Kicking ass and taking names... or at least trying to

I've been putting in a good volume this week playing at least a few games every day and will probably hit at least 100 for the week which is nice to stay on my goal. That being said, variance is still rearing its ugly head and I'm still in a slump of sorts. Actually, I've been playing pretty break even lately. Still looks like a down month though unless I get some wins in the next week.

While the results aren't there, my play is improving every time I sit down. That ultimately is what matters. I've become more adept at spotting mistakes I make in certain spots where I should shove or fold, and even bet sizing to maximize value from my hands. I've also been better at reading hands and knowing exactly when someone doesn't have a hand, or a big stack bully is just trying to push me around. Yes I've made a few stupid hero calls, but I feel I've made more good than bad. The bad ones you learn from and don't try to make again, and the good ones you learn from and can spot even more. I am finally really starting to see what all the pros talk about in playing the player, not the cards! Although monster hands don't hurt!

In other news since I've lost a decent chunk of my stars bankroll I have decided to cut out the $1.75 18 man games until I get back up a bit. While the variance is less in these games, two of those games can equate to three $1.10 45 or 90 man games so the variance/volume risk/reward is less. Say for example I cash in 1 out of every 4 (A very realistic percentage) 18 man games, that's at least $7 for buy-ins not counting any sort of profit. Well I can play 6- 45 or 90 man games for that price and would estimate cashing slightly less say 1 out of 5 games to be accurate. These cashes will however be more $ as there are more players involved. Essentially I get more games for my money at this point is what I need until my roll goes up some.

My bankroll on Fulltilt has remained about the same for the months so no adjustments are being made there in game selection just yet. I'm still grinding out the $2.25 27 and 18 man games.

Only one week left in the month and I'm determined to finish strong!

Back to the grind

The first week of March I put in decent volume for me. Played almost my original goal of 100 games. However, this encompassed my largest downswing to date. So part of that play was to get thru this run of bad luck. One of the key things I have learned from pokerwit is to not be results oriented, but rather evaluate your play and if it is a +EV move then in the long run things will balance out. Variance is a poker players worst enemy and downswings will happen. But so will upswings where you feel like you are just running like God. It does suck though when you are constantly getting two and three outted, but you just can't let it tilt you if you are making good moves and hitting good spots. I just keep reminding myself of this even though I've lost almost 25% of my bankroll on Stars. I'm not yet in the zone of having to go back to mini games though so hopefully I'll get thru it now.

So after running so bad last week was a welcome break with a vacation to Vegas where I didn't play a single hand of poker. It was a great break going to see my alma madder Wyoming Cowboys and the whole Mountain West basketball tournament. It was also great to get to see my grandfather and brother whom I haven't seen in a few months. That is one of the hardest things living so far from home, never getting to see the people you care most about. All in all it was a great trip with a lot of gambling and Vegas fun. I think I still may be hung over and I've been home for two days!

Well getting back to poker, I played a bit last night on FT. I had a mini winning session last time I played on there, but was also running bad until then. Last night I just sat down super focused and ready to dominate. I only played 7 games as it was late after working out, but I managed to win an 18 man SNG, third in 27 player SNG, and min cash another for a good winning session. I made some killer folds against some way better hands, something I've been working on more and more. I also made a nice comeback after getting 2 outted KK < QQ when a Q came on the river, but fell short of the money in that one. I'm feeling refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to start getting out of the funk and evolving my game to start building my bankroll even more.

I also joined the Pro Hand section of Pokerwit and that has already provided some very valuable insight and new ways to look at hands. I'm looking forward to really learning a ton more on the site as the pros Amir got are some of the best in the world.

With all of this, I'm focused and committed to making March a good month for my game!

February recap, looking forward

February is in the books! There were a few ups and downs for the month, but overall it was good and I learned a lot. I ended the month on a terrible downswing losing about 10% (or about 15 buy ins at my current level) of my bankroll on Stars after a huge upswing early in the month. Although I fell short of my goal monetarily I still managed making $.62 per game average, which for an average buy in of $1 equates to an ROI of 62%. Not too shabby if you equate that to making other investments. If only my bank account would show that sort of return! The bottom graph is my games to date on Stars. Although I am running bad there still seems to be a slight uptrend, so I'm optimistic on turning things around this month. If you read my previous posts then you know obviously I didn't come close to my volume goal, but like I said... Poker is a second job, not my life at the moment. I still have to go out and have fun! I did however also begin to play more on Full Tilt as a few of my close friends are playing there more now too. Always good to try and take a friends money! Plus I have found the MTT fields are much smaller which can equate to less variance and hopefully a decent score sooner. So moving forward I plan to play more on FT as well and keep that in my stats. The graph on top is my games to date on FT and obviously I'm still in the black, but I plan on changing that this month and continuing in the future! Until next time, good luck and thanks for reading!

Gearing up for the weekend/end of the month

So I haven't played nearly as much poker this month as I had planned to for a variety of reasons; laziness, a ton of work stress, and a trip to New Orleans to try and drown my liver. Yes I know excuses are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink, but I figure as long as I am making a steady living with my job poker can sort of be pushed by the wayside every now and then. That being said, I plan to hit the virtual felt hard this weekend. I'm on a mini downswing lately which can be blamed on variance, and probably a lack of focus from my trip to the big sleazy. I have however won a ticket to the sunday quarter million again (those satellites are jokes!) and plan to gain some more experience sunday along with mixing in as many SNG's and MTT's as I can handle. Before my downswing I had pretty closely made my monetary goal for the month so hopefully I can make that a reality this weekend. I will update after it all goes down on my monthly stats! Vegas in t-minus 2 weeks so I will also have to kick March off on a high note before that. Good luck out there and thanks for reading!

Pro's to the left of me, pro's to the right of me...

And I was stuck in the middle. After taking it easy saturday and only playing 4 tournaments with no success I wasn't sure I'd use my satellite ticket on Sunday as I was just too involved with the Olympics and the Daytona 500. Well, the race was postponed for quite awhile so about 45 minutes into late registration I decided I would give it a go.

Sat down at a table that didn't have any really large stacks and proceeded to grind my way up to average chips and held pretty constant toward the average for an hour. There were 31,000+ that decided to battle it out in the tournament, so obviously the field would have a big mix of donkeys and some pro's out there. As we got closer to the 10k left mark (5400 got paid) one short stack donkey on my table kept crying about people raising him and finally he busted out. Well then I got moved to another table and huh looked to my right only to see a huge name in the online poker world, Boozeorlose. My only thought was thank God I'm to his left and not right so I at least get to see what he does before I get to act. By far the biggest name player I've ever played with on a table, but luckily he was also about average chip stack. Well on goes the grind when another player busts and who get's moved to the table but a pokerstars sponsored pro, Leo Fernandez! Man, my poor micro grinder heart just about couldn't take it! And of course we were approaching the bubble so I knew those guys would be upping the aggression trying to steal chips.

Well my stack was dwindling when boozeorlose shoved all in and I looked at Ace jack. Not premium cards, but in the situation I was in made the call to gamble and try to stay alive. He turns over pocket Kings after everyone folds and I just think I'm out, but hit a miracle ace on the turn to stay alive! Turns out I only had two aces in the deck to hit as another player folded one. Well shortly after that hand our table was thankfully broken up so I didn't have to worry about those pro's anymore!

I managed to make some moves towards the bubble and chipped up nice, but lost a few pots to put me short stacked again and hit a bad spot going all in and 3 people called. Pocket tens held up and hit trips for a huge pot that would have vaulted me even higher, but I placed 2607 out of the 31,000 plus field for my largest cash of $26 on stars. Not huge, but some good learning experiences and I think I'll try to satellite into this tournament more often now. Other than that grinded a few SNG's and had a few cashes to put me up a decent chunk for the weekend. I'm looking forward to another week of putting in some time on the felt and coming away with new skills and knowledge!

Satellites, laziness, and adjusting goals

Just a quick update on February so far. I haven't put in nearly the volume I had been wanting to so far this month. However, the results I do have are pretty good. I'm over half way to my monetary goal for the month, but with only about a third of the amount of games I had intended on playing. I'm hoping to ramp it up the second half of the month as I'm going to Vegas for a week in early March and that will probably be pretty counter productive to online poker results. So a few adjustments I'm going to make on goals are to not focus on a set $ amount to win, but rather a $/game and maintaining that average or improving it in successive months. As soon as February is over I will have that statistic as I have been keeping track thus far. My average ROI is pretty high (much higher than is sustainable over a long period of time), so I expect that to sort of trail off as I attempt to move up in stakes. That however shouldn't translate into losing money, so long as my $/game increases and steadies.

I've continued to adjust my game daily and really feel I'm playing my best poker yet. This week I found a satellite to the weekly $11 buy-in $250K prize pool tournament on pokerstars that is well within my bankroll and is similar to the structure of games I've been playing so I played a couple and won a seat for the tournament on Sunday. I may or may not play in it this weekend as I am a big NASCAR dork and want to watch the Daytona 500. There are also a ton of other promotions going on right now for Pokerstars celebrating their 40 billionth, yes billionth, hand dealt on the site so I may try to take advantage of some of those too. Otherwise it will just be motivating my lazy self to increase my volume of play! I haven't decreased from January thus far so that is good, just need to realize the room for growth and move forward.

Hopefully that was more short and sweet! Thanks for reading!

Poker sites and blogs

Throughout my time as a poker player I have found numerous sites that are helpful in maximizing my game. Here are a few:

www.pocketfives.com -- a great online forum that also has a good rankings system.

www.sharkscope.com -- result tracker that can be a powerful tool on getting insight into your opponents skill level. Requires monetary value to get full access, but I use it for my 5 free searches every day and once my bankroll allows plan on purchasing it.

www.pokerwit.com -- this site has done tremendous things for me. It is a site started by a very successful online player, Amirsf, that provides a very unique tool of uploading hands and allowing people to play back the hands in various ways. This can help you think of different situations and ways to play particular hands. Amir has also put a lot of input into everyone's game and I'd like to personally thank him (if he ever reads this) again for helping me so much. He was actually the day three chip leader of the 2009 world series main event and can be seen briefly on ESPN a couple episodes.

There are other sites out there such as online poker rankings and 2+2 forums that I occasionally visit, but not often.

A few blogs I enjoy reading:

www.bfizz11.com -- this guy is unreal sick in today's MTT's and SNG's and has the confidence level to show it. Just from the time I started reading this blog in late December I can tell he has had 2 months of almost $50k profit in each month and has dominated online poker. Keep an eye out if you ever see him at your table as he will probably end up with your chips. He has recently started dabbling on Full Tilt after playing primarily Stars.

www.rainmanpoker.net -- MI_turtle on Stars, this guy is also a sicko. Huge amounts of volume and has a good coaching program from all the buzz on the internet. Again, beware if he is at your table.

www.brad2002tjpoker.com -- A grinder with a similar background as me. Worked a full time day job and played poker as a hobby on nights and weekends. Has made a good profit, and seems like a pretty insightful guy.

Those are just a few of the sites I regularly visit, and there are also a ton of links on each one. I find it particularly insightful to look at a lot of points of view on poker and to arm my arsenal with as many weapons as possible at the tables. Also if one can afford it coaching from these players would be significantly +EV.