Results from 12/29

Well sometimes the cards are with you, and other times they are against you. Last night they were definitely against me. I won't bore you with the details, because then it would sound like I am whining, which I am not. This morning I am going to replay all the big hands that I lost to see if there is anything I would do differently. I highly recommend doing that. If you are going to take this game seriously (which you don't have to) then you need to get pokertracker and use it to analyze your play and your opponents play. I find that most of the users I talk to use it to analyze their opponents tendencies, but they seldom use it to take a look at their play. When I have a losing session like the one I had last night I replay every hand that I was in and then take some notes. Sometimes you lose set to set or overpair to set and you are really not going to get away from that hand. Other times you find that you are chasing flushes or straights because you feel like you are due.

Anyway to get to the numbers I dropped $80 to lower the bankroll to $5,419.66. My VP$IP was solid at right about 19-20%. So I am thinking it must have been post flop decisions gone wrong or just it was not my night. If I don't hear from anyone have a Happy New Year!!!!

Results from 12/28 plus a shameless plug

Ok first for the results. I played in a $10 league game that had 31 people. Money went to the top 5, and with 14 people left I was about 6th in chips when I get dealt 88 on the button. I had one limper before me and I raised it up to 800 (blinds were 100/200). The small blind folded, the big blind called, and then the limper went all-in for another 1800. Now I know the limper very well, I talk to him daily, and I figure this guy for either 66,77,or 99. If he had a high pocket pair I believe he waits until after the flop to go allin. He could make this move with AK but I am pretty comfortable in my read of a middle pocket pair. Since now the pot is 4300 and it costs me 1800 I figure I am getting good odds on my call unless he has 99. I want to scare the BB out so I go allin over the top of the limper. Now this is the funny part. With two all-ins behind him he decides to call with A6 suited!!! Can you believe that??? Anyway the limper flips over his cards and it is 99. I am dead. But wait the flop comes AJ8 with one heart. I am alive and I will win this hand and go up huge!!!!!!! The turn is the 9 of hearts. Shit I am down but I will still win money from the BB. The river is another heart. The BB knocks us both out and I finish 13th.

So it is back to the ring game. I play a small session and finish winning at a rate of 2bb/100. My VP$IP was just under 17% as I was not getting many hands to play. At least I stuck to my chart and I did not play dumb hands that would have sucked away my small profit. All total my profit for the day was a whopping $29 bringing my bankroll to $5,499.22.

Now for the plug. I don't know about you guys but I am not creative, (unless it is finding a way to play poker with my buddies, leaving my wife home with the kids), so Christmas and other holidays are rough for me to figure out what gifts to get. Well a buddy of mine owns a website called FindGift.com that solves that issue for me. No matter what the holiday you can use their gift wizard to give you tons of suggestions. It makes a self absorbed person like me look like a caring person who gives up tons of his time looking for the perfect gift. Well I had dinner with my buddy the other day and we starting talking poker. It turns out he has PAGES of really cool gifts for us poker players. I added the link to the front page and it will take you directly to the gambling portion. Feel free to look at the rest of the site though because Feb 14th will be here before you know it. There are a ton of great features on this site but I will let you guys see them for yourselves.

A light day - Results from 12/27

Well I went home after seeing King Kong (good movie) and I find that my DSL is down. Well the service itself is not down, but the names server is down so I cannot really get to any websites. So after being very frustrated, I decided to just play my league game over dialup. Feeling like I am Amish I actually do well and finish 3rd in the league freeroll (the league is at pokeranalysis.com). I win $15 for finishing 3rd plus I get points which I will use to buy a poker book. The 3rd place points made me the winner for the month of December which means I get staked to a $50 tourney at Pokerstars plus I won a seat in a very exclusive (less than 70 people) freeroll for a $1500 WSOP seat on February 4th. Not bad.

Then I played in a tourney for the Pokerfox.net people on FullTilt. It is a $10 entry and usually we have 25-30 show up. Unfortunately the holidays limited the people to just 10. I took 2nd in that for another $30. I decided not to play any cash games since I was on dialup and I could not get the website plus pokertracker to work over my connection. So my profit for the day stood at $34 which brought the bankroll up to $5,470.30.

I'm baaaaccckk - Results from 12/26

Well after two days of not playing poker at all in order to spend some quality time with the family, the 26th was about playing poker. In my usual 2/4 game I ended up playing 1416 hands (wow) and won at a rate of 2.9bb/100 hands for a grand total of $162.15. For those of you wondering how long I played it was about 10 hours of play as I tend to average 130-150 hands an hour playing multiple tables. Now unfortunately I also played some tourneys at Bodog where I was absolutely robbed and knocked out short of the money all three times just before the 2nd break each time. When all my money was in I was at least an 80% favorite to win the hand yet I was sucked out each time. After the last suckout I withdrew all my money from Bodog so I can concentrate on my ring games. With bonus money being cleared, I ended the day on the plus side $202.94 which brings my bankroll up to $5,436.11.

As I near the start of my race, I am rethinking my strategy. I have now played 4,666 hands of 2/4 this past week, winning at a clip of 2.4bb/100 hands. If I can keep that up for another two to three thousand hands this week I will start out my 2006 campaign playing 3/6 instead of 2/4. The ideal situation is to move up to 10/20 by the end of the year. I probably will play 15k-20k hands a month so it will be easy to figure out pretty quickly if I can move up or down in levels. No matter what happens I will not move past 3/6 until I have 25,000+ hands with a winning % that is greater than 1.5bb/100 (though ideally I would like to win at 2+bb/100).

I am also going to significantly reduce the amount of MTT that I play. While I do profit at them, it is not nearly at the rate that I need to in order to reach 100k by Dec 31st. Towards the end of this race I figure I will need to profit (winnings + rakeback) $400 per day to make up for the slow start that I will naturally have. That is extremely possible as long as I stay disciplined at limit poker. You will NOT see me at a NL ring game at all in 2006. This will be a grind, but if I stay disciplined I will make this happen.

Anyway I am very pleased at yesterday's results and I am thrilled with the new preflop strategy. Yesterday my VP$IP was right at 19%. It is starting to become 2nd nature, and in a week or so I should not even need the chart sitting at my desk. Anyway I hope everyone had a great holiday, and good luck to you on the felt.

Preflop hole patched - Results from 12/23

Well like the title indicates, I found a preflop strategy that fixed my aggressive preflop play. I went from a VP$IP of 28% down to just over 16% last night. Man did it feel weird. I kept thinking that I was folding way too much. Why can't I play that A9o from early position (because it is a -EV play). The problem is even if you play "perfect" poker preflop, there is still your postflop play. Mine was real good yesterday, but not great. Then there is the very annoying luck factor. Every time I get upset at how lucky someone is I remember a great quote. This one quote has changed my view on poker more than any other quote. I saw it on PocketFives.com. The quote is "without luck there is no skill in poker". Interesting huh? The theory is that if the best cards preflop won 100% of the time, then there would be no skill. Things like bluffing people off of a pot or some calculated semibluffs would not work because the guy with the best hand preflop would win all the time. It is the factor of luck that gives room for skill to take place. Anyway I like the quote, and it keeps me sane. Especially on nights like last night. Here is a sampling of the hands that I lost with last night. As you are reading figure how much you think I won or last in my session.....

1010 vs KJ - Lost a $39 pot when the river brings a King
QQ vs A8 - Lost a $30 pot when the river brings an Ace
AK vs 98 - I lose a $65 pot on a flop of K97 when the river comes up an 8 to give the guy two pair
KK vs 109 - I lose a $39 pot when the river comes up a 9 to give the guy two pair
KK vs A8s - I lose a $59 pot when the guy turns a flush after I flop a set of Kings
99 vs Q10 - I lose a $43 pot when I flop a set only to have the guy river a straight
QQ vs KJ - I lose a $23 pot when the turn is a King
A7s vs J6 - I flop the nut flush only to have the guy go runner runner for a boat ($34 pot)
AQ vs A3 - I lose a $37 pot when the flop comes up A38 and I did not figure him for two pair
88 vs Q3s - I lose a $30 pot when he turns a Queen after a rag board.

Total value of pots lost - $399!!! In addition 3 other hands I folded KK or QQ when I was checkraise postflop with a Axx board. All of that happened in a span of 4 hours covering 480 hands. So needless to say I posted a loss, but it was only for $45. After my rakeback I lost less than $20 to drop the bankroll down to $5,233.17. What is funny is that I am actually encouraged as I write this post. There is no way that trend will continue. If I could have won half of those pots I post a $150 win for almost $40/hr return. So I will continue my preflop strategy, (it works), and I am sure we will see some better results. I am still pleased that over the 3,250 hands that I played this week at this level I am up 2.2bb/100.

Anyway I told you guys and gals in the beginning that I was not a pro. I am someone just like you trying my best to give this a shot. I hope you stick with my through the ups and downs and we can all learn together. Until next time, good luck on the felt, and have a great holiday season!!!

Results from 12/22

Well for the 2nd straight day things did not go so well for me. To make a long story very short including some bonus money (only $15) I posted a loss of $92.65 to drop the bankroll down to $5,252.97. I spent the rest of the night going over my play the last two days. A couple of things that I noticed. 1) My VP$IP is just too high in my losing sessions, the last two days I have been up around 28% which is ridiculously high. Fortunately this is something that I can and will fix. 2) I have been reluctant to drop high pairs when I know damn well I am beat. This is a little hard to fix, but I need to do it.

So I did find a chart to help me with my preflop play. I am going to focus on sticking to that chart for the next week or so and see if that helps. This is the whole reason that I started playing 2/4 before my race officially started. The good news is that overall I am still beating this game to the tune of 2.8bb/100. But I am not happy with the holes in my game so I am looking to improve.

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly - Results from 12/21

Well for those who thought that I would just write about wins every single day, I showed that I am human after all. Last night simply was not good. First of all I played in the 13.5k at Bodog. Near the end of the first hour I double up to about 2500 in chips when I get dealt AA. I have a maniac on my right who has showed bluffs constantly. The blinds are 30/60 and he just flat calls and I raise to 320. The big blind calls and the maniac folds. Flop comes KQ9 and the big blind checks and I put him allin for his last 1700 chips and he quickly calls. I know I am in trouble now. Of course he flips over J10 and I am crushed. I drop down to less than 500 in chips. After that I put my chips in with A10 only to lose to K7 when a 7 flops. I end up finishing 240th out of 466 players. Now I was pissed!!!!!

That is when I should have shut the computer off and watched Braveheart or the Godfather. Did I do that????? Hell no. I was going to get my money back off of Bodog. So I go in there and start playing waaaayyy to aggressively and I proceed to lose even more money. Finally I settled down and played some 2/4 at Pokerroom and did ok. Final total after clearing some more bonus was a MINUS $82.09 which dropped the bankroll down to $5,345.62.

So you have seen the bad and the ugly. What was the good? Well I learned a lesson today and it cost me less than $100 to learn it. If I am serious about reaching this goal I need to a) focus on playing my 2/4 game at pokerroom and other sites, and b) notice when I go on tilt and immediately stop playing. Kreiger says that we should strive towards perfect poker at all times if we are serious about the game and even a little deviation can turn a good player into a loser. Yesterday it did that to me. Hopefully I will succeed in stopping that from happening again.

So today I vow that I will still play an occasional tourney at Bodog, but I will concentrate my ring game activities to my game plan. That includes 3 sites - pokerroom, full tilt, and pokerseas. I look forward to writing about my better day tomorrow. Until then, good luck on the felt.

Results from 12/20

Well variance kicked my ass yesterday, though overall it was not as bad of a day looking back on it. Three times I lost big pots when I had 2nd highest set only to lose to highest set, and then on one table I lost back to back hands when I held KK and AA. So how did the day finish up? Well I ended up $107 with a win rate of 2.8bb/100 hands. Not bad. I still believe that at this level I can win closer to 4bb/100 due to such soft play. Obviously when I move up I will go back to the normal view of 1-2bb/100. So far at this level I have played 2,130 hands (still a very small sample) and my win rate is 4.7bb/100.

So including my bonus money (thanks again pokerfox.net) my profit yesterday was $134.79 bringing the bankroll up to $5,427.71. At this pace I will start my race with 6k instead of 5k, but I will need the head start.

Results from 12/19

Well I did not play much poker last night due to the fact that I was not feeling well. I played about 300 hands of 2/4 and lost about $12 but made $25 back in bonus money. I also played my favorite tourney at Bodog, the 13.5 k guarantee. I finished 140th (top 45 pay) out of 491 when my AQ ran up against A9 and KK. I managed to get a flopped ace but then the K came to take me out. I really like that tourney structure though and I am going to try it multiple times during any given week. The good news is that I won a entry into the 100k on Dec 31st at Absolute Poker. I am looking forward to playing in that tourney as it will be only the 2nd time I have ever played in a tourney with that big of a prize pool. So thankfully I listened to Lou Kreiger when he says that you should not play when you are not at your best and I cut the session short. Final total was a loss of a whopping $4.62 which dipped the bankroll to $5,292.92. Today I feel much better so I am expecting my usual 900-1000 hand session. Good luck to all of you.

Results from 12/18

Ok even though I am not going to "officially" start my race to 100k until Jan 1st, I decided that I would put my results up on a daily basis. Yesterday I concentrated on playing 2/4 limit on Bayou Poker. That is the limit that I am going to start my race on and I want to get a good feel for how I will fare. I reread the limit chapter on SuperSystem 2 this week and I finished Holdem Excellence as well while I was in NY. So how did my day go??? Actually it went really, really well. I played 933 hands and won at a rate of 8.7bb/100 hands for a profit of $325.20. This despite losing 6 times in a row with KK. Thankfully I am playing limit poker. I feel that the limit games are really soft at this level, however I know that 8.7bb/100 is very unrealistic. I also cleared $41.88 of bonus for my play yesterday bringing the total up to $367.08. The bankroll now sits at $5,297.54.

If there are any other stats that you would like to see for my play, please let me know (if anyone out there is actually reading this stuff). Good luck on the felt!!!!

Tourney Results

Well today did not go well for our hero. I played in two tourneys tonight. The 20k guarantee at pokerroom and the 4k guarantee at Interpoker. In the 20k tourney I had AA in the 2nd hand of the tourney. I raise to 4xbb and get two callers. Flop comes up all rags, and I make a pot size bet and one guy drops. The turn pairs the board (sixes) but I am not concerned and bet out another pot size bet and get called. I check the river and the guy wins the pot with 106. So I lose 40% of my stack right there. I then sit tight and until I get AK which loses to AJ. To make a long story short I finish 666th out of 962.

In the Interpoker tourney I fair better but finish 35th out of 204, top 30 cashed. My AKs ran into KK and got his ass kicked. The only good news is that I am up in my cash games playing 2/4 today so all is not lost. May you have a much better time than me today.

Update

Hello everyone. Sorry that there has not been an update for over a week. There has not been much poker playing as I left to go back to NY for work and a visit with my family. I did manage to play in the 9pm 4k guarantee at Interpoker a couple of times this week. They usually get 200-225 players in this tourney and they pay the top 30 as long as they get 200+ players. I cashed both times I played, including one final table. Unfortunately after making the final table I was rather short stacked and I took a stand with A10s and ran up against KK. My ace could not get any help so down I went in 9th place. Overall for the 2 tourneys I cleared a $70 profit. Not bad, but not nearly enough when I start my race.

Later tonight I will be playing in event 30 of the Bluff Poker Tour. It is a $20,000 guarantee tourney with a $33 buy-in. Right now there is 355 players registered which would make for a nice overlay. I am sure when the tourney starts at 9pm there will be 600+ in the tourney. I will report my results (no matter how bad they may be) later tonite. Until then good luck to you.

How I built to 5k

Some people have asked how did I build my bankroll from nothing to 5k. Well early on I won $10 in a freeroll at BET365 to get myself started. I then played fixed limit poker .05/.10 at Bet365 + Freerolls until I built my bankroll to $150. From there I tried NL poker again at the .05/.10 level I kept playing there until I had 30 max buyins at the next level. If I ever dropped to 20 max buyins I would move down a level (fortunately that only happened twice). For those of you that need more coaching and advice let me suggest clicking on the link for pokerfox.net. The pros at that site can give you some great tips on how to get started.

I would never play SNGs at all. It is not that I don't believe they are profitable, it is just I never liked to play them. When my bankroll grew to $500+ then I started to play $5 MTT in addition to my ring games, but I would only play one or two a day. As the bankroll grew, I started to play more MTT. My profit for the year in MTT is $2572.45.

Some people would say that I am too conservative with my bankroll. I believe that is one of the keys to being a successful poker player. I am by no means an expert, but I believe there are 4 major keys to being a successful poker player.

1) Patience
2) Insightful when it comes to people - being able to read why someone is acting the way they are acting.
3) Even tempered - being able to avoid going on tilt
2) Fiscally responsible - exhibiting good bankroll management

If you have those four qualities you can become a successful poker player. You will still need knowledge and game experience, but those can be gained over time. Anyway soon I will post how I plan on starting this race. Until then good luck to all of you.

Some notes about the links

There are a few sites that I have listed in the links section and I thought I would explain a bit about them and why you should be visiting them if you are not already doing so.

Bluff Magazine - The magazine and the people behind it are truly awesome. This magazine is for anybody who likes poker. If you do not find this magazine entertaining then you are dead and nobody has notified you. The people who run this magazine are serious poker players who are not afraid to have fun with the game. Trust me when I say that this magazine is different from any other magazine you have read about poker, and that is a good thing. Go buy this magazine right now.

Bluff Poker Tour - The fine people at Bluff created a tour that would allow some of us "internet poker players" compete for 6 World Poker Tour Seats during the course of 30 events. The people at Bluff really care about their customers and poker in general, and they show it with things like the BPT.

Fantasy Poker Challenge - This is a free game that Bluff holds. You pick four poker players for an event. You have a salary cap so you just can't buy all four studs. After the first day you get to change out players in your lineup, even if they were eliminated. The better your players do the more points you get. Now how good could the prizes be for a game that is free? Well first place for each event gets to go to Howard Lederer's Fantasy Camp. Second place is a pair of Oakley thump glasses. The winner of the end of season freeroll gets a WSOP Main Event seat. All for free. I told you these guys were good.

PokerFox.net - I signed up for this training site a month ago and I am still mad that I did not do it a year earlier. This site costs $50 per year but it is worth tons more. You get advice from two poker professionals. You get to watch videos online where they help you with your game. You get articles where they teach you how to play better. Plus you learn how to take advantage of your bankroll to maximize your profits though site bonuses and other programs.

The original 100k project - The people at PokerFox.net are taking an average Joe and putting him through the paces so that he can make 100k on online poker in one year. His starting bankroll is 1k. You can follow his progress on the site and learn how he is doing it. That site is the inspiration for this blog.

Poker Analysis Forum - There is a wealth of information at this site. Poker room bonuses and giveaways, tournament information, and discussions on poker strategy is all there plus much, much more. In addition to all that great information, this great poker community also has two monthly leagues that they run - a freeroll league and a buy-in league. They are both great ways to play poker with some great people.

Introduction

Many of us watch poker on ESPN, or the Travel Channel and think man I wish that could be me. I am definitely one of those people. Cards have always been a large part of my life. It is in my blood. My Dad was almost late to his wedding because he was playing cards with his family. Sure enough on my wedding day my friends and I were playing poker until the very last minute. I used to love going to Atlantic City or Foxwoods to play poker, and we still had a weekly game every Sunday night. When my job moved me to Georgia, my poker playing ended. For a long time I would play every other card game going but no poker. Every time I went home though a poker game would be at the very top of the agenda. At the end of 2004 I was finally introduced to online poker. I spent the last two months of 2004 trying to win some money playing freerolls since I promised my wife I would not deposit any money. Finally just before New Year's I did.

Since then I have built my first $10 win into over $5,000. With some withdrawals for expenses and such my bankroll as of today is $4776.69. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I can round it out to about 5k (though more would be nice). The project will officially begin on January 1st 2006. Until then I will give updates and I will describe how I have gotten here so far. Keep in mind that I am not a pro (that will become more apparent as you read on), but I will do my best to point you to where you can go for sound advice. Once the project begins I will give daily updates on my play so you can track my progress. Hopefully we can all learn along the way and then maybe you will give it a shot as well. Take care, and good luck at the tables.