Happy New Years

Happy Early New Years everyone! For some people in Europe I might be fairly close, but I'm still about 10 hours away. Although only about 2 hours away from starting to party for it!

So the last couple weeks have been very exciting for me, and that is part of the reason that I haven't posted at all. On December 22nd, the Tuesday before Christmas, I proposed to my girlfriend to marry me, and she of course said yes. I did it as a huge surprise for her as well. We both live in Chicago, but her family is from Austin, Texas and she was going down there for the holidays. Well, I flew in earlier than she did so that I could get her parents permission and then surprise her when she walked in the door and I was there on one knee. It took me a couple months of planning and a LOT of lying to her to make sure she had absolutely no clue(I was really afraid someone in her family would slip up). I then spent the rest of the week there with them and it couldn't have been a better Christmas. I might try to post some pictures a little later, but I don't have them here at work.

On to poker. I really haven't played too much, and when I have, I have been having a bad run. I have bubbled out of the last 5 Bodog $8.80 tournaments that I have played in and I can't figure out what's going on. I do great until right before the bubble then I just start spewing chips. I need to reevaluate what's going on. Also, I have been having a lot of people end up screwing me on my big hands with hands they should have never called with. Today I was dealt AA with a medium/short stack and a guy that just barely had me covered called with 97s. He ended up making his flush(which I had the Ace for), but why would you call that right on the bubble? I can't figure this play out. I wish I could get REAL hand histories for Bodog so I could go over them, but Bodog's software sucks and won't let you.

I played very little on FullTilt, but I did have the opportunity to play on there from about 35,000ft, which was pretty cool. On my way back from Austin, I got free WIFI and played the entire time on FT in Matrix tournaments, one which I cashed in all 4, the other which I busted in all 4, so I broke even. It was just a cool way to pass the time on a plane.

Well, I am done for today. I just found out that I get to leave work early, so I am taking off in about 4 minutes. It's time to partay!! Have a great night everyone. Don't do anything I wouldn't do ;)

Updates and Goodies

Take one goody away and I give another. So I have been trying to update the Hand Distribution Calculator that I had on the sidebar, but the Javascript widget that Blogger includes is for some reason not compatible with my code and I don't know why. I have it working on my side, just not when I paste it into their screen, so who knows what is going on. I will try to make some kind of a work around, otherwise it might have to wait until I start hosting my own site, which is in the back of my head for down the road. Blogger is just too limited, and I can't host files and everything, just gets kind of annoying...especially since I have run my own websites before where I had all of the control I wanted.

So the new goody... It's a Hold'em Manager Stat Guide(can be used for any poker tracking software, just different stat names). It's officially my gift to the members of CardsChat.com that I wrote for my 1000th post there. I wrote it as a gift because of all the knowledge that has been passed on to me through my reading and writing of posts on there. My poker skills have improved multi-fold because I have so many great minds pretty much at my fingertips at the forums. So I will be keeping the updated version of the file located on the sidebar, I say updated because I plan on taking any suggestions into cosideration to make changes to it, because I know that how I have my stats set-up, may no be the best way, or 100% correct. So please let me know on the forums of any changes you think should be made here, Special 1K Post: Holdem Manager Stat Guide.

That is all for tonight, after that I am tired of typing. Peace out for now!

First Off... Money

Hey everyone. First, I'll start off by saying Happy Holidays, they sure have been good for me so far, and I have been really busy, both with playing poker and trying to roll out some new things. I'll talk about poker in this post and leave the other subjects for subsequent posts. So since December has started, I have been going positive just about anywhere I have played. On Bodog, I have been killing the $8 tournaments, making about $190 so far this month.

On UltimateBet, I got 6th place in a CardsChat.com member buy-in tournament for ~$18. Earlier today I also played in Joe Seeb's 1 Million Twitter Follower Buy-In because there was so much added. Huge bounty's on UB Pro's and big prizes if the final table was made. Well, I started off really slow, losing about 1/3rd of my chips in the first 15 minutes on someone going for a 2 outer and hitting it. I actually got all the way down to only 150 chips right after the first break and brought it back to 1000 over the chip average to 3500. A little later on I stupidly got involved with another big stack at the table where I had top two pair on the flop, Aces and 10's, and lost to the other guy's set of 4's that he hit on the flop, and that knocked me out. Overall, I was sure I had the hand, there were no straight or flush draws on board, just couldn't see him having that. I went out in about 350th place out of ~900 and it paid around top 160, so I was kind of bummed about that.

On FullTilt, I have been playing my cash games here and there and matrix games here and there. Not as much as I would want though, mainly because when I sit down to play a cash game, I would like to be able to play for at least a couple hours, but I can't always find that time. All of the holiday festivities have been keeping me too busy, lol, still in the positive though.

Also, I just broke another milestone, this month I passed the $1000 mark, so I am officially 1/10th of the way there. I know that it was definitely longer than a year, but who gives a fuck. I have a job that I have to pay more attention to and I have been able to make that on top of it, so that's perfectly fine with me. Well, that is all for this post, now on to the next.

Happy Thanksgiving Week(US Only =) )

Whats up all. So poker has once again been pretty slow lately, but I think once it gets colder it will get a lot more prevalent for me. I haven't played any poker at all on a weekend in about 3 months I don't think because I have had all kinds of things from weddings to parties to going out of town, etc. that has kept me from playing at all. I have been playing at night during the week, but there isn't much progress that can be made when I only have about 4 hours of total free time from the time that I get home until the time I feel I should be in bed(that 4 hours also includes showering and eating dinner). It doesn't help that I have about an hour commute each way, so if I could get rid of that, I would have an extra hour after work and another possible hour of sleep(so maybe I could stay up an hour later). Need to figure some stuff out. I've been thinking of trying to get a new job and I have a friend in Nashville that I gave my resume to, so hopefully that works out. Other than that, nothing with that part of my life is really changing.

On to poker. There have been some more big jumps this update. On UltimateBet I got 2nd place in CardsChat's $5.50 tourney that had $100 added and I took home $51 for that, so that bumped my UB account over the $200 mark. I was kind of disappointed with myself in that tourney because when we went to HeadsUp, it was down to Snowmobiler(a CardsChat regular) and I and we were about even in chips, and stayed that way for about 10 minutes, and then I just made a dump play with King high and lost. I need to work on my HeadsUp game a little more. I have a Heads Up book by Colin Moshman that is supposed to be great that I just haven't gotten around to reading yet.

On Bodog I played in one of the BPOIV(Bodog Poker Open IV) events and I didn't realize that it was a rebuy tournament, which I hate, and I ended up bubbling out of that one, and also spent $20 on the $5.50 tournament(which is why I don't like them). Now I know that with rebuys, you should be expecting to rebuy about 10-15 times, but that is just dumb to me, especially in my challenge situation where I don't have an unlimited bankroll to support all of the rebuys, but whatever. I built my winnings up around another $150 on here by playing the $8.80 tournaments at night, they have been working great for me, and I'm not going to stop until they stop bringin in the money.

On FullTilt, I have pretty much been doing the same, playing cash games here and there, but I have also started playing some of the Matrix tournaments, and I have had nothing but success with them. Actually, every single one that I have played in the past month or so I have at least won my buy-in back, with one of them I won all 4, so I was the "Dominatrix". Haven't really improved much here, but it's still +EV. And with Carbon, I was just messing around one day with an All-In or Fold tournament, and I won .75.

That is all for now. Like I said, hopefully once the weather gets cooler there won't be as many events that I need to be at so I will be able to play more so I have something to update. Also, I will be fixing the VPIP Hand Range Calculator because the math is wrong on it, but I just need to find a way to do it is JavaScript. I know I could do it in Visual Basic or PHP, but JS isn't my forte, so just be on the lookout for that as well.

New Tool : Hand Distribution Calculator

So while I was at work the other day I came up with an idea for a way of pulling out an approximate hand distribution for an opponent based on his/her VP$IP percentage. Key word being approximate, because it is possible for someone with a VPIP of 5% to play a 72o every now and then, just unlikely. So if you look at the upper right hand sidebar, you will see my new Hand Distribution Calculator, the first of it's kind from what Google showed me. I am going to be making some tweaks to my coding for it to perfect it here and there, so let me know if any of you have problems with it. So basically, this should help with some of your away from table workings if you use programs such as PokerStove, along with while you are playing and you want to just check out what hands might be in your opponents' ranges as you are playing them, it might be able to help you with a critical decision! Hope you guys enjoy!

Short Update Problems

Hey all, sorry for not getting back later on that night and posting those hands, I got home and my computer was down and I have been having problems pretty much ever since. After I got the computer back up and running due to a memory issue(just a bad stick), I updated to Windows 7 and I have been having some problems connecting to my Holdem Manager database. So now what is on my agenda is I am taking spare parts from all of the computers that I have built in the past and I am making a linux server that will probably partially be a media server, but mainly it will host my Holdem Manager PostgreSQL Database on it, so that way I will just be able to connect to it from anywhere, including from my laptop if I'm away from home or something. This will be so much better than having to import and export the databases from each computer everytime I want to use one or the other if I want to keep my stats 100% up to date. So right now I am in the process of getting all of this older hardware(some of which may have been the problem with those old computers) all put together and working correct and then I am going to put Ubuntu 9.10 on it, which comes out tomorrow. At the moment, for some reason the computer isn't recognizing both the hard drive and the DVD-R at the same time, only one. It doesn't matter how I have them set up either, whether on different IDE slots or if they are set up as master/slave configs. So that will be my project this weekend between going out and partying for Halloween. But I am pretty excited about that, especially since I will be up and running again with poker. It's not that I couldn't play without all of this being done, I just have that on my mind now and I want all of this finished and out of the way before I do anything else now, lol.
Other than that, I have noticed that the graph on the sidebar freezes Internet Explorer everytime the page loads, so that is gone for good now. For a while I had thought that I fixed that problem, but it's back. I would really rather not have the crappy picture that you have to click on to see well, but I will find something to go in that graph's place. Although when I was searching for widgets, it looks like Google got rid of a lot of them. So be on the watchout for that.
Last note....we have a real URL now!!! Absoluthamm.com is now the official address for this page(just a redirect obviously) so that will be a lot nicer than typing out buildthatbankroll.blogspot.com. I have a lot of plans for that domain in the future as well (maybe I will design a new site and host it on that linux box that I'm getting up ;) ). Well, that's all I've got for today. Hope everyone has a great Halloween weekend playing poker or partying and getting wasted... I know I should be doing the former, but I will definitely be doing the latter. Peace

Fall Is Here

Hey everyone, been a while yet again, even though there should have been a post about 2 weeks ago, but when I was just about to publish the post, my computer shut down on me for no reason, then I was too lazy to go back and type everything back up again, so blame technology on that one, or me being lazy, what ever you choose.
So I have had another good month, bumping up my top 3 sites yet again. Bodog by about $154, mainly from playing $8.80 MTTs, as they, in my opinion at least, have the best ROI for the lower limits on Bodog, because their $2.20 and $3.30 MTTs have all of the people that would normally be in the $0.25-0.50 MTTs on FullTilt or PokerStars, because Bodog's micro limits are higher. So I have been pretty successfull with those. I haven't played any of them in the past couple weeks and I have no way of tracking the hand history on there(yet) because they are stupid, so I am unable to give any specific hands that I had played.
On FullTilt, I have been up and down with my cash game playing, and I'm still working that out. Lately I haven't been able to play much because everything has been so busy with work and events on the weekends, so I am going to try to get back into that next week I hope. But I have cashed in a couple CardsChats.com tournaments, the last one being two days ago when I got 2nd for $34, and I will go over two of the big hands from when we were Heads Up later on tonight when I get home from work.
On UltimateBet as well I got 2nd place in a CardsChat.com tournament, taking in $30 for 2nd place, but I should not have gotten 2nd place. My connection went out when there were still 8 people at the final table and I was chipleader, and I was never able to get back online. Later on I found out that when it was down to 3 players, I was just about to blind out, and one of the other guys playing went all in against the then chipleader and lost, so I ended up blinding out in the round or two later and got 2nd because he made the mistake of not just waiting for me to blind out. Funny stuff.
Well, I will be back on later tonight to post those hands, so see ya in a few hours!

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!

Card Dead

So since the last time I posted, I have been playing absolutely terrible. Actually, I think it is in part my playing bad, and partly getting completely sucked out on time after time, which is in turn my fault on earlier play... My Aces have been getting cracked, I have flopped straights, only to get beaten by backdoor flush draws that go all-in on the flop, driving me crazy. I have not won a penny in a single tournament since last post, which was...July 17th, so a little over 2 weeks ago. And it hasn't just been on one site, it has been on just about all of them.

Starting off, I bubbled on Carbon, which would have given me at least $5(a lot considering .07c has been in there since the first week I had it). On UltimateBet, I played a like 5 $1 SnGs, to be of no help to me at all, I think I got 4th in 3 or 4 of them, which almost makes it worse. On Bodog, I played one of their $3.30 SnGs(which is higher than my bankroll allows, but it is the lowest they really have that isn't a 90-person) and bubbled on that one too!

Where I really screwed up was at FullTilt, playing the Daily Dollar tournament... I am mad at myself for this, because it could have been avoided. First of all, I won my seat into the tournament through winning a little 50 FPPs SnG satellite, which was easier than hell. So I am playing the tournament and build up a good stack, probably about 4 times the size of the average stack, and then like 4 hands in a row, I get the following: KK, AKs, AKo, JJ. Could I have any better cards consecutively? That's what I thought too, but I LOST WITH EVERY FUCKING ONE OF THEM!!! Why? Because it is a rebuy! So Joe Dumbfuck over there will go all-in with jack shit and suck out on me with my great hands, and if he loses, he will just rebuy again, and again, and again. So after those consecutive beats, I was pissed, and did a rebuy, then a double rebuy, and then a double addon when the break came. So I ended up spending like $7 on a stupid $1 tournament. I ended up getting pushed around after that, because I was moved to a table where everyone else had at least double my stack, and ended up getting out when I pushed with KQs and ran into KK and never held up. This is just one of the reasons that I usually never play Rebuys, because I hate how people play them... the damn game isn't played with skill, but how deep your pockets are, and that's stupid. Oh well.

I have brought my FullTilt back up about $2 by playing ring games though, and I think I might start to do this a little more often now, as I am pretty sure I have a good strategy that someone over at CardsChat helped me learn. So I have just been playing NL2(.01/.02) on FT just to try out my strategy, and I have doubled my buyins 3 times in just the past 2 days, so I think I am going to master it a little bit more at NL2, and hopefully will build the roll up a little bit to be able to get to NL5 soon(and on up), because it's kind of hard to take things seriously when you are playing for pennies, but I have to start somewhere, and it is more consistent than tournaments have been going for me lately, so I'll stick with it for now.

Also, I am thinking about possibly buying Hold'em Manager with some of my UltimateBet winnings. I have been doing trials on it for a long time now and it is a pain in the ass having to get rid of all of the tracks every two weeks when the trial is up(whoops, did I say that), and I love the program, just couldn't see spending $55 on it, but it will definitely be worth it over the long run. I just need to have a little bit more motivation to make that push. Well, hopefully next time I post, I will have some better news for you, this post was more of a rant I feel. Until next time, good luck at the felt(for me!!)

Another Bump

So I added a little more to UltimateBet yesterday, adding $5 to bring it just under $150. I won the $5 in the CardsChat U/B Freeroll, which I have already talked about a dozen times. I placed 12th in it, but the money wasn't the only good part about the game, I also won my 2nd Last Person Standing Challenge title, which doesn't earn me anything extra, just bragging rights for a day, lol, but it adds a little extra challenge to it to make it fun.

I also started using some of my Bodog winnings to try to turn a profit, as I haven't played with any of my roll there except for one time in a cash game, which I ended up losing $0.50, so I just played a 10-man SNG for $2.20 and I ended up winning it, making $6, but really only 3.80 after the buyin. I am kind of mad at myself for it though, I didn't realize it was listed as a Beginner SNG, so the top 5 out of 10 got paid, which just cut my winnings by about $4, but oh well, still won.

I think I am played a tournament on Carbon later on today, but I'm not sure how much poker I will be playing this weekend, but if anything happens, here will be the first place you'll be able to find out about it. Take it easy guys

Full Tilt Is Growing

The past couple days have been pretty successful for me. First I will start with Friday, which really wasn't a success, but that was out of my own stupidity. I was playing the CardsChat Carbon Freeroll, in which 5 places pay out, well, I made it down to the final six and I'm sure I could have made it into the money, because there was one other player that was below my chipstack by quite a bit, but I was also fairly low and needed to make a move to move up in spots. My problem came in that I wasn't just playing for the money, but also a CardsChat Challenge called Last Person Standing, or LPS, which really doesn't get you much but your name on a leaderboard and some bragging rights. In the challenge it was down to me and one other person, who had about double my stack and I needed to catch up to him in order to make any kind of a run on him. So I was in early position with AJs and pushed(only had about 6BBs left anyway). and I got called by the Small Blind who had AQo, I caught my Jack on the flop, but then on the river he improved to an Ace high straight, and I was out on the bubble. Had I not been trying to catch up to him I'm not sure I would have made this move right here, but possibly just tried to eke my way into the money, but oh well.

On to Full Tilt, where there was actually some progress... On Saterday, I played about 15 of these Sit-N-Learn freerolls, which I won tickets to through the Full Tilt Academy, and with them, the top 100 get a ticket to a $5000 freeroll on Sunday, so through playing the 15 or so, I ended up getting tickets to the Sunday in 7 of them(which I found out later didn't matter because you can't redeem anything from them by unregistering =/, I just made it so the field was a little smaller). So Sunday, I got to play in this one, which I ended up making $12, but I should have been higher, here is how I went out. So a player in early position with a stack just above mine raised pre-flop to about 5XBB and I look down at AKo, so I just flat called, not wanting to get into a huge pot with an unmade hand preflop, everyone else folded. Flop comes Axx, GREAT! He raises the pot, so I reraisedthe new pot and he pushes allin, I call and he shows me the AQo, perfect, only 3 outs for him. Turn comes a 9 and of course the river is a Q, so I was out. I felt like I played the hand great, just got screwed by the river. Nothing that I did was going to make him put that hand down.

I also won $2.50 in the Fantasy Freeroll for Limit Stud Hi Lo, which I got about 95th place out of 800 or so, which I find pretty good since I usually suck at Hi-Lo games, just because I am so used to Holdem, but I am getting a lot better at recognizing the low without problems. So now I'm up to about $22.50 in my FullTilt account, which is obviously the highest I have had it for the challenge. Hopefully this week will be as good as last, talk to ya later!

WSOP Month Was Good To Me

OK, so when I last updated you guys I had just cashed in my first Fantasy Poker Event on FullTilt. Since then I have played two more, and I believe I have another two coming up. Anyway, the ones that I played were the NL 6-Max and the Omaha Hi Low 8/b. In the NL 6-Max I can't remember what place I got into, but I know that I cashed for $2, so that was a plus. In the Omaha game, I just couldn't get anything going, seemed like the only time I was winning hands, I was splitting it for the low or high, drove me nuts. There were a TON of people sitting out that must have forgotten about it, so had I played smart, I probably could have outlasted them until they were blinded away and made the money, but oh well.

On UltimateBet, I was playing one of the weekly CardsChat Tournaments and ended up getting 4th place in it and took home $12 for that, which was nice because I have felt like UB hasn't done much for me lately.

Then tonight, I was playing in another CardsChat event on Bodog and got 2nd place, adding another $24 to my account, and had I waited for a better hand, I may have been able to win it, but here was the scenario. About 5-10 minutes into HeadsUp I was dealt 98s, so I made the standard p/f raise of about 3XBB, he calls. Flop comes A98 rainbow, how much better could it have been? He was betting just about anything on every flop, so I checked to him knowing he was going to bet, he bet the pot and I just called. The turn brought a rag, so I checked again and this time he min bet, so I pushed and he called(had me covered by about 8k chips). He turns over A9 for the top 2 pair to my middle 2.... needless to say, my hand didn't improve on the river(was only about 2% to hit one of the other 2 8s) and I got 2nd, which is my biggest cash on Bodog so far.

Other than that, I have a lot of little tournaments coming up this weekend that I will be playing in and hopefully making something out of. A bunch of these stupid Sit-N-Learn Freerolls on FullTilt, which I don't even know what the payout is or anything, so we'll see if I even play them. But until next time, see ya at the tables...

Upgrade

Hey all, no more poker since last night, I just wanted to say that I updated all of my bankrolls and also the graph on the sidebar. The way that I had it before really sucked, so I spent the morning looking for an update that wouldn't freeze people's computers, so if it does then let me know and I will change it back. The other way was just a huge pain in the ass, so there. About the only other news that I have is the date for my next Fantasy Poker tournament that I won the ticket to and that is next Monday night, June 22nd in No-Limit Hold'em 6-Handed, so I am expecting to do well in that also, so I will get back to you guys later, enjoy the new graph.

World Series of Poker Baby! - with Updates

Wow, so I really am turning into how I was right after I started this thing. I haven't posted in exactly a month! I'm sorry. I have been playing poker, but just haven't found the time to write anything about it, not that I didn't have plenty to say, just never completed the task. So aside from that, it's World Series time!!!! I have been completely immersed in that, mainly because I have a Fantasy Poker team on FullTilt, which has already yielded me some goodies. So far I have won a FullTilt Poker hat and 4 tickets to freerolls(if I make it into the top ten then I qualify for a Main Event Ticket Freeroll!!! How sweet would that be?) I already lost the Pot Limit Omaha Hi Freeroll earlier tonight, got about 600th place and 360 pay out, but right now I am playing the Limit Stuf Hi and I made the money and am currently in 140th place after the 2nd break, so pray for me(I'm not the best Stud player, but I have been making some pretty impressive moves tonight). I also have a No-Limit 6-Max event coming up sometime, and I can't remember what the other one is, but those should be fun.

On the other hand, I have won some money on PokerStars and Bodog in the last month through playing a couple CardsChat freerolls(for Bodog) and some regular donkrolls on PS(actually was just playing to waste time and ended up making some money, that works, right?) I have played a bunch more MTTs as well, but I can't remember the exact results. Although, I am going to be keeping much better track of my play and hopefully plugging some leaks of mine, because I got Hold'em Manager fully installed now, so I have imported all of my hands from the last year or so and trying to see what I can learn about myself. I will keep you guys posted on that as well, but not in too much detail, for obvious reasons.

But anyway, I am going to go try to place top 10 in this tournament so I am possibly go to the Main Event next year and then I will be at my $10k! Take it easy guys, I will update later how I finished in this.

Update: At the 3rd break I am up to 52nd place with 119 left...still in this B ;)

Update #2: Right after the 4th break was dealt As9cAc, got all but 1000 in on first, opponent had a 2 showing, so I pushed on next move and he flips over pocket trip 3s and my hand never improved. Good run though, now I've gotta wait til next week for my next events though. Made $3 for the freeroll, and I didn't get my Main Event Ticket so I'm kind of disappointed. Time for bed though, g'night

Updated Layout

Hey, just letting you know that I updated the layout a little bit. The realtime graph that I had on the saidebar before with my challenge bankrolls was causing some people's computers to freeze up for some reason. So I changed it to an image. It isn't as nice, with the mouseovers and stuff, but this shouldn't freeze computers. Also, you can't really see it too well, so I am going to have to work on that, but for now, you can click on the image and it will open up into a new window so you can see it at max resolution.

I am playing in a CardsChat freeroll tonight on UltimateBet, so that should bring a little more money into the game, and I will update later on that. This will be the first poker for me in over a week..... God I hate saying that.

Busy Busy Busy....

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't posted anything in about a week now, but I haven't even had the time to play one little sit-n-go, let alone anything else. Work has been so busy that out of the last week, I haven't been able to eat lunch 3 days. I mean, the whole not eating thing isn't the problem, it is the fact that I have had absolutely no downtime, and it's driving me nuts. The good thing is that I have been doing very well at work, having more sales in the first week of May than almost Feb/Mar/Apr combined, so that is nice for my other bankroll.

On the down side, I found out today that my boss for some reason thinks that I need to go back into training. See, I was given a new office for myself to run on my own because some other guy got fired and it needed to be filled. But they weren't sure if I was ready to go yet or not, but they needed someone to be there regardless, so it was me. So my sales haven't been so hot in the last 3 months, but this month they have sparked, mainly due to the fact that I have become much more aggressive in my sales pitch and almost won't take a no for an answer, and it has been working very well. So as soon as I start to do much better, they throw this shit at me that I have to go back to watching people do sales again, and it pisses me off. Oh well, I was going to play poker tonight, but now after talking to the boss and him telling me this shit, now I am just going to go out and get hammered, can't stand this shit. He just kept saying, "But hey, you still have a job...." Fuck that.

Real Money on FullTilt

So I haven't posted in a while, I feel like I am always saying this, but I have been busy as hell, and haven't had much time to play poker, let alone post a blog post about how I did. There really wasn't too much last week anyway. Since winning the 45-man SNG, I pretty much evened out, cashing in one then losing in two, no remarkable hands or anything.

Tonight I played in a CardsChat member's freeroll on FullTilt and I got 6th place(I think I should have done a lot better, but I will explain some of those hands in a minute). For getting 6th, I got $7.50, so that brings my FT account up to just over $8, which makes it a lot easier than the .50c I had before. Now on to some of my hands in that game:

Actually, both of the game-changing hands I am going to talk about(one good and one bad), were AK Offsuit. In the first one, I was UTG(Under The Gun) and flat called with another caller behind me, then a player in middle position raised to 5xBB preflop, and the other player and I called. Flop comes J-Q-10 rainbow, I hit the nut straight! I needed to slow play this hand, so I just checked and the girl behind me bets the pot, $5000, the original raisor RAISES her all-in($8900), then I obviously re-raise all-in($9600), and that girl calls and has us covered! She turns over A3off, stupid hand that she never should have played(she is a pretty good player too, came back later on and cashed as well, not sure what she was thinking here). The pre-flop raisor had AQ of diamonds, which there were none on the board. The board held up and I became tournament chip leader with a stack 2x 2nd place. This hand skyrocketed me.

The next hand, the one I didn't like, happened about 5 hands before I busted out. I had AKoff again in middle position. The guy in UTG+1 raised it 6xBB($9600) and had about $20,000 left, so I put him all-in, I had about $40,000, and everyone else folded. He thought about it for a long time and was saying in the chat, "Should I really do this with 33?" and he called!!! Needless to say, the pocket 33 held up and I didn't improve and it hurt my quite a bit and I never recovered. I hate when people make those dumbass calls pre-flop, but two things that I realize that many people don't, A. It's a freeroll and people aren't losing any buy-in by making dumb plays, and B. AKoff is not anywhere near a made hand. It is the best drawing hand that you can have, but nothing else, so oh well. Maybe there will be more later on in the week. Take it easy all.

Won a 45-Man SNG

So after a couple nights with my new strategy and cashing in about 4 SNGs for a small amount(not much more than the buy-in, or twice it), tonight I won a 45-person SNG for $13.50. I will contribute much of it to the amazing hands that I got for my last 10 or so hands. In the last 10 hands I was dealt AK twice, AQ twice, A9s, A8s, KK, JJ, 98s, and 44. I took the last 4 people at the table out in just those last 10 hands as well. It was working to my advantage as I was constantly betting 4xBB with every hand and they would push thinking I was just doing my regular raise and my hands would hold up(held up against trip Jacks, QQ, and a straight which I beat with the boat). I have lost a couple SNGs as well that my little strategy wasn't obviously working with, but I have won more than lost, so that is good. Well, keeping it short tonight, busy day tomorrow. Peace out.

It's My Birthday

So today is my birthday, but it kind of sucks. It is raining outside and I am at work. I have never worked on my birthday. The last 5 years of it I was at Purdue, partying my ass off, before noon usually... this whole working on my birthday thing sucks, I wish April 21st was permanently on Saturday every year(I wonder if there is a way I could work that out with the world?) Anyway, the woman I work with is going to get a couple of us Hooters for the B-Day for lunch, then tonight Allyson(my girlfriend) is taking me to Lawry's downtown for some steak, I am going to be stuffed by the time I fall asleep. No poker today, but I cashed in a couple SNGs yesterday, but I will comment on those later. Peace out fellas.

Finally!

So tonight I finally cashed in one of the bigger SNGs, it was a 45-person, and I won $4.05 so the new strategy that I was saying I was going to try worked(at least for today). I know you probably want to know what that strategy is, but I am going to hold it to myself for a while, both because it needs to be improved upon, and because if you know my strategy and you are playing against me, well....obvious. I ended up busting out having an M of ~2.5 and went all-in with pocket 66, to get called by the other short stack at the table(had me covered barely) with K10off(I thought that was dumb, but whatever). He caught a 10 on the flop and I never progressed, getting out in 5th.

I also cashed in the PokerSpace FullTilt $100 freeroll, for .24c, which was kind of a surprise, because I was playing in it until there were about 120 people left in it, then I had other things to do. 102 places were paid out and I ended up blinding out at #65, so people must have been dropping left and right once the bubble bursted, because my stack was just average. Oh well though, That's an extra quarter(almost) that I have on FullTilt now. Hopefully I will be able to win one of the FT freerolls that CardsChat sets up, because those pay out so much better. Well, that is all I have for tonight. Have a good one.

Post From Work

So last night I went on a spree. I was bound to play some $1+.10 45-90 person SNGs on UltimateBet because I am sick of the 9 person ones(I find people don't care as much, therefore will go all-in with a wide range of hands and it is driving me nuts, and the payout for a win doesn't always justify all of the B.S.). But I found out something pretty important, people don't change their ways of playing just because of how many people are in the SNG, they still play like they don't care at all. I am not sure on the exact hand history as I am at work, and my PokerTracker is at home, but I will try...

45 person SNG, about 25-30 people left, so still pretty early, not even first break yet, blinds are about 50-100 and I have 2750 chips.
Dealt JhJs under-the-gun at a full table, so I raise it to 600(6xBB is a big raise, but in early position with JJ, I didn't want too many callers) and it folds around to the Cut-Off, who calls, everyone else folds, pot is now $1350.
Flop is 3c7sJc, good for me, so I lead out with a smaller continuation bet of 1/3 of the pot with 400, and the other guy pushes all in and has me covered by about 40 chips! So I am thinking either he has a smaller set(which didn't seem likely since he would have been calling a big raise with a pocket 3s or pocket 7s), a Ace(King, Queen, Ten) high flush draw(which I thought was most likely), or maybe a higher pair like Aces or Kings, which I had dominated right now. So I of course called, and what does he show?5c 8c?!?!
First....what the fuck were you calling a 6xBB bet preflop with that for, and second, why would you push with an 8 high flush draw??? Needless to say, he got his other club and beat me and I could have punched someone. This happened a couple more times last night on different tables in other ways, I think there was only one game where I just didn't get any good cards and just had to go in with 88 and got busted out, which is fine, it happens, but the other games pissed me off.
Tonight I am going to try to play in the CardsChat FullTilt Member's Freeroll if I can get out of work a little early, otherwise I might play some SNGs again tonight, but I am going to try to apply a different strategy. I will try to keep you posted. Take it easy.

Quick Update

So the 45 man SNG, didn't notice it was a damn Ultra-Turbo...I hate that damn format. I love Turbos, just not the Ultras. Anyway, got 10th in it and only paid out to 7, so I lost .60c, but learned to never play a UT again, lol. Blinds were 600/1200 and my stack was about 3700 and I went all-in preflop with KK. Guy with A4s calls and hits an Ace on the flop and holds up. The whole time people were calling with damn near anything, because you had to otherwise, by the time the damn blinds got back to you, it was already two more blind levels ahead. Some skill with a lot of luck involved there. Well, now I am just waiting for midnight. Take it easy fellas.

No More Step Tourney

So UltimateBet has had these Step to the World Series Tournaments that have the basic idea that you can start with a 9 person SNG for .10c, and that would be Step 1. 1st and 2nd place from that get to move on to Step 2, and 3rd and 4th get to replay Step 1. And that keeps going on as you move up the ladder, all the way to Step 10, which is a $2250+100 buyin, and the winner of that gets a seat to the WSOP and spending money.

Well, these tournaments are fun, and I have gotten up to Step 5 about 4 or 5 times now, but the problem is, that unless I make it all the way, I get no money(with exception to 2nd place on Step 10, they get $3550). So really, it is fun, but it is a waste of time. So as soon as I lose all of my coupons for those, I am done with them. Kind of sucks though, because most people are only playing those and not the regular SNGs, oh well.

So right now I am playing a .50+.10 45 person SNG, which is the first time I have played one on here that was bigger than 18(SNGs, I have played thousands of MTT Tournaments), so we shall see how this works out. Seven places pay out, and #1 gets $6.75, which isn't much, but I am really only playing down here because none of the other ones were even close to filling up. And I would normally be going to bed about now, but I wanted to be a good boyfriend and call my girlfriend at mindnight as her birthday is tomorrow.... how sweet, right? Well, I will keep you posted on how this SNG goes. I have only been playing about 10 minutes and already at the 6th blind level, they are increasing every 2 minutes. So I need to go so I can pay attention. Cya

Slump on FT

So I went on a bit of a slump on FT last night. I was playing on the .01/.02 tables and lost my buy-in of about .30c due to someone calling my preflop bet with QQ and he had J10. The flop came Q98 rainbow, so I bet, then he raised, I re-raised all in and he obviously had the straight and I didn't pair the board for the boat, so my buyin was gone. I played again later on, and I just wasn't having any good cards, and whenever I would try to make a move, someone would come over the top of me.

Then, I was wanting to play some tourney action on FT, so I bought in to the $10,000 Daily for $1.00. There were ~6,000 people who entered, which was fine. The only thing I didn't like about the tourney was that it was a rebuy, I hate rebuys. But anyway, I was doing fairly well, without being able to rebuy. I made it past the first break and then went out with AhQh. A guy in front of me bet 5xBB pre-flop, so I just flat called. Flop came 5hAs9h. So I had top pair, high kicker and nut flush draw. So the other guy bet out a pot sized bet, I raised him all-in and he called with AsKc and I ended up not getting my last heart and he out-kicked me, so there went my $1. I went out in ~2000th place, and I think it was up to 1,100th place gets paid or something like that. So they pay out a lot of people. It would be a good tourney to play in and have a good chance of getting into the money, I just need to get my bankroll up so I can play it a little more often.

Tonight I won't be playing any online, but I might play a home game over at my buddie's house, so I will post on that tomorrow if we end up playing. Til later, good luck on the felt.

One Little Tidbit

Forgot to put this in the last post. But this is another reason that I am going to try to play more MTTs, because I feel like a lot of the people that are playing the 6-10 person SNGs will go call all-ins with such a wide range of hands that it sickens me, because they can just go right back to the lobby and play another one if they lose. While with a larger SNG or bigger MTT tourney, they can still go to the lobby and wait for one, but it will take longer, so they may be less likely to make some of their stupid calls.

For instance, Tuesday, I was playing a tourney on UB and was chip leader by about 150 chips and bet out 5xBB with pocket AA in early position, and it folds around to a guy on the button(2nd in chips), and he raised me about the size of the pot. The blinds folded back to me and I hesitated and then pushed all-in and the guy immediately calls with 33!!! What the hell kind of strategy is that? He was going up against the chipleader, the ONLY person in the game that could knock him out in one swoop and calls an all-in with a pair of 3's. Stupid...But of course, he gets his trips on the Turn and beats out my rockets to cripple me.

Just wanted to talk about this hand.

Too Late For April Fools....

So I had a plan for a decent April Fools trick for the blog, but I was busy as hell yesterday and by the time I got home and had time to write something up, it was already after midnight....so blame my busy day for that.

I have been playing a little bit of poker the past couple days, but not a whole lot since I have some projects due and have had a lot of appointments, but they are thinning out a little bit more, so no worries.

I cashed in a couple U/B SNGs for minimal payouts and they are starting to annoy me, so I think I am going to set aside some more time and go for the bigger MTTs. If I do some SNGs, then no more of this 6-10 person crap, I am going to try to get some bigger payouts with the 18-45 person SNGs, make my time a little bit more worth it.

Layout Change

So I decided that the last layout was really boring and made me want to change it, so I found a cool wallpaper for it and I have spent the morning importing my widgets on the side into the new HTML, which was kind of a pain in the ass with all of the borders and margins and stuff, but that's all done.

Other than that, I was playing on FullTilt last night for about 15 minutes while I was waiting for friends to get ready to go out and won .58c on the .01/.02 tables, so now I am up to over $2. I am going to start the OFC(OnlineForumChallenge) tourney today on there, but I won't be able to play longer than about 45 minutes because I am going to see a concert, Black Label Society, so that will be fun.

Probably no more poker today, but tomorrow afternoon I plan on playing, so I will update.

Small Profit

So I made $3 playing on a .01/.02c cash table last night for about 15 minutes. I was in the mood for playing a MTT, but I couldn't find one that I liked. I was also playing on UltimateBet's Step to the WSOP Tourney, I was playing Step 4 last night and won, so I won the ticket to Step 5. I played Step 5 today and I got 5th, which gave me a ticket down to Step 2 again, which sucks, but hey, it isn't very often that you play a 9 person SNG that pays out something to the top 6, so I will take it and build my way back up.

I also signed up for Bodog today just to see how it is. I played on it about 5 or 6 years ago and I wasn't that impressed, but we'll see what they can do for me now. Anyways, I am playing a tournament later on tonight that I already registered for, so wish me luck to that, I will try to keep you posted. Also, I am registered to play the OFC tourney tomorrow on FullTilt, but not sure if I will have enough time before a concert that I'm going to. Take it easy peeps.

Problems...

So, I realize I have not posted since like September or something, but my job had been killing me. I was waking up early and by the time I got home, I was drained and the absolute last thing that I wanted to do was sit back down to the computer again. But there is good news, I was promoted and now I have my own office and my hours are not as long(not to mention I get paid tons more), so I will be playing poker a lot more, but some things are changing.

Walker is OUT!!! They have been really sketchy with my winnings lately...my funds have been disappearing and reappearing, and no one can seem to give me a real answer, so I completely withdrew everything from there(that is another story, worst withdrawal experience of my life!) So now I am going to be playing on UltimateBet, Carbon(not much though, same network as Walker), FullTilt and PokerStars. I understand that it is kind of crazy trying to do the 0-10,000 on 4 difference sites, but there are certain things that I like about each site, so all of them have started with $0 bankrolls. From now on I will try to keep everyone a little more updated.

Peace out everyone,
AbsolutHamm