How good am I????

How good am I? I think that’s something every poker player in the world wants to know. Let’s analyze the data and see… I have read all the major and well respected poker books ( several times for some of them ). I might have missed a few..but the total is probably 15 books or so. I have watched and still continue to watch the high stakes table play and try to learn from their play. When I plan to move up a level I scope out the tables at the new level and watch the play for a few days and take notes on some of the notable players (both good and bad players) so I don’t go in completely cold. I have analyzed some of my hand histories to try and figure out if I made a huge blunder that caused a loss (or a lucky win). I practice good bankroll management and stay away from games above my BR level and I quit playing when I am tired or tilting. It’s pretty easy to stand here and puff out my chest and say I am a good poker player. Heck my literary resume looks pretty good and I can talk a good game. Well I am old enough now that I don’t play the dick measuring ego game anymore… I suck… I do really well at Double or nothing SNG’s and that is where almost all my profits come from. I am a total cash game donkey.. my ONLY chance to book is win is to quit immediately once I make a nice score. The longer I play a cash game the more certain it is that I am going to dump my buy-in right back. I do o.k. at MTT tourneys as far as cashing. My problem is that I ALWAYS want to cash and I never accumulate a ton of chips unless I happen to go on a heater. In MTT’s I tend to be an average or less than average stack most of the tourney and end up with a minor cash after several hours of play. I just don’t like to gamble enough to build a nice stack in a tourney. I only play NL holdem. I have dabbled in Badugi in the past very little but other than freerolls and have never played anything for money other than NL holdem. I can’t multitable for shit either.. I have tried.. 2 tables no sweat…3 tables not a problem.. 4 tables..if I start all 4 about the same time then I have issues in the endgame of a SNG. More than 4 and forget it…I start making too many mistakes at that point. Lets face it.. I suck at poker overall. It took some time to figure out I suck and some of the reasoning as to why. My only saving grace is that I am getting better at staying away from the things I bleed in for now so I can continue to build a new bankroll. I know I can get better at the cash games, MTT & other variations of poker, but it’s going to take some time and effort.. Right now I don’t have either the time or the bankroll to do that so it looks like I am going to be mainly a DoN player for the time being. Maybe some day in the distant future I can honestly say I am a good poker player, but for now… I suck! LOL

How good are you?

Until next time..
Dave

BR $66

Is everyone good?

In this age EVERYONE playing poker online seems to think they are an expert. With all the poker books and forums available there is a tremendous amount of information easily within reach of any player. Are the games harder now than they were 5-6 years ago? Of course.. Are they still beatable at every level by anyone with decent bankroll management? Of course… How is that possible if everyone is reading the same books and the same forums?? Well the obvious answer is just because you read a book on how to play poker doesn’t mean you will play just the way it told you to. You might “think” you do..but in reality you are far from it. That doesn’t mean you aren’t an expert though and just full of knowledge you like to impart upon other players during a game…LOL.

A few tidbits of late…

First one.. Micro buy-in tourney with 90 runners. I am at the final table and since we have been at the final table the guy on my right has raised my blind EVERY SINGLE time. I had horrid cards the first few times and I let it go, but after 3 or 4 orbits it was obvious what he was doing to me. We were down to 5 people left already and he did his normal over the top raise on me. I had K-10 suited so I went all in and he called w/ A-7. I ended up with a boat and he was crippled to just a blind or two left. He starts going off on me about what a horrible push that was and that he was ahead and I should have never called. LOL… WTF… what did he expect when he raised me EVERY SINGLE time I was in the blind?? Did he not think I would push back?? We were 5 handed too!! I wasn’t much of a dog to begin with and when I pushed I was almost positive I was ahead anyways. He spent his last few minutes of the tournament just hammering me on my horrible call before he crashed out.

Second one.. Micro double or nothing tourney. We are down to 8 people already and the blinds are going up with antes so it’s worth it to just pick those up. I am in middle position and have A-K and push. The guy to my left thinks a second and calls for almost all his chips with 6-6. I get an ace and win. He comments “I never win races”. Well this is about my 4th or 5th tourney for the night and I had seen this person at 2 or 3 of my previous tables and he liked to “comment” about his play or other people’s play. I figured I could piss him off pretty easily so I typed “why call at this point for almost all your chips with just 6-6? You had to know you were a coin flip AT BEST and could be crushed by several over pairs!”. Yep…that’s all it took. He starts typing like crazy in caps..”I at least had a pair..you called with nothing” “ I was ahead”. LOL… yeah.. that was easy!! I typed back “I pushed…YOU called…you made the bad play not me” Then he scopes me and comes back with a “your biggest cash is $45 and you are giving me advice?” LOL… oh boy… so I scope him and he has 2 big tourney cashes for nearly $1K and has proceeded to bleed it away REALLY quick in both MTT & SNG’s over two months. He looks like he is almost broke because he’s in a $1 tourney and you can see his buy-in’s keep dropping over the past 2 months as he blew through his bankroll. So I typed “so you luck boxed 2 tourneys..now you have donated everything back”.. he goes off about how big his cashes were and he’s the best. I typed “looks like you are about ready to deposit again huh?” and then just kept typing “donator” after each of his spews until he crashed out of the tourney. LOL… that always puts a smile on my face and puts me in a good mood!! I tried chasing him around to some other SNG’s but they fill up so fast at that level that by the time I found him they were always full.

This is a rare occasion for me.. I normally never type in the chatbox and tend to mind my own business. But…on occasion I will stir the pot some. LOL..

On a side note..what is it with donk calls? I know these are micro stakes but come on… I ran pretty deep in a $2.20 MTT with 4,000 runners.. we were almost to the money and a big stack at my table is being aggressive and raising a lot of pots. I get K-K and he does his normal 4X blind raise and I push all in. It folds around to him and he insta calls for over ½ his stack…with…3-2 offsuit??? Well that hand is the one that boosted me towards the top chip counts at the time so I was happy but WTF?? This is over 2 hours into the tourney. How in the world did this guy survive that long to begin with? I see this crap every time I play early on in a tourney..but usually not after a few hours.

Well that’s enough spewing for one post…Until next time..
Dave

plugging away

Well I am still plugging away playing poker. I only played in one Blogger tourney and it was the main event today. Half of the table was sitting out and I missed EVERY SINGLE draw I had. I never got any cards and several times when I paired up I ended up outkicked. It was frustrating and I ended up busting out after the first hour. I just hate days like that when you ALWAYS have the 2nd best hand. Luckily I finished up all my other tourneys while that played out and for the last 20 minutes or so I was only playing the blogger tourney. I am pissed right now and I am glad I am not playing. I might play a little later tonight but most likely not. I played several hours last night and for about an hour before the Blogger tourney so I got in some table time and played pretty well. Went like 10 out of 11 in my double or nothings last night and earlier today so that was nice. I also tried a $2.20 MTT tourney last night with 4,000 runners. I went deep and busted out in 99th after making a boneheaded play. I was sitting in 24th in chips at the time and an early position raised 3x blind. The guy next to me popped it to like 10X blind. I had pocket Queens and should have folded them.. most likely he had Kings or Aces at that stage. Well I pushed all in ( I blame the late hour!! LOL ) and was insta called by him with his aces. Well he had me slightly outchipped so I was out and he was tourney leader. I still made a few bucks but with the final table guaranteed $100-$1300 and my chip stack at the time I donked it. I rarely play MTT's, but once my bankroll gets into the triple digits I will keep one or two low buy-in's running while I play my DON's and see if I can maybe get a nice score. Well at least I got over that $40 hump I was stuck at for a few weeks and my BR is still slowly climbing.
C-ya..
BR $58

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

New Attitude

Poker is just a hobby for me and it’s how I relax after a day at work. I don’t expect to really make any kind of money out of this and I don’t have grand expectations for results. “goals” are out the window now and they only caused me trouble before. I just want to have some fun playing and maybe earn a couple of bucks along the way. As long as I play within my bankroll that should help keep the tilt monkey from ruining my fun. I realize to make any amount of real money it takes too much time and effort and that sounds like another job to me!!! I won’t be blogging as much about the specifics of what happened and it will be more about unusual hands or things I see. For example I have noticed a few silver stars lately and that is something I NEVER saw before. I checked a few of them and it looks like some just went busto but a few are just high grinding guys. Then last night I saw a gold star at my table. This guy has played over 6,000 $1.10 DON’s in under 2 months!!! I was like WTF that’s a lot!!!! And his total profit was just under $300..a whopping $.05 return on each one LOL. Now I don’t know how many tables he’s playing at a time (he was hidden from search) but it has to be a lot plus he has to be playing a lot of hours!! Even if he is 20-tabling that is still probably 5 hours a day EVERY single day. All of that for $150/month?? He’s not making enough FPP points to really do much with either. Sounds like an awful lot of work for a very small return. I made the same amount last year in less time with only 1/10th of the tourneys. Something else I have noticed this past year ( I still watched people playing online even if I didn’t play myself) is that people are much more aggressive now. I am seeing fewer all in showdowns with good hands. It’s a bunch of garbage now. Seems like tight is right even more than ever now at the low levels where nobody pays attention to how many hands you play.
Well until next time.

BR $25

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

Stagnant

Well it’s been a stagnant week. I have hardly played this week. I am signed up for the Blogger tourneys but haven’t been able to play either one the first 2 days. I am hoping that today I can play one of them. So far the fields look like they have been around 400-500 runners and with 72 getting a shot in the finals that’s not a bad payoff for a freeroll! I am used to 10,000 runners with top 100 getting a ticket to the next round. I did put in 4 hours last night. Felt like I was spinning my wheels again, but at least I finished up for the night. I played a little of everything..Badugi & NLH ring games, MTT tourneys and a bunch of 5.20 & 10.40 DON’s. I didn’t cash in any of my MTT tourney’s and managed to get sucked out on in several of them too. All in all a frustrating night in MTT tourneys. I lost several 80-20 favorites and worse! I lost a bit in Badugi and won a bit in my NLH ring game so most of my win came from DON’s. Basically I came ahead two $10.40 DON’s for the night. I broke even on my $5.20 DON’s meaning I lost the rake. I kept running two at a time and I would win one and lose the other…this happened four times in a row! I did four $10.40 DON’s and I won three of them. Not cashing in any of my MTT was kind of a bummer considering I played four of them and I didn’t run very deep in any of them. Breaking even on the $5.20 DON’s sucked too. It was just one of those nights when you lose all your races and then get sucked out on too a few times. I felt I was playing pretty good and just didn’t run very well. Oh well..at least I did finish up for the evening..C-ya
Dave
Starting BR: $235
Ending BR: $245