A try that failed miserably

Well last night I attempted to give 5/10 NL a shot again. I wanted to see if my great play over the past month and a half would carry over. I decided that I would set aside a couple of buyins to see what would happen. What happened was that I lost both buyins. Why did I lose? Several reasons actually. The biggest reason was that I forced the action instead of being patient early on. That made my image at the table a poor one and then any moves that I tried to make were looked up. That and a mixture of a couple of cooler hands caused a bad downturn.

I do not regret giving 5/10 a shot. I will try it again in a month or so, especially if I continue to do well. I do regret not following the same successful path that helped me so far. At least I recognize what I did wrong and hopefully I will avoid that in the future.

I did have another final table in my 180 man SNG challenge with my friends over at Bluff. Unfortunately I finished 6th when I went allin on an overpair and was called by A6 and lost to a runner runner flush. I am 2nd out of the 7 in this contest, which is where I think I will finish when the month is over. My buddy Jeremy is a solid player who is much more determined to win this thing than I am. I am predicting that when this is all over he has play at least 5 times the amount of 180s that I will. With that big of a sample his top 10 finishes for the month should be higher than mine. Though I do have two final tables out of 7 tries so far.

So for the month I am down about $900. I am not too worried about that number as I am sure it will be erased with some solid play at 2/4 and 3/6. Best of luck out there to all of you!!!

Hello

Many of you have been asking about me as of late. I am sorry that I have not been posting. Here is an update of what has happened the last couple of months.

First of all I did not go broke, which is what many people may have thought. I did create a severe challenge for myself by lending a family member a considerable portion of my bankroll. I do not regret that decision, though it did severely crush my chances at some goals that I had for the year. That was further complicated by a horrible February that saw by bankroll get even more depleted. I kept dropping down in limits and the losing kept continuing. I eventually moved all the way down to .25/.50 NL which was a far drop from 5/10, but I was determined not to go broke.

Then March came along and I posted a winning month again, to the tune of 5k. I started getting my confidence back right before heading to a live trip to Tunica. I had a great time with some of my friends from the bluff forum, and I profited $700 after expenses. It is always great when you can spend some time with your buddies playing poker and winning to boot. I have some very good stories about that time and I will sprinkle them in as time permits.

When I got back from my Tunica trip I made the best decision that I have made in my short poker career. I joined pokerxfactor.com. This site is great!!!!! I have been studying the videos (there are tons of them) and trying to read the forums and get involved as much as possible. All the videos are great learning tools, but Rizen's cash game videos are just awesome. They have taught me some new things and just helped validate things that I thought I knew. Armed with all this information I attacked the cash games during the month of April and posted an 11k month!!!!!! I will post a link to pokerxfactor so you can check it out.

So for May I am looking to put together my 3rd straight solid month and my goal is to post back to back 10k+ months. I also joined a 180 man SNG contest with my buddies on the Bluff forum, so you will see me in the $4.40 180 man SNGs. I played two last night finishing 36th and 9th. I also posted another solid day at the cash games, and my overall profit for the night was $1134.

So where am I playing??? You can find me at the 2/4 games on VIP and the 2/4 or 3/6 games at Full Tilt. Actually last night I joined a 3/6 game on Full Tilt and who do I find at the table but Rizen. I was only there for about 30-45 minutes and showed a $75 profit there. It was fun getting to play against him though.

Ok enough of me rattling on. Probably nobody will be reading this anyway but I thought I would at least post what has been going on since so many of you have been sending me posts asking "what is up?". I will do my best to keep this updated so you can follow along again if you so desire.

Results from 1/26-1/28

It was a great weekend for cash game poker, yet a horrible weekend for MTT poker. Overall for the weekend I won $3300 which brings the bankroll to a new alltime high of 28.6k. I am extremely happy about that despite the fact that I did not cash in any tourneys this weekend. I had a couple of bubble finishes and two heartbreaking bad beats in the Full Tilt 50k tourneys. Here are a couple of interesting hands.

Hand 1 - I was playing at the 4/8 NL deep stack table. The max buyin for this table is $1600. I bought in for the max and I had about $2000 when this hand shows up. I raise from middle position with 7d6d to $30. Everyone folds to the big blind who calls. The flop comes out Ks3h5h and the big blind checks. I bet $60 trying to take down the pot right there, but the big blind calls. The turn is a 4d, and the bb checks and I bet $120. The bb calls. The river is a 10s and the bb checks again. Now I have the nuts and I want to figure what he will call. I bet $300 into the pot and he reraises me allin. I call instantly and win a $3800 pot. He shows K10 for top two pair.

Hand 2 - I am playing againt David Chiu at a 5/10 table. I raise with 88 and I am reraised by David who is in the sb. I know he plays aggressive preflop so I call. The flop comes 832 rainbow. David bets $80 and I just call. The turn is a 10 and David bets out $150. I reraise allin for another $500 and David calls. He shows QQ to my set. The river comes a Q and David escapes my trap.

Hand 3 - I have KQs and I raise from late position. I was reraised by someone holding AQ and I called. The flop comes 910J rainbow and I flat called the bb bet. The next card was an 8. The bb bet out $150 and I reraised allin hoping the guy had a Q. He calls my allin bet and shows AQ. The river comes up a K and I lose.

I was happy that hands 2&3 did not put me on tilt. I kept playing my game and ended with a winning session.

Well that is all for now. Best of luck out on the felt.

Results from 1/25

Well yesterday went much better for me. I four tabled 1/2 and 2/4 NL on Full Tilt and ended up winning almost $1100. That brings the bankroll back to 25.3k.

What did I do differently from the night before? I did attempt less semibluffs. Unless I had a huge draw I tried to keep the pots small. I paid much more attention to see where the raises were coming from before I reacted. Sometimes I do not do that when I am playing multiple tables. This time I made sure that I took the time needed.

So today we will be at it again. Maybe I can finally turn a profit this month besides my rakeback payment. Best of luck to everyone out there.

Results from 1/23

I took several steps backward yesterday. My cash game run was horrible. Six times I flopped top pair/nut flush draw. I lost all six. Once I flopped aces full when the other guy flopped quads. It was just a sick run of cards. Now I will say that I probably semi-bluffed way too often considering the run that I was on. My table image was probably a touch too reckless and thus I did not get the laydowns I needed, nor did I get the draws that I was betting.

I also suffered a heartbreaking defeat in the $5 rebuy. I ended up bubbling in a tourney that had 1900 people in it. I had a better than average stack the entire time when I get QQ in the big blind. The button did a standard raise and the sb called. I go allin over the top which was a rather big reraise. The button called and the sb folded, but the button turns over KK and I am out just short of the money. If I win that hand I would be in the top 10 in chips. Of course I always play to win, which hurt me in this situation.

So for the day I dropped 2k and that puts the bankroll at 24.3k. I went to bed early since I just did not have a good feeling at the table. Hopefully I can turn it around tonight.

Another up and down day

Well last night I played a ton of tourneys and some cash games. The tourneys were aggravating to say the least. I bubbled out of two of them and did not cash in any of the five that I played. The most heartbreaking was the $10 rebuy on Stars. I finished 65 out of 795, when the top 63 paid out. I was always about the average chip stack until two bad beats and one horrible call shortstacked me.

The good news is that I won about $600 in my cash games at Full Tilt. The profit for the day was $485 overall, which brings the bankroll to a little over 26.3k. I decided that come February I will be playing in the FTOPS on Full Tilt. Most of the buyins are in the $200-$300 range, and as long as I continue to do well I will enter those.

Anyway best of luck everyone. I will post tomorrow. Take care.

Weekend Update

Well this weekend was good for me in a card sense, but bad for me otherwise. I hurt my back in a interesting little story. For those of you that do not know, I am a husband and father of two kids. Well on Saturday I am taking a shower when I hear screaming downstairs. This is not my wife yelling at the kids because they are not listening. This is screaming as if there is an intruder or something. Finally I hear my wife yelling, "get Daddy, go get Daddy now". Well I jump out of the shower, hit the tile floor and slip and fall. I get up, and rush to get pants on, and then run downstairs. I see my 5 year old daughter standing on a chair screaming, my 7 year old son crying, and my wife yelling. I also see one of my Iridescent sharks laying on floor. He is about 9 inches long and about 2 to 3 inches thick. His fin is caught in the rug. I finally get him unhooked and put him back in the tank. He is fine. By the next day I cannot move due to severe back pain. I am on painkillers and I am seeing the doctor today.

On the poker front, I won $1600 this weekend. Most came from cash games, though I did cash in both halves of the Full Tilt daily double last night. I almost won "best finish" which would have been worth $420.

So the bankroll is at 25.8k now. I will play a few more tourneys tonight provided that the painkillers do not put me to sleep. Best of luck to all of you out there.