New Years Resolution

So New Years is gone and passed and I am off to a goo start so far, both for making money and for volume put in. So far this year I have put in 20k hands, which is a lot for me in essentially not even two weeks. I started out with a little down spurt, but have been working my way back up ever since. So far this month I am up almost 6 buy-ins at 10NL and that is in profits from the tables. I am also getting about another 4 buy-ins from rakeback. On top of that, because of the 3 consecutive months that I qualified for IronMan Silver on FullTilt, I acquired $150 in bonus as my Year-End Bonus. I am in the process of working that off, which I am about 55% of the way through so far and I have until February 14th to finish off, so that is going to be a really nice little boost to the roll. I am right on the rim of pushing into the $500 range for my roll, and I was over it for a little while earlier today, but by the time I ended my session, I came back down just below it. Hopefully either by tonight's sessions or definitely by tomorrow morning when my rakeback comes in, I will be over $500.

Once I clear my bonus, I think I might take a break from Tilt possibly. I keep hearing from everyone how soft the micros are there(not that they aren't at Tilt). I have never really played any volume there and I am curious to see how the rewards system works first hand and everything. I think I'm going to transfer some of my money from my Bodog account over to my Stars account so I can have a base. I haven't been playing too much on Bodog because I don't like having a restriction of only 4 tables even though they are soft. If things don't transition well from Tilt to Stars, then I have no problem going back to Tilt. I personally really like the look and feel of it better, but I would like to see if I can establish myself on Stars as well.

Also regardless of if I don't stay on Stars, once my bonus is completely cleared, I am turning off Rush. I am going to temporarily drop down a level and grind out 6 Max. I have been relying on Rush a ton to crank out the points I need for certain things, but I don't feel like it is helping me get better as a solid player as fast as I would if I was playing normal tables. I want to get better at table dynamics when the players aren't changing every 2 seconds. I think I am going to start out at 6 tabling, but I have a feel that I will be upping that fairly quickly since I am transitioning from 4 tables of fast as hell paced Rush. Hopefully everything works out for me this year and for you guys as well.

Holy Crap

So I have let it go a while before, but this has been the worst. Like 4 months since my last post...that's terrible. And there has actually been a lot that has happened, poker wise, in those last couples months as well. As far as my regular playing, I have been stupid and have still been sticking primarily to Rush, even though the swings are crazy. Right now I am up ~8 buy-ins from Rush since the last time I wrote a post, that is due to me going up to 10NL(within my roll) and having a huge down swing at the beginning of this month and I have worked it back up. Put it this way, my most unprofitable hand is AA when AIPF(All-In Pre-Flop)... doesn't make any sense, I know. My rakeback is also helping me boost a little too.

Big Thing #1: I participated in the CardsChat.com Heads-Up Tournament again this year. Last year I busted out in the first round to JuiceeQ, so it wasn't anything to be excited about. This year I ended up lasting 61 players and got 3rd place! By winning third I won the money from all of the tournaments, plus an extra $25 that was added for 3rd place. Here is the bracket I created for the entire thing. This was really exciting for me because I feel like I am a decent Heads-Up player, but I don't have the chance to show it very often.

Big Thing #2: Another CardsChat.com event that I participated in this time around was the Summer session of CardsChat League. It is an 11 week long team tournament series where you have 5 people per team, 9 teams, and one person plays each weeknight in a 9-man SnG and points are distributed based on your finishing place. The players are drafted to each team and I was drafted by kcanuck to Team Orca along with dmorris68, edgie212, and t1tpfdc. Throughout the entire season it was pretty much a neck and neck race between our team and a team called the Mercenaries, but in the end, we came out on top and won the entire League. By winning, we have our choice of a 30 day membership to DragTheBar(my vote) or a team coaching session with zerosum and then also we get to split $200 in prize money(so $40 each). League was an absolute blast and I recommend it to everyone, I just wish I wasn't so busy in the Fall and can't commit this season. Here you can see the spreadsheet covering all of the league info

Big Thing #3: On top of our team winning League, I won MVP of the League by having the highest average points scored throughout the 11 games! This was another huge confidence booster for me because my average bested 44 other players, many of whom I respect their games immensely. My average points ended up averaging out to be right between 2nd and 3rd place. With winning MVP, I have my choice of Dusty Schmidt's book, Treat Your Poker Like a Business, or a personal coaching session with GiantBuddha, a coach over at DragTheBar. I am leaning towards the book, since GiantBuddha is primarily a Limit Holdem player(he is still very good at NL) and also because he plays stakes that are way above my limit, so the players I'm playing with are completely different).

So all-in all, the summer has been pretty positive for me. And as far as this month, I have played more hands than I have in the past 2 years, over 28,000 hands right now(have a couple more hours today, haha). So it's been productive. I will try to remember to post some graphs and such later on tonight and I will promise to TRY to post more often. I know I don't have a ton of readers, but there are a handful. Til then, take it easy!

FT Ring and SCOOP

So I'm back again after yet another 20 day absence. Just about all of the free time that I've had at the computer that wasn't spent looking up apartments(I'm moving in July) or doing little wedding things has been playing poker. It has shown quite a bit as well. At the end of the month in April, I ended up up 5 buy-ins, being as low as negative 3 buy-ins in the middle of the month after a nasty swing. So far in May, I am up almost 3 buy-ins, so once again it is starting off good. For some reason the beginning and the end of the month has been fine for me, it's right in the middle that just kill me. All of my winnings graphs for each month are V shaped. But I did get my FT account over $200 for the first time, so I consider that a milestone!

This month I plan on trying to put in a larger amount of hands, but the big problem is that I haven't had a free weekend in about 2 months. Two weekends ago I was at Indiana University for a bachelor party, last weekend I was at Western Illinois University for a house party weekend, and this coming weekend I am going to be down at my own alma mater, Purdue University, to take engagement pictures with my beautiful finace(only problem is that I don't like taking pictures...) So hopefully the end of the month will give me some more time, otherwise it will just continue to be trying to grind after work.

Tonight, I am playing in Event #8 of the SCOOP series on Stars. I won a $109 ticket to whichever event I wanted to play and I checked out all of my options. Most of the $109 events are at times that I would be completely unable to make at least the first hour or 3 of the tournaments because of work, so I just counted those out. Some of them, I didn't feel like playing because I definitely don't have enough experience(ie. Badugi, Razz, etc.) even though I know the game, I know it wouldn't be worth my time because I wouldn't get anything out of it. Basically what it came down to was the medium NLHE event tonight, the medium NLHE event next Tuesday, or the low NLHE 2-day Main Event next weekend. I would have loved to play the Main Event, but that would mean two consecutive nights of staying up until at least 4am when I have to be up for work at 7am. I really don't feel like doing that(who knows, if I do well tonight, then I might say screw it and take a shot at it). I chose today's tournament over next week's just because I know I have tonight free, and who the hell knows what is going to be planned for me next week, so I need to take advantage of that free time. As of 30 minutes to start, there are 2,500 players in the event and about 370 are getting paid, so all I can say is wish me luck because first place right now is just over $40K and that would put me well over my 10K mark and I could change the format of this site into something else. Take it easy and good luck to all of those who are in OTHER SCOOP events ;).

April Showers Bring Me Dollars

Really corny title, I know, but April has been positive so far since my downfall that was the end of March. April hasn't been nearly as good as the beginning of March, but anything positive is good to me. I am up about 2.5 buy-ins for 5NL so far in April, that is from playing about half and half between 2NL and 5NL. With as spewy as I was at 5NL towards the end of March, I dropped down to 2NL to reevaluate my game, even though I was still above my 30 buy-in threshold, it wasn't worth losing anymore when I could find out the same information down a limit. What did I find out you ask? Nothing. I have no clue what was going on with that span of losing sessions that was different from my span of winning sessions. The only thing I can think of is just plain old variance. The hands that I lost the most with were my premium hands and about 75% of those losing hands were all in preflop and just didn't hold up til the end. Nothing I can do about that except for folding AA preflop and, variance or not, I do not have the strength as a player yet to do that in a ring game(I have done it in satellites before, but there is actually strategy to that when it comes down to the end). Well I really don't have much more for today and I don't have any graphs and such because I am on the road and away from my desktop which has all of that on there. Hope everyone has a great week, the weather is getting nicer outside.

Up Up Up...Then Down

So this month started out great. I was killing it. In fact, out of my first 35 sessions of the month, only 3 of them were losing sessions. I was up about 12 buy-ins for 5NL and things were going great. I was just about to hit the $200 mark in my account at FullTilt and then... boom 3 buy-in losing session. No big deal though, I have had a bad sessions here and there many times before that I have come back the next day and got it all back. I took a rest that night and came back fresh the next day. My first session of the day was good, I ended that up almost a full buy-in, so I was thinking that I'm back to normal. Later on that day, lost another 2.5 buy-ins. My AA lost to KK 3 times in those two sessions. My sets got rivered out by straights and flushes. Basically, none of my great hands were holding up and I can't figure out what is going on. So far on the month I am still up 3 buy-ins for 5NL, but I am about to the mark where I might want to move back down to 2NL for a little bit. I will know after my next session. I'm not sure when that's going to be though because I have taken a little bit of a break from Full Tilt because I felt like I was just getting tilted playing there because none of it was working out for me. That and I had played every day of the month on there to try to get into the One-A-Day freeroll for IronMan, but I found out that the day that runs I am going to be in St. Louis for a wedding, so I will be unable to play in that anyway, so it wasn't worth blowing my money away on points for something I won't even be able to play.

Here's the graph of FullTilt:

So my play for the last 5 days has been moved to UltimateBet because I have a big enough roll over there that I can play what I want. I started out at 2NL because I haven't played UB for cash games in quite a while, so I wanted to become more comfortable with it again. So far I have only logged 700 hands, but I'm up almost 2 buy-ins, so it's working over there a little better for me so far. I have been having a problem with them giving me my UltimatePoints though so we will see how long I will be over there.

My next move if things stay rough for me might be to move over to PokerStars. They have a ton of players so I know there will always be a game going and they have a great VIP program. Not that FullTilt's is bad, I would just like more of the bonus's and cash than gear or a custom avatar. Also, they have the SCOOP Poker Tournament which is comparable to FTOPS but bigger, so there is something else to think about, even though most of the events are way too high for me right now, even though I'm going to be a balla rolling in the dough by next year ;). The only thing is that I'm not a huge fan of the layout of PokerStars layout. I know it's easy to get new skins and such for the tables, but it's the whole window...I don't know, it's something I'm going to have to get used to.

Anyways, I'm going to get going. I'm playing in the CardsChat tournament on Tilt right now and it isn't going well and then I have the OFC Tournament on Bodog later that I will hopefully make a deep run in, but as of right now there are 1600 players in it and Bodog's payout structure is very narrow paying 135, so only like 8.5%. We'll see how it goes anyway. Good luck all!

"March"ing Forward

So it's only the 5th day in March and it's been good so far. I have been playing a lot of 2NL after deciding to move back down because I wanted to have a little more of a cushion for bumping up and just yesterday I hit that cushion point, so today I was up to 5NL again. So far this month I am up 8.75 buy-ins, or $17.52, for 2NL(I'm using 2NL because that is what the majority of the hands were), which I would say is pretty good(especially for me)for it only being the 5th day and that is over the course of about 1800 hands. When I was first playing 5NL, it started off a little rocky, and I think that was just because of the mindset of how long it takes to win in 2NL the .20c that would be a 4xBB raise in 5NL. So I was pushing hands a little harder than I should have. Also, I got caught by a couple hands that were set over set, me having the lower set of course, which just kills. Last month I qualified for IronMan status on FullTilt, so this month I am going to try to make the entire month and see where that gets me. Also as a side note I cashed in the CardsChat tourney on UB the other day for $4, so that was nice, it has been a while since I've cashed in one.

Here is my graph of the month's progress so far:

Up In Limits

So FullTilt has been steadily growing just as it was before my vacation(by the way, sorry about no updates while out there, I had no WIFI to work with.). I had built my account to just over $140 and decided that it was time to move up to 5NL. While I still think that it was the right time to move up, yesterday variance hit me like a bitch. I lost more money with AA's yesterday than I have in the past 2 years. I got it 8 times yesterday. Two times I was in the BB and it folded around to me, so I gained 1/2 a BB. One hand I got all-in with another guy with my AA, he turns over KK, that's fine. Flop comes JTQ rainbow. Now he has 6 outs, about 24%, the four 9's for the straight and my last two Aces for the straight. Turn blanks and the river brings the 9. He had me covered, I lose my stack. Later on I get AA again, another guy and I get into a raise war that ended with him calling my 4-bet. Flop comes 8A8. I check, he pushes, I insta-call. He had JJ. I start to fist pump, he needs runner runner J's to win. Needless to say, the turn brings the first J and the river brings the 2nd J. Once again, he had me covered, I lost my stack. I ended up losing around $8.50 yesterday. I don't think I played any huge hands terribly, just got extremely sucked out on. Although I would have made the call with the KK preflop as well probably.

On the other hand, I think this week I might take a little break from FullTilt and play a little on PokerStars and Bodog. I have kind of neglected those two for a while now since I pretty much exclusively started playing ring. I just have to get my mindset into the tournament style, there is a difference you know, which is why playing poker is clearly a game of skill. Til next time, take it easy!