Am I allowed to win one race?? Results from 2/26

Well I did not play a ton of poker yesterday due to family obligations. When I did play I was aggravated. Anybody who thinks that you cannot win with AK should try playing it against me. Twice last night I was knocked out in a race with AK. The first time I am 5 off the bubble with a somewhat short stack when I push allin with QQ. Of course AK calls my QQ and he flops an ace and I am sent packing. The second time I am at the final table of a sat to the KIWI $215 New Zealand tourney. I am in 6th place with 7 people left and the top 2 get paid. I have about 5 times the bb and I push allin from late position with 99. I get called by AKs and the flop comes up 7810 but the turn is a rag and the river is the king. Oh well.

I pretty much break even in my ring games which puts me in the hole a whopping $39. Definitely not a great day, but it did not kill me. Today I may play in one of those Pokerstars tourneys or the 9pm Full Tilt Double Stack tourney along with my usual 5/10 game.

By the way I am sure you have heard about the people who have played multiple accounts in the big weekend tourneys. As far as I am concerned this is disgraceful. They may be better poker players, but they sure are poor human beings. This is starting to become poker's version of steroids. As soon as we someone killing the weekend tourneys everyone will start to wonder if they are "juicing". It is a shame, I love to watch these tourneys in action and now I don't know who is legit and who is not.

Anyway good luck out there.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 27 bankroll - $7281
Profit - $2029
Mar 1 goal - $10000 (color me disappointed)

Report from 2/25

I could not think of a clever title, sorry. I am sure that by now you are here for the results and not my clever banter. I played two tourneys and essentially broke even (I won a whole $3). I lost another $25 playing NL at Full Tilt. I am struggling there to get action on my hands without making them very vulnerable. It seems that people there play very tight preflop and then loosen up a bit once the flop comes out. I still need to figure out how to exploit that. Fortunately though I was very solid on my 5/10 limit game. I won over $200 playing that which put me at a plus $229 for the day when you factor in my $40 in bonus money that I cleared (thanks again Bayou). So now the bankroll is at an all time high which scares me because I always have a horrible day once I reach this point. Here are the numbers.....

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 26 bankroll - $7320
Profit - $2068
Mar 1 goal - $10000 (not going to happen, oh well)

Good luck at the tables!!!!!

An "Even Steven" Day - Results from 2/24

Well I had a lot of play for very little profit. I did play in a $10 tourney at Full Tilt but I finished in the middle of the pack. I stayed even for my $25 NL play. I did play some $10 NL with my Dad and as expected the play was horrible. Unfortunately I got sucked out several times and I lost my $10 buyin. In 5/10 I was a winner which made my overall day a profit of $22. Not exactly what I am looking for, but it sure beats losing. I am hoping to get in one of the PokerStars 180 person SNGs, but I am not sure if I can at this point. Today I have kid duty, still paying for that Tunica trip ;-) , and playing will be difficult until tonight.

Jan 1 - $5252
Feb 25 - $7091
Profit - $1839
Mar 1 goal - $10000

Having fun playing poker - results from 2/23

Well the title of this post does not have anything to do with the results of yesterday. For the day I did not do well. I ended up losing $125. It happens. When you play 5/10 that is only a small amount.

But back to the title. I want to have fun playing poker again so I moved some money around. Don't get me wrong I still want to get to 100k, and I will still post results. But poker this month has been more work than fun, and right now I am looking at a break even month which would be my first. So what did I do? Well a couple of things....

1) I took $600 and moved it to PokerStars so I can play in more of their $20 180 person SNGs. I really like the structure, the blinds go up every 15 minutes so you get alot of play. I finished 15th in my only attempt yesterday for a $43 win. I lost JJ on back to back hands which sucked, but I did enjoy playing a tourney there without having to go through 2000 people.

2) I took another $600 and moved it to Full Tilt so I can play at their $25 NL tables. When I can run that to $1500 I will try their $50 NL tables, and then as I reach 30 max buyins I will keep moving up. If I drop to 20 max buyins I will drop down. It helps to work on my NL game.

3) I moved $100 to Royal Vegas so I can play at their $10 NL tables with my Dad. Unfortunately his game has not moved up as quickly yet, but I still like to get to play with him. This will allow me to do it.

The rest of the money stays at Bayou where I will continue to play 5/10 and grind it out. This will continue to be the bulk of my playing.

So there it is. I will report how I do on each one so that we can keep track. I will try and play 5 of those 180 person SNGs a week. Otherwise I will concentrate on my 5/10 game and my Full Tilt NL game. Then when Dad is around I will play with him as well. I am not abandoning my try for 100k, but I am being realistic. This is not my full time job and while I want to learn, I want to do it in an environment that keeps it fun so I do not burn out. By getting to play a couple of different games I think I will accomplish this. What do you think????

Here are the numbers......

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 24 bankroll - $7069
Profit - $1817
Mar 1 goal - $10000 (man I better go win some 180 person SNGs)

Take care and good luck all.

Results from 2/22

Ok everyone I am back to regular updates. With my work schedule the last two weeks and my Tunica trip I was not playing online too much. Now I am back and I should be playing alot of poker over the next 3 days. Last night I tried to get back into the saddle and play a little 5/10. I ended up winning almost $80 in a very short session. Overall I was pleased with the play.

I am going to try something a little different to change things up as well. This week I will be depositing some money in Full Tilt Poker. I am going to use that money to play some NL poker. I will start out at the $25 NL tables and move up when I have 30 buyins at the new level. I will still play 5/10 at Bayou, but I want to change things up as well. So for most nights I will play one table of limit 5/10 and one of $25 NL. I figure using two different sites will make it easy to tell the difference. I will also let everyone know what I am winning/losing at each one.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 22 bankroll - $7192
Profit - $1940
Mar 1 goal - $10000

Tunica Trip Report

Well I am back from Tunica and boy do I miss that place already. Well not actually the town, because there is not a damn thing to do there. I do miss the fun that I had in the casinos though. Here is a somewhat long recap.

Thursday 16th - We get to the Grand and we check in. Unfortunately we find out that there are three "buildings" to the Grand Hotel and Casino. Two of them are across the street of the casino and we are in one of them. So much for sneaking out in the middle of the night to play!!! We throw our bags in the room and sign up for the 1pm tourney at the Grand. The tourney was run ok, nothing great though. The entry fee was $80 and people started off playing literally anything. I could not gain any momentum and I was out pretty early. My buddy Greig won the tourney and $920. We then played some blackjack, craps, and three card poker and I sucked at all of them. At the end of the day I find myself stuck $250.

Friday 17th - We head for breakfast and then we go to Sam's Town for another tourney. This one costs $50. There are 63 people playing in this tourney and the "random" drawing of seats put myself and all three of my friends at the same table. We decide before the tourney that since we are all at the same table, we will split the winnings that the team earns. The member of the team with the least experience is my friend Bob. I gave him my copy of Harrington on Holdem to read on the 6 hour drive. Harrington did not prepare him for his first hand. He gets dealt 1010 and raises. Two people call and the flop comes out 10xx with two spades. One person checks, one bets 250 and Bob raises to 500 and both call. Keep in mind we start with 2500 in chips. The next card is another spade and Bob goes all in. One person folds and the other person thinks about it and then calls. She has A6 with the A being a spade. Of course a 4th spade comes on the river and Bob is out. So much for Harrington. I finish in the middle of the pack in 26th and my friend Greig finishes 3rd and my other buddy Jeremy finishes in 5th. The team splits $472. After that I decide to play more blackjack (dumbass game) and lose my profits plus another $100. Fortunately then we come to the Gold Strike where I find my first 1/2 NL game and win $200 back putting me at -$150 for the first two days.

We checked out all the poker rooms while we were there and Gold Strike was the best. They had the biggest variety of games and the room is non smoking with table service available for food. They have flat screen TVs all over the place, and automatic shufflers at every table. The only complaint is that the chairs could be a little more comfortable. The staff is very friendly, they treated us extremely well and we are hardly high rollers. I ended up playing there until 5:30AM and there was still 3 1/2 NL games going and 2 2/5 NL games not to mention all the limit games and Omaha games going. They even ended up having a table for Chinese Poker. If you have enough people who want to play they will deal anything apparently.

Saturday 18th - So after 4 hours of sleep and the breakfast buffet at the Gold Strike three of us head back up to the poker room to play 1/2 again. The other guy (Bob) goes to play craps. There is a little wait but the let us just hang out in the room until we can get started. After about 15-20 minutes they sit all three of us down at a table. We did not move from that table for 15 hours. When we wanted lunch they brought us menus from 3 of the restaurants and just told us to order and it would be brought when it was ready. The cost? Nothing. Dinner was the same routine. Care for a some cheesecake? No problem we will go get it for you. They also had coffee, popcorn, and goldfish in the room. Plus cocktail waitresses would constantly go through for other refreshments. The only thing that cost you money besides a tip was if you wanted a Red Bull. That cost $2. Why? I have no clue. Alcohol is free, but Red Bull costs you money. I guess they want you to be asleep. So how did I play you ask???? Well I bought in for $200 and started off pretty hot and got it to $400. Then I lost a big hand to a calling station when he called my $75 turn bet with a flush draw against my set (sound familiar?). He hits the flush draw and I start my slide. I slide back to $75 but I was not worried because my reads were solid and I could always rebuy. Then I started to get some cards and the rebuying was not a factor for the rest of the night. I ran that little $75 to $1200 which put me up $850 for the weekend!!!!!!

I have a ton of stories about the weekend that I will share over time. I will be going back, and when I do I will be staying at the Gold Strike. There really is not a need to go anywhere else. If you decide to go and you plan on playing poker make sure you book your room through the poker room. If you play for five hours you will get the room for $30 during the week and $39 on the weekends. You cannot beat that deal. So I am putting some of my profits in my bankroll and this is how the number looks right now....

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 20 bankroll - $7114
Profit - $1862
Mar 1 goal - $10000 (man this date is coming fast)

Good luck to everyone out there!!!!!

These ups and downs are killing me - results from 2/13

Well everything that happened in my favor in the afternoon went against me last night. I would have KK in a capped preflop against QQ and a Q would show up. Twice I lost set over set. I will examine this session more thoroughly when I get home from my Tunica trip. To make a very long sad story short I lost almost all of my winnings from the afternoon session. The total with the bonus money put me ahead $132. Normally I would be happy with that, but you know why I am not. I have figured out how to post from my cellphone (thanks Jeremy) so we should be able to get some posts in during the weekend. I am not expecting to play tonight or my wife may divorce me. Have a Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!!!

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 14 bankroll - $6837
Profit - $1585
Mar 1 goal - $10000

I just have to post this - results from a brief session

Ok I had some extra time so I decided to play a little on two tables. Talk about having a deck literally hit you!!!! I could not lose. It was as simple as that. Though I did lose one hand with AA and another with KK it seemed like every hand I went in, I won. If I had AK then a flop would be AKx. If I limped with 88 an 8 would flop. It was surreal. I only played 296 hands yet I won an outstanding $565 for a winning clip of 19bb/100 hands!!!! That is sick. If I can hang on today I will finally be back in the positive for the month and at my highest point year to date. I almost don't want to play tonight (but I will). I just had to share the good news. I hope all of you that read this experiences the same thing today. Take care.

We are back running again - results from 2/11&2/12

Hello everyone. Sorry that I have been out of pocket for a while. I had my kickoff meeting for work and that kept me away from poker and my blog for several days. I am back up now and I played some this weekend. Saturday was a down day for me and then Sunday I won it all back. I plan on playing a bunch today, but I am not sure how much I will get to play on Tuesday or Wednesday. Tuesday of course is Valentine's Day which is definitely a no poker day. Wednesday I am going to try to get to sleep early because I leave at 5AM for my Tunica Trip.

I just cannot wait to go to Tunica. As you may have read, I have not played live poker in a casino in over 10 years!!!!! We are leaving early so that we can play in a $80 freezeout tourney at the Grand at 1pm. We are staying at the Grand as well so this will work out well. I withdrew $1000 from my online poker bankroll to bankroll me for the four days. While I wont be able to post updates while I am there, you can expect a rather long update when I return on Monday. Until then, good luck on the felt.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 13 bankroll - $6705
Profit - $1453
Mar 1 goal - $10000

A quick update - results from 2/7

Well I am off to one of our very tiring conferences. Updates for the next two days will have to come at night because I will be at meetings from 7AM-6PM. I did play in two tourneys last night and they both ended in horrible fashion. The first tourney we are down to the final table and 3 people get paid. We are down to 6 people. A short stack goes allin and I wake up with JJ. I move allin and two people fold behind me. A guy call two allins cold with A9c. I have him covered. The flop of course comes A9x and I am crippled. I go out the next hand with Q10s against AK. Oh well.

The other tourney which pays three people I am at the final table with 8 of us left. Hatfield (from pokerfox.net) min raises me on the big blind. I have 72d and I call the min raise since we both have healthy stacks. I figure him for an A or a mid pocket pair. The flop comes A72. Jackpot!!!!!! I check, he bets 300, I make it 1200, he goes all-in. Now I figure he has AK. I dont believe he has AA because the min raise is questionable preflop from him and he would want me to catch up if he had a set of aces. A set of sevens or twos is unlikely because I have a 72. He cannot have A7 or A2 because why raise with that garbage preflop? No, I believe he has AK so I call. He flips over AQ. Awesome!!! Until the turn brings an ace and I am out again. So much for putting all your money in with the best of it.

So despite all the crap happening to me, I move on and play 5/10. I do not go on tilt, instead I play my regular game. I win over $100 in less than 90 minutes and call it a night since it is so late. Overall with bonus money I end up $143 for the day including those two evil tourneys.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 8 bankroll - $6672 ($6792 with missing bonus money)
Profit - $1420/$1540 with bonus
Mar 1 goal - $10000

Getting back on track - results from 2/6

Well I continued my streak from Sunday into yesterday. I won at a pretty good clip, finishing the day at +268 while winning 3.6bb/100. That is not to say I avoided bad beats or cooler hands, but I really tried to ditch those hands earlier. Like ditching KK when three people called your raise and an ace flops. I would lead out again with KK but if someone raised or if more than one person called I ditched the hand. It hurts to have to do that, but it hurts worse to spend an additional $20 to learn what you already know.

I also played the PokerStars 180 man SNG. I really like that tourney despite finishing 51st out of the 180 (top 18 get paid). It is a good tourney structure and the blinds go up every 15 minutes so you get good play for your money. I will try to play a couple of more of those as time goes on.

So tonight is bowling night so I am not sure how much play I will get in. I do have a couple of league games that I am going to try and get in today as well. Good luck to all of you out there.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 7 bankroll - $6532 ($6654 with bonus money)
Profit - $1280/$1402 with bonus
Mar 1 goal - $10000

I hate the Steelers - Results from the weekend

Well I am a Dallas Cowboys fan which means that I grew up hating the Steelers. That continued yesterday. I thought for sure that Seattle would win, which shows me once again why I do not bet money on sports. I do have to wash my neighbor's truck thanks to the loss. Oh well.

Saturday I continued my struggles at 5/10. I am just a break even player at this level, but at least I am not a losing player. I believe I can lick this game with some more patience post flop, so I am going to continue it for now. I lost like 35bb on Saturday and then won some back on Sunday, but overall the weekend was a loss. Today is a day off of work for me so I will probably get 1000 hands or so in at this level. I would like to be able to post a win today.

Bayou is still having some problems with my bonus money but they are working hard on fixing it. I will continue to post my results with the missing bonus that I should be getting.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 6 bankroll - $6209/$6416 with bonus
Profit - $957/$1164 with bonus
Mar 1 goal - $10000

Yeah a winning day - results from 2/3

Well the losing streak ended at two miserable days. Last night I won at a pretty good clip and finished the day winning $258. I also started to receive the bonus once again from Bayou. They had problems at a network level, but they are starting to fix it. So I was paid another $221 in bonus (I clear $40-$50 a day in bonus). I am still owed another $150, but at least we are getting closer.

Today I play a WSOP sat at Absolute Poker at 8pm. There are only 45 or so people that qualified for this event with the winner getting the WSOP seat. It is not a main event seat, but it is a seat to a $1500 NL event, and boy would I love to play in it. I am very familiar with these players, and it is a great field. Hopefully the flop will be with me. Best of luck to all of you out there.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 4 bankroll - $6533 ($6683 with the other bonus)
Profit - $1281 ($1431 with the other bonus)
Mar 1 goal - $10000

AAAAAAARRGGGGHHHH!!!!! - results from 2/2

Well I now officially hate the month of February. I have gotten my ass kicked two days in a row and man it sucks. I lost a total of $2000 in pots last night when an opponent hit either a two outer or a three outer to beat me. That is not to say I played it perfectly all night, but I played pretty damn well. I am going to give this another night or two before I push the panic button, but it does not feel good to go backwards. So I ended up losing $406 last night at 5/10. Hopefully I have reached the end of the rut.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 3 bankroll - $6054 ($6312 when you count the $258 in bonus money owed)
Profit - $802/$1060
Mar 1 goal - $10000

Just call me donkey - results from 2/1

Well I finally had a losing session at 5/10. The loss does not upset me, it is a minor setback. What kills me is that I knew that I was not in any shape to play, and I still played. That is DUMB. I was telling my buddy Jeremy that I had an absolutely rotten day and I was not in the frame of mind to play. So did I sit at home and read a book? No. Did I watch TV? No. I played. Let me tell you that when you are not 100%, and then you are unlucky on top of it, you will get crushed. That is exactly what happened to me. I lost $401 playing 5/10. That is ridiculous.

But the good thing about writing this is that I feel it leaving me now that it is over. We all have these bad days. By the end of the weekend I will be back up over 7k and will be back to my winning ways. It will all start with me bringing my "A" game today. So with that I am just going to post the numbers and learn my lesson.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 2 bankroll - $6460 ($6643 when you add my missing bonus)
Profit - $1208/$1391 (with the missing bonus)
Mar 1 goal - $10,000

A quiet day - results from 1/31

Well last night was bowling night, and man did I bowl like shit. I got a new bowling ball and I could not hit the ocean if I was standing on the beach. I shot 121-153-176. The good news is that we won all 3 games against the first place team which should vault us into first or second place.

Ok enough about bowling. I got home and I really did not feel like I was at my best so instead of playing 5/10 and risking destruction I decided to play in my two league tourneys. The first tourney was essentially a $5 SNG since we only had 11 people. I finished in first place and won $27 I believe. The second tourney was a $200 freeroll given to the top 50 players in my poker league each month. I ended up finishing 2nd in that tourney which netted me another $35. This is the same field that I will be facing in my WSOP sat on Saturday. Hopefully I can finish first in that tourney.

So I ended up winning a little money and building some confidence in my tournament game which I have been sorely lacking. Tonight I am back and ready to play 5/10 again. As for a goal this month, I figure this is a short month that will be even shorter since I will be playing live for 4 days of it. Even though I will count the wins/losses of the live game, I have decided to make my goal to reach 10k. I will need to win a little over $100 a day to accomplish that. I am not really stretching myself too hard, but I want something that will not cause me to press while I continue to learn the 5/10 level.

Jan 1 bankroll - $5252
Feb 1 bankroll - $6861 (with the money owed to me it would be $7014)
Profit - $1609/$1762 with the $153 owed in bonus
March 1 goal - $10,000 (boy that looks good!!!)