up to $90ish. Also been grinding back from a downswing on Tilt. I was down around a $225 total bankroll at the lowest and I'm slowly grinding back. I'll be looking forward to my rakeback on Tilt come another week or so as it will be a big boost. I decided to play some 25nl tonight as I am basically counting my rakeback right now and had a wonderful session. Finished up 6 buyins over a 1k hand session. Can't beat that :)

So as we move forward this month, this is our base after today's session:

Tilt: $367.50
Stars: $90.28

Total: $457.78

Probably looking at around $350 in rakeback this month so that will put me safely playing 25nl again.

Cashed out....

2009-01-19T11:50:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally plunged and cashed out of Cake today. I'll be putting those funds to use at home instead of redepositing into my poker accounts. This means that my bankroll is much much smaller now to play. I think that instead of grinding at 25nl I'm going to grind away at the DON's on Stars. Calculating some things through, if I play 50/day at work (give or take a few) that puts me to 1k per month and at a 60% winrate clears about $1600/month not including any fpp's that go along with it. Right now, it is more important for me to grind out the cash then it is for moving up in limits so think that is the best way to go. Will be posting updates from time to time with the overall totals. Hope it goes like that :)

Stars: $213.37 (after 15 don's today, and 9 wins)
FT: $349.87

Cashed out $1122.49

sigh

2009-01-16T09:54:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess it's time to make it official and post the actual bankroll situation. NL100 absolutely crushed me and I'm embarassed but need to move on. I've been taking a little break from NL and playing a bunch of Double or Nothings at Stars. It's kind of monotonous, but it is steady profit and low stress. I've played 93 of them in the last 2 days and won 55 giving me a net profit of $132.80. I've been playing ~9 tables at a time and just grinding the crap out of them :)

so here we go:

Cake: $1157.49 (moved some over to Tilt)
Tilt: $261.07 (lost a lot of money here)
Stars: $189.37

Total: $1607.93

New Vid- 4 table 25nl

2009-01-08T10:06:00.000-05:00

Ok, after a disastrous attempt to move up to 100nl, I have humbled myself a little bit to really improve my game. I watched a few videos on CR and have been looking at some graphs of other people and realize I am playing too much of a nit style. It's been between TAG and NIT and I need to ramp up my agression some and my positional play. I am moving down to 25nl to work on this and will be 3betting much more in position. I played about 1700 hands last night 4 tabling 25nl from 5pm until 9pm and where I was usually running around an 18/16/2 with a 5% 3bet, finished 21/19.9/7.23 and a 13% 3bet percentage. My positional stats were as follows: well can't seem to figure out how to find those in HM at the moment. I definitely make some questionable plays overall and would love some feedback.

MX6-4 Tabling 25nl on Tilt

Fresh New Week

2009-01-05T07:24:00.001-05:00

Well, the holidays are now over and we begin to get back into a normal routine which means more work and less fun :(. The holidays were great for the tables as a lot of people were off work and donating funds all over the place. The variance was a bit higher than normal, but I'll take that because it was definitely +EV overall. I'm still a bit torn about what to do from a cashout perspective. I'd like to see it grow and move up but at the same time it would be nice to pull some out and bank it up. I am very close to requesting a cashout from Cake due to the lack of players available to play but that will leave me a little short for 100nl if I do it, but I think its just time to take the plunge. I have over $1500 there currently and if I cash out, that will leave me with ~$1500 bankroll to work with once my rakeback hits on tilt ($150ish). Not horrible but not really what I want at 100nl obv. The funny part is that I am playing with that same bankroll anyhow because I'm not touching the money at cake anyhow, but it is a mental thing for me knowing that I can switch sites and have a good chunk of funds there to play with. If I can get my Tilt bankroll up to about $1800 I'd feel a lot better about cashing out from Cake. Sigh...decisions. Anyhow, I've strictly played 100nl for the last week or so and things have been going pretty well. I'm up, but not exactly sure how much currently as I don't have access to my PT at home, but think it's about 5 buyins total. I'm also implementing a few new things at my job that will take some additional time from me playing, but I will still have quite a bit of time to get my hands in. I would really like to get about 30k hands in this month at 100nl which should net me close to 1k in rakeback. I'll be able to get a better picture of that once I import my hands today. If I can average 1k in rakeback per month, I'll just start withdrawing that and leavinng the bankroll with what I win/lose. That would be the ideal situation for me as I would like to pull roughly that much out each month to fund my vacation in December. I was able to earn about $550 in rakeback last month at 50nl, but a lot of that was at cake where I got 33% rakeback and think the extra 6% would account for close to $100 there so it will take a few more hands to get to 1k on tilt this month. Anyhow, recap time:

Cake: $1557.49
Tilt: $1226.12 with $150 coming in rakeback
Stars: $199.50

Todays goals: Watch one video at 100nl and play 1500 hands.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T16:54:00.000-05:00

Well, for my first post of the year, I want to thank all the donks that have been on the tables the last few days. You have all tried my patience quite a lot and brought a new level of patience to my game. After being sucked out on 7 all in pots and ONLY finishing down 3 buyins, I was able to recover all of that today. Rakeback has not hit as of yet and I'm kind of at a loss of what to do really. I think I might just leave the funds in to play 100nl instead of drawing down. Not sure yet. Quick bankroll cap:

Cake: $1149.80
Tilt: $923.02
Stars: $199.50

Rakeback: $407.69 coming from cake and $150.04 coming from tilt.

Grand Total once the rakeback actually hits: $2830.05

Final Post for 2008

2008-12-31T22:36:00.001-05:00

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.

Yea for Slugs!

2008-12-29T10:43:00.000-05:00

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

A tumbling we will go!

2008-12-24T09:57:00.000-05:00

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

Spotcheck

2008-12-17T07:41:00.000-05:00

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????

Mindset???

2008-12-10T07:37:00.000-05:00

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.

Up and down week

2008-12-06T16:51:00.000-05:00

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

New vid up!

2008-12-02T16:42:00.000-05:00

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.......

End of month bounce

2008-12-01T10:46:00.001-05:00

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

Time to get back to the grind.

2008-11-30T11:18:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I needed to take a bit of a break from playing as I was putting in a lot of hands, but wasn't thinking about anything that was happening and caused me to shed off a lot of profit in the last 2 weeks. I've dropped quite a bit of my bankroll since taking a shot at 100nl and needed a few days off to clear my head. I also think that I am not spending enough time studying and hence hurting my overall play as well. So for now, I am going to spend at least equal time studying as I am playing. If I play for 3 hours one day, I will not play again until I have spent 3 hours studying/watching vids whatever.

So now to the update:

Cake: $556.84
Stars: $185.02
Tilt: $205.54

Total: $947.40

RB: $349.63 @ 23,641 hands

Oh the swings....

2008-11-24T07:51:00.000-05:00

Here we are again trying to find our reasonings for such large swings but I again have to tell myself that there is just a lot of variance in poker. I don't think any of us really know how much variance can play in our game. Granted our play makes that part of it but I feel that I am playing ok. I did a video over the weekend of 2 tables at 50nl on Cake. Feel free to criticize, praise, whatever. I need to get better and I can take it.

Cake: $896.04
Stars: $189.28
Tilt: $205.54

Total: $1290.86

RB: $320.79 @ 21,827 hands

slow and steady

2008-11-21T07:28:00.000-05:00

Well, I didn't get to do my video Wednesday night because I ended up playing a 10nl donkfest game with a full table of guys from Pokertrikz. We had a full table going for about 2 hrs and Trikkur ended up a little over 10 buyins and I ended up down almost that much. Was crazy. Played probably close to 1k hands yesterday however and recouped my losses from Wednesday and I now sit poised to rebuild up to that 2k mark. Rakeback is going to be a big boost this month as I'm approaching 300 alraeady and still have 10 days left.

Cake: $1288.67
Stars: $189.28
Tilt: $205.54

Total: $1683.49

RB: 18,012 hands for $277.40

Reality Check

2008-11-19T08:08:00.000-05:00

Well......So much for 100nl for now :) I played quite a bit yesterday and got my arse handed to me overall and humbly moved back down to 50nl with no second thoughts. I then continued to run bad/tilt and had to stop because I couldn't differentiate between the two. I was able to recoup some of it late last night after I had a couple hours to get away from the game. Overall, I ended up dropping about $500. I am hoping to get a video done this evening and hope to have that posted up tonight. See yall later!

Cake: $1232.81
Stars: $205.48
Tilt: $205.54

RB: $242.84 @ 15,708 hands

100NL begins

2008-11-18T08:03:00.001-05:00

Well, the journey has made it to a new level and one that I think will be my mainstay unless things go really well. I ventured into 100nl yesterday and finished my first session down about 1.5 buyins. I think it was mainly jitters at first. The first semi big hand was very early when I had watched the guy to my left lose a big pot to a big suckout. He had about a half stack left and when he was in the BB, he shoved after 2 people limped. The very next hand, utg limped and I was on the button w/ A9 and raised, he then again shoved his half stack. I thought that there was a very good chance that he was just steaming still and ended up calling. He showed AJs and took a half stack from me. Soon after that, I had KJs in the bb vs a SB open. Flop was J high and 2 diamonds (not mine) and sb bet out pot and I called. Turn was a blank and he shoved. I called and he showed AJ and I didn't improve again. I saw people calling down much lighter and maybe it was the combination of the boaords, but I didn't get any respect at all with my bets. Had to close out at the end of the day down about $160 but was able to play after I got home and was able to recoup that as well as annother $150 or so. Overall, up about 1.5 buyins at 100nl.

Cake: $1729.31
Stars:$210.98
Tilt: $205.54

RB: 13,595 hands $194.84

Looking forward to analyzing some hands today and spotting some weeaknesses.

Here's my overall graph for the month of November so far:

Quick weekend update

2008-11-16T23:52:00.001-05:00

As I finish out the night, I realized that there are sooooo many donkeys playing in the weekend night times. Was a bit frustrating for a while as I played probably 1k hands pretty much breakeven after I would stack someone then someone would stack me by hitting their 2 outer on the river and stuff like that. I am not sure how many hands I got in today, but it was quite a few. I'll get them all emailed over to PT tomorrow for analyzing. Cake updated at some point while I was playing and has me at 11,004 hands and a rakeback of $152.62. Was able to add a couple more buyins tonight after all was said and done. 100 is getting very very close as I have the BR if I include my rakeback.

I'm really hoping that I have turned the corner. Here's my stats for the month that I have been able to import into PT. I'm missing about 1k hands or so, but this is close.

Cake: $1513.25
Stars: $210.98
Tilt: $205.54

Total: $1929.77

No bankroll update

2008-11-16T11:03:00.000-05:00

Well, after waking up late this morning, I realized that I had missed my race. I've been exhausted and hadn't pre-registered due to not really being sure if I wanted to get my tail up on the one morning I didn't have to. Decided that I would lay in bed and have a few cups of coffee instead.

My wife has to work today so I hope to get in a few hands this afternoon and crank it up a little bit. I am so close to that 100nl level yet still quite nervous about making the leap. I just remember how much of a backslide I took when I moved up to 50nl a few times. With the rakeback funds that will be due to me in December, I am only about $50 away from the $2k bankroll that I need. I've played very few hands at 100nl so far and what I have played turned out well given that I was able to stack my sb opponent on my very first hand. Then I played like a chicken and decided to leave and I haven't been back. I'll likely just play 3 tables of 50 and 1 table of 100 for a little while to try and keep myself not focused on the pot sizes too much. I know it's all about the BB's but when moving up, it's sometimes difficult to see that.

On a seperate note, I added a new section to the blog where I will be listing some video's of my play. The first one has been posted and I look for this to help improve my play as well as others. Please feel free to leave comments. I think I'll put up a new post each time for comments. I'm hoping to do this on a weekly basis, if not more so.

Good Streak Continues

2008-11-15T01:06:00.000-05:00

Man, what a long day this has become. I spent a lot of my day actually working today and not playing poker. Was able to issue a few policies today and also worked on a few other quotes. I have a large 5 car policy that I am hoping to get issued on Saturday. We'll see how that goes.

Just got home from bartending (almost 1am) and fired Cake up and decided not to play as I am quite tired. Decided to just update this and go to bed. Need to open the bar at 10am so need to get some sleep.

Today was a pretty dang good day for poker. I played ~600 hands and finished up almost 4 buyins. Was a great run, even after have KQ lose to QJ on a 4QQ flop. Yup, J on the river sinks me.

Cake: $1392.86
Stars: $210.98
Tilt: $205.54

Total:$1809.38

Rakeback: $137.80 after 9929 hands.

I am really close to start taking shots at 100nl and I honestly say that I am a bit nervous. Think I'll girnd away at 50 for a while.