it's been a while

I know I haven't posted in a while. I don't want to get too caught up in results and trying to hit a certain goal. Nothing worse than trying to attain a goal in poker according to a timeframe. I have been playing maybe 10 hours a week with usually one good night on either Friday or Saturday night. I have been hung up for 2 weeks now in the mid $30's on my bankroll. I was moving right along and was up to $40 and I went on a bad run and dropped to around $35.00. Then I started a cycle where I repeated that for 2 weeks now! I would get it up to $40 pretty quick and then it would trickle down to $35 again. Well last night when I got to $40 I finally stopped...LOL.. Maybe that will break that cycle. I am still just doing my $1.10 DON's and mixing in a few small buy-in MTT's too. I haven't really cashed in any of the MTT's and that is keeping my roll from growing right now. I'm having fun though and am playing pretty well so it's all good. As long as I keep doing that it will eventually keep climbing. I am signed up for the blogger tourneys but since that start pretty early I probably won't get to play any until the weekend.
Current BR $40

I'm Back!!!

Well I know I vanished for a full year. But I am back now…what happened to me? Well I was going to spew a long story of BS and then say I was just kidding..but meh…how about the truth instead? After my last post I had a pretty decent night and got my bankroll up to over $300. I had never cashed out before and I had been spending a lot of time sitting on the computer instead of being with my wife so I cashed out $200 so I could at least show her I was winning and could actually get my money back. I used it to get a nice hotel suite for a night out of town and had a little “getaway weekend” with just the two of us. It was worth it and I am glad I did it. That still left me with $100 and enough to play the $5.20 DON’s which was where I was comfortable at anyways. I figured I would just grind it back up again. I knew I was blowing my “time table” for my goals, but I didn’t care at that point. Well when I started playing again I had a wonderful little run of 0 for 5 on my $5.20 DON’s!!! whew!!! Bam!! In about 90 minutes I was already at my threshold for dropping back down to the $1.10 DON’s. Well after a month of playing $5.20 or larger buy-ins I didn’t want to go back to the $1.10’s so I made a typical “loser’s” executive decision. I signed up for a $52.00 DON instead and figured I would double up or be toast. Well I was burned and ended up toast. Then I burned off the last of it on a cash game. Poof….$100 gone really quick. Needless to say I was pretty upset that I tilted so bad. I know $100 is nothing…I have a decent paying job and support a family so it’s not the money…it’s the lack of control that bothers me. I DON’T like to lose when I am the favorite!!! It freaking drives me nuts when I am a 70% or higher and am all in against someone and lose. I know it happens and it happens a lot with all the hands we see online, but it doesn’t make it any easier. That is the one reason I won’t deposit any real amount of money to play poker. If I put $1000 in there and then went on tilt I would be sick about what else I could have used it for instead. Losing my winnings doesn’t hurt as bad!! LOL… So I took some time off..I was too wrapped up in playing anyways..I was playing too much and watching the numbers too closely to stay on track with my “goals”. I didn’t sign on for like 3 months..not one hand of poker. Then after that I played a few freerolls from time to time. I actually won a few tickets for the weekend finals, but weekend days are for my family and I rarely have time to play then so I still have them. It’s a new year so I made a new deposit..my usual whopping $25!!! LOL.. Same plan as before basically..starting with $1.10 DON’s and less than $1.00 MTT’s and will grind those until I hit $75 and then I will start to move up in both. I played a few already and it didn’t start well. I went like 0-7 right out of the gun..and only on one of those losses was I behind when all the chips went in..sheesh!! what a welcome back that was!! Oh well..it happens.. but then I kept at it the next day and I am back to even again.
Until next time…

Current BR $25

Milestone

Well I had an o.k. session tonight. I started off with a pot limit Badugi, 60FPP step satellite and a Sunday 200K satellite first. The Badugi tournament didn't go as well as my last one. I doubled up once and won a few other small pots but never made it above 4K in chips. I ended up going out in 40th out of 104 with top 16 getting paid. The step satellite didn't go so well either. I was card dead the entire tourney and when I finally pushed (with a stack of 950) w/A-K I got called by big stack w/2-4 and he paired up. I went out in 36th with top 10 getting tickets. The Sunday 200K satellite went a lot better. I didn't get any cards for quite a while and just stayed out of the way and preserved my chips. I finally got a good run of cards almost an hour into it and doubled up and then tripled up when my A-A ran against K-K & Q-Q. That put me as chip leader with around 60 people left and 27 getting tickets to the 200K. At that point I was content to preserve my stack and stay out of the way of other aggressive medium stacks that could hurt me some. I had one nut on my right that had a nice medium stack and was really aggressive!! She ended up with a stack bigger than mine but wouldn't back off..she ended up busting out in around 25th!! Unreal…some people don't understand satellites.. I ended up with a ticket but I had no intention of playing in the 200K..that tourney lasts like 12 hours if you run deep. So I unregistered and got my $11 tourney dollars which is why I did it to begin with. I tried another 200K satellite while that one was winding down, but I got burned pretty early when my A-K was run down by A-4 when he made 2 pair. I then switched over to my $5.20 DON's and ran 4 for 5. I was especially proud of my final DON that I was in. Runners were especially bad tonight with only 1 or 2 other positive ROI at each table. To my left was a -25% roi guy. We were at the 25-50 blind level and picked up A-Q in late position and I haven't played a pot yet! There was one limper in front and I raised it to 200 and the Cowboy (it was in his name) thought a few seconds and pushed all in. For some reason I got a fast read on this guy and knew he was weak. As bad as he was I knew if he had a decent pair he would have just called and if he had a top pair he would have min raised me and not push all in and maybe chase me away. Even though at this point in the tourney I was screaming FOLD I went ahead and called. He had J-10 and then flopped the nut straight. I knew better even if I knew I was ahead it wasn't by that much since both his cards were alive. Well that left me with 240 chips and still 8 people in the tourney. Luckily 3 others were around 1,000 chips and the blinds were about to go up to 50-100. I wasn't giving up yet!! I folded the next few hands and then in the big blind I pushed all-in and of course was called since it was only double the blind. My hand was ahead and held up. Then a medium stack got frisky and fell in love with a hand and was busted by the Cowboy again (he was running very lucky!). Now I had 700 chips and the other 2 small stacks had around 800-900 each.. I still had a chance… then in early position I pick up A-9 which I normally auto fold, but with my chip count and the big blind of 150 coming to me next I pushed. I was called by the big blind with A-4. I was very happy until the board paired twice and we tied with our Ace kickers. That sucked!!! Instead of doubling up to around 1900 I was still at 775 instead. I was o.k. though since 2 other stacks were at 500 & 700. I had to fold both blinds since other people shoved and I was down to 500 chips now and the blinds jumped to 150-250. My lucky donkey Cowboy that put me in this position to begin with saved me. Both short stacks pushed all in and Cowboy called. Of course he had the worse hand of the three but in his usual fashion he ran them both down and both were busted. Whew…another win..but it was close. That win did push me past a milestone (maybe only temporarily!! LOL) $200 BANKROLL!!!
Dave

Starting BR: $187
Ending BR: $205

how do you know?

Things are going alright in my poker world. It looks like I am still on track with my goals so far. I do realize that I have a LONG way to go and have to take what is given to me and not force anything trying to reach a goal. I am still doing the $5.20 DON’s mostly and mixing in some heads-up and small buy-in MTT just to keep from getting burned out on the same format. I was thinking about accurate ROI% and I don’t think anyone but the high level players can ever really know what their true ROI% is. I have read that even a 1,000 game sample is too small of a sample to verify your ROI%. The problem is that most positive ROI% players will move up to the next level well before even reaching that amount. I ran a 35% ROI on the $1.20 DON’s but I only did 90 of them before moving up to the $5.20 DON’s! Did I run lucky or not?? We will hopefully never know because I sure hope never to be at that level again. Now I am doing $5.20 DON’s, but I only need another $15-20 profit before I begin to take shots at $10.40 DON’s. Only problem is that I have only ran around 40 of them and I have run at 20% ROI. The first 9 I went 9-0 and 92% ROI. The next 11 I went 3-8 and -47% ROI. The next 20 I have gone 13-7 and 25% ROI. So I have a slight dilemma… Since my sample is so small do I stay at this level longer until I have at least a 100 game sample or move up again? If I want to reach my goals I have to move up when my bankroll supports it so I think I am still going to move up. Of course if I lose the first couple of $10.40 DON’s I will drop right back down to the $5.20 level. The good thing about my long term goal is that I never plan on going above the $20.80 DON level to achieve it. Once my bankroll is large enough to play the $20.80 DON I am planning on staying there and just adding more tables until I am 4 tabling. If I reach that point then I achieved my long term goal and will set new ones then. Until then…back to the grind.
C-ya at the tables
Dave

Starting BR: $173
Ending BR: $187

Round #2 a new beginning

O.k.. I was ready for try again. This was about 2 weeks ago. Same plan as before.. Micro SNG's and Heads-up SNG. I planned on staying away from ring games. It seemed I would always get ahead quite a bit and end up losing it to a bad beat later in the session. I prefer the SNG as I know what my loss/profit will be for each one. While I took my month off Pokerstars came out with their Double or Nothing SNG's (DON'S from now on). I read a few articles on these and watch a couple and they looked pretty easy so that's where I began. TAG TAG TAG.. if you are going to play these you better have a set of balls on you.. Shove fests late in the game and aggression wins. Well I love these things. I have seen all kinds of posts of how boring they are and low ROI%, but I disagree.. I multitable 4 of the $1.10 turbos and that keeps you plenty busy. for the 1st week I ran 36% ROI and then I started mixing in a $5.20 turbos every now and then the 2nd week. It didn't hurt that I ran 9/9 on the $5.20 during the 2nd week while I kept up the $1.10's. The great thing about these (at least for me) is that I don't tilt when I lose a few. So now we are to the present day.

Starting BR $25
Current BR $90

my 1st blog... wow... earth shattering

Hello there!! This is my 1st attempt at doing a blog. Most of my entries will be about poker since that is what I love doing for a hobby. A little background on my extensive poker career: been horsing around for a few years now. I started playing play chips and freerolls to learn the game some. On occasion I would place in a freeroll and then promply lose the small amount of money I had. Finally about 6 months ago I deposited a whopping $25 on Pokerstars and started trying to build a bankroll. I doubled it up in about 2 weeks playing micro SNG's and NL ring games. I thought I was on the way to a million... THIS IS EASY! LOL... then Mr. Tilt had to show his ugly face.. one or 2 bad beats and I was steaming!!! "These damn donkeys don't know how to play!" I thought...well I will just move up to a higher buy-in and win it all back in 1 shot... LOL... yep...awesome bankroll management and doing it while on tilt at that!! Well luckily it worked out for me usually but I remained stuck at the $50 BR level for another 2 weeks ( with huge downswigns followed by faster upswings). Well that's all for this post. I will do another to keep them from being too long.
Dave