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!