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!

Vacation

So I am on my way out to Big Sky Resort in Montana right now because my friends and I are going skiing for a week. Needless to say, I won't be playing much online poker. I do expect to play some with my friends at night though, and one of the bars by there apparently has live poker every night, so maybe I'll get more in than expected. I might try to update with some pictures if I'm able.

As far as poker the past week, I've been doing verg good on FullTilt. I don't have my account in front of me right now, but I'm up about another $10. Also, i have ended my last 22 of 27 sessions in the positive, which is a major plus for me. Today I had one bad hand that sticks out. I was dealt pocket AA on the button and a guy in early position raised 3.5xBB and it folded around to me. I made kind of a tricky little play by just min raising it and he called. The flop came 3AK rainbow giving me top set. He raised pot, I reraised and he pushed all in, I obviously called and he had me covered. He had AK, securing my win unless he hit runner runner K's, like a .1% chance on the flop. Of course by me telling you this, he hit that two outer and sent me to the rail. Well, that is all for now, I need to get back to dreaming of powder.

Tilt Mania

So with my title, I mean Full Tilt, not that I'm tilting. I put it because I have been going a little crazy with Full Tilt lately, neglecting just about all of the other sites. I have continued to make a steady rise in my NL2 full ring game. And I have logged a lot of hands with it. Still can't believe how many people will make moves at these stakes with 1 and 2 outs, but as long as I'm making very few advanced plays(which is hard for me because that is the play that I'm used to), and stick to ABC poker, then I am winning. I imagine that it will be like this for the next couple stake levels, so I will probably just have to get used to it. I also played my first CardsChat tourney in about a month and a half last night and we ended up making a deal with 5 people left and I was in 3rd, so I came out with $24, which was just $1 under 1/5 of the remaining prize pool, so it was split pretty evenly.

I am also going to attempt to play in the World Blogger Championship Of Online Poker (WBCOOP) on PokerStars, but they picked terrible times for Central Standard Time. Everyday they made it either when I will still be at work, or when I will be on my drive home. The first night, the NL tourney, I got home and I was out in 577th place out of ~1600. Last night I took the train into the city and there were 900 people left in the PLO tourney out of about ~1500 and I had 1200 of my starting stack left at 25/50 blinds, but the 3 active guys at my table had 15,000 plus chips, so I really didn't have much room to work with. I waited for my first good hand which ended up coming about 4 hands in, AAKJ double suited and pushed my stack and was called and his hand hit a BS fullhouse, and I was out. But because of their stacks, I am assuming there are a lot of people that are unable to play and the ones who are playing are just scooping the blinds constantly. Oh well, maybe I will get lucky tonight, but I won't get home until it has been running for at least a half hour.

Last point...I updated all of my bankrolls on the right, so they are all correct now(for today at least). Take it easy guys.

Found My Groove

So after pouring over hand histories through Holdem Manager for hours I found a couple leaks in my game that I thought would completely turn my cash game around, and boy have they this month so far. One big thing was that I was playing about 5-8% more hands than I would have liked to have been playing, and another being that I didn't feel like I wasn't aggressive preflop as I think I should have been. So I narrowed my range down a bit and upped the preflop raising a bit and voila...up 8 full buyins so far in January! I have only played about 2000 hands, but I have been playing a lot more so far this month than I had in the past couple, and it's showing. Another thing that I have started to try and do more is keep a better book on my opponents(taking notes on their tendencies and weaknesses that I notice), and that has sure helped here and there as well. The only problem that I have been having with that is that I play on 3 different computers, and the notes are kept locally on your computer, so as soon as I switch computers, my notes are gone as well. I thought about possibly writing a program that I can keep on my flash drive that will keep all of my notes stored there, because I always have my flash drive, but I don't know if I want to dive into something like that right now. We'll see.

Also, I got 4th in a $8.80 tournament and took down $85 for that, and the next day I was just into the money and took $15 for another, so up another $84 on Bodog. I don't have access to all of my poker rooms right now, so I will update my monetary totals later today and get some current values up there. But I better get back to work. Until next time, good luck at the tables.

A Little Live

Welcome to 2010, hope everyone's New Years was exciting, I know mine was. We had a party at my friend Sam's house and at the end of the night, 2 other guys and I played a little poker. $10 buyin with one rebuy available if wanted. I was the first to rebuy when I pushed with AKs into a four to the flush on the flop against my buddy's pair of 10's that held up. To be completely honest, that is the only hand I really remember though, as there was obviously a lot of drinking before that to ring the New Year in. In the end though, I won the whole thing winning $60 total for a profit of $40 on the night.

The next night we went over to another friend's house to play a little bigger game. 8 people wanting to play this time and it was $20 with on rebuy available. I wasn't drinking as much this night, so I remember more key hands. We started out playing that the payout would be 120-40-20 and the winner would get all of the rebuys(top heavy, right?), but once it got down to 4 and everyone who was playing had rebought, we all agreed that 2nd and 3rd would both get $40 to break even and the rest was 1st.

So the first hand I'm going to talk about was the one that I ended up busting out the first time with. 5 players left in the game and I had just over my starting stack left. I'm in the big blind with A7s. First two players fold, button(my friend Joey) calls, small blind(my friend Matt) completes. Now Joey, the chipleader, is the type of player who will call just about anything(he LOVES chasing draws), but will many times try to raise you off of the pot, he's the definition of a LAG player. Matt is the complete opposite; he won't bet unless he has a real hand and I knew he wouldn't call a big raise here. My point was to get Joey in hoping to be able to extract value from him if I hit something. I raised about 3xBB and Joey called, Matt folded as expected. Flop comes K38 rainbow, no help to me, so I fumbled my chips around and then just raised about half the pot, Joey thought about it then called. Turn comes a 7. I quickly checked, so did Joey. The river brought the A, giving me two pair. I bet half the pot again, thinking that Joey would try to raise me off the hand like he had been doing on the river a couple times earlier in the night taking advantage of his large stack. He comes over the top for about 3 times the pot, I then pushed all in and he thought about it and called. I turn over two pair, Aces and 7's, he turned over two pair Aces and 8's, the first time I have ever seen him slowplay...

Another big hand that was about 4 orbits into the game, I was again in the big blind and Matt was sitting to my right in the small blind and it folded around to him and he just completed. I looked down at 72o and I wanted to make a play with it. Up until this point in the game I had been played very tight, mainly because I really hadnt' gotten any big hands so I just had to pick my spots to steal blinds, so I had a good image to steal. I raised it kind of big to 4xBB. Matt thought about it and then called. Flop was 10-6-3 all clubs. Matt bet half the pot but looked really uneasy about it, so I popped it up to 3 times the pot. He was very uneasy with the call, saying at one point that he knew I had the flush, but eventually did. The turn came the Q of diamonds. He checked again, I bet pot and this time he raised me just 2x original pot. So I knew he had the Q, but I also knew that he thought I had a flush. I tanked for about 2 minutes on this, thinking that if I pushed allin, he should most definitely fold. Although I ended up folding just because I haven't played enough with him to know that he would fold top pair in this situation. He ended up turning over AQo. I asked if he would have folded if I would have pushed all in, and he said he would have for sure(he also isn't the type that would be lying here) so I learned something for later on that one.

All in all, that night I ended up rebuying with 4 people left thinking that I could at least squeeze into the money(blinds were kind of high compared to chips, but the low stack had already rebought and was back to being very low, lower than my rebuy actually). I ended up doubling up on the first hand after rebuying. Then I took two hard hits, the second one knocking me out in 4th. The first I was all-in with AKs vs QQ that held up. The second, I was short stacked to about 3/4 the starting stack and got 77, so I pushed and got called by KK that held up. So I lost $40 on the night there. So for the weekend live, after two little SNGs I am even money, without any rake even taken out.

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.