Hump Day, Bump Day

Stupid title, I know. So it's been going fairly well this past two weeks, not nearly as good as the month before the last post, but that wasn't necessarily expected. Lately I have been playing cash games a lot on FullTilt, still trying to perfect my strategy, and I am learning something every time I play. One thing is that you can make a lot of money off of the super loose people, but another thing is that you can lose a lot of money to those super loose people as well. Since I have tightened my distribution up, there have been quite a few times when I would get a hand like QQ that improves to a set on the flop of 3Q6, and I lose to the low straight...granted, you will see that at any level when there is no betting pre-flop, but you wouldn't expect someone to A. call a sizable raise pre-flop with 47o, B. call a continuation bet on the flop with an inside straight draw, C. call ANOTHER continuation bet on the turn with the same draw.... Some people just drive me nuts, and I know that I'll never get away from those idiots making those plays, because as much as there are people at the micros playing like that because they don't have the bankroll to play the higher games, there are also idiots with money that you will find in the bigger games playing the same way and normally just spewing their money away.
So anyway, on FullTilt I made about another $4.50 in the past two weeks. Had a couple bad days in which I had lost 2 buyins and at one point I was down to $14 because of people sucking out on me, or me just forgetting my new strategy and playing way too loose, and losing because of it. Going back to the better range, I came right back. Also, FullTilt has a promotion going on right now called TakeTwo, which is kind of like the Iron Man challenge in which you get awarded for playing so many days in a month. So for the first 10 days you play and make 1 FPP, you get $5, then for playing 10 days you get another $10(total $15), 15 days is another $10(total $25) and if you play 25 days out of the 30 in September, you get another $25(total $50). So I didn't know about this until about the 8th(Labor Day weekend killed my poker time) so I only got 2 out of the first 8 days of the month, so that killed my chances of making the full amount. But since then I have played 16 days out of the month, so I will be getting another $25 to play with for clearing the bonus, so that will help out TONS, nearly doubling my roll. Wish FT had this promo running all of the time, lol.
On UltimateBet, the only thing that changed was I played a $2+.20 SNG just to kill time one night and I got 2nd place in it to get $5.20($3 profit). Nothing else very interesting on there.

Finishing Up

Ok, so finishing up where I left off this morning. FullTilt... so I have pretty much been playing cash games exclusively there for the past month or so, and I have had varying results as I have been trying to perfect my strategy, as I would consider myself pretty novice for ring games as I have mainly played tournaments before.

So, one thing that I have done is I moved up from .01/.02(2NL) to .02/.05(5NL). Now this isn't too good as far as following my BR Management rules, but my theory behind it was that I am getting around at least some of the idiots that are playing the lowest levels possible. Another thing that I have done is tighten up my range a lot, Holdem Manager has been helping me notice this a lot when I have been going through my sessions. I used to be at a VPIP of about 30-35%, and I have since brought it down to about a 17-20%, and I have been having positive sessions ever since, especially when I am noticing that I am playing against people who are playing with VPIPs like I used to have.

Well now I am off to the bar to watch the Purdue vs Oregon game, so I'm out. Talk to you later, hopefully not a month.

Here Comes The BOOM...

So I guess this has turned into a monthly update, which I wish it wouldn't be, but between being busy with work and being busy playing poker, there haven't been too many times to update. Also, I think the summer has to do a lot with it, as when I am not at work or playing poker, I am out doing something, I mean, I have a life. So once the cold air starts hitting, there might be some more updates.

Now, on to the big update today! EVERY SITE HAS HAD A DECENT INCREASE!!! I will start off with the biggest first. Bodog....wow. This is something that I should have posted about the night that it happened, but I was too lazy and it got pushed off until now, almost 3 weeks later, so I don't have any specific hands, but I won $160 by winning a $8 Bounty tournament, which has been my biggest increase during the entire challenge! I have also played a couple smaller SnGs and cashed in them, but not for very much.

UltimateBet hadn't changed very much at all until Thursday night, where I got 4th place in the CardsChat.com Freeroll, adding $12 to the roll. I have started employing a more tight aggresive approach in my tourney game that has really been helping a lot. In this tournament I ended up busting out with K8s to someone holding pocket QQ that ended up improving to a set on the flop. Other than that, I really haven't been playing on UltimateBet too much lately. I played a couple Step Tourneys two weeks ago, but those are really just to kill time, because the amount of luck and time that goes into making it all the way up to Step 10 is immense.

Now on to PokerStars, which really got it's boost over a couple of different ways. First, I just started playing cash games, just 2NL, one night just to kill some time and see if I could raise it up a little. Just playing one table, I brought that $2 up to $9 in just over an hour before I quit. A couple days later I was playing two tables at 2NL and made another $12 in a couple hours, bringing my total up to $21. Then the next day I decided to just play a $1+.10 tourney and I ended up cashing in that for $5, bringing it up to $25.

Carbon finally got a boost! The last time it had any change on my graph was the first week of the challenge when I won $.07 in a new player freeroll. This was just yesterday that this happened, playing the CardsChat.com $100 Freeroll. I ended up getting 2nd place, and the tournament pays out 5 spots. I am not sure what hand I went out on because I didn't see it. What happened was right when it got to heads up, a 5 minute break came, so I went to the bathroom and took my break, whatever...came back to my computer about 4 minutes later, and the tournament was over and I got 2nd place. I think what happened was I pushed the "I'm Ready" button before I went to the bathroom and that ends the break early....I didn't know that, so it's my fault. We were at just about even stacks, so I could have taken it down for sure, but I learned a lesson, never hit that button.

Well, I need to run, but I am going to come back later to finish up about FullTilt. Cya!