Wedding's a coming! Last Update For a Bit

Poker:

Running incredibly well at NL50 over a few thousand hands. Bankroll up to $1,100 already from $780 3 weeks ago. Never had to redeposit.

It's good to see how much better I've gotten at emotional control in this past year.

The wedding's approaching in just 2 and a half weeks. Wow.

Everyone keeps commenting how calm I am. I find that odd. Because I'm not really calm at all. It looks like I've just got a natural poker face. But it isn't that I'm worried. No, no, no. I'm just incredibly excited.

I haven't ever felt a rush like this. It even trumps when I found myself conscious, but with a hole in my brain in a neurosurgery ward. I was on the edge of that great unknown called death.

My excitement here is so far beyond that, my mediocre writing can't do it justice. I think half the reason people think I'm calm is that I don't know HOW to express just how intensely crazy I am about getting hitched.

I've gotten over all of my second guesses about getting married already. I've spent the last 4 years thinking about marrying this girl and the past year letting the engagement really sink in.

I'm beyond any reasonable doubts. Rationally, I think anyone seriously considering marriage SHOULD be beyond doubts by this point.

In poker terms, I'm putting my whole liferoll on the line here. As a conservative player, I'm of course sure as hell that I'm making the right decision. Of course, we never really know what life has in store for us.

I'm all in, until the day I die.

Thorn

Workin' out!

I do a desk job and my biggest hobby is poker, so I don't exercise too much in the course of a normal day. I've been trying to stay healthy. Both my dad's parents went to heart attacks in their 50s. My mom's mom went last year with a heart attack, too, and my dear old grandpa, while he's still around, had a stroke a few years back.

You might say I have a bit of a family history.

So a few months back my housemate and I decided to get into p90x, some extreme workout program that's supposed to kick your ass into shape in 90 days with a full body circuit regimen, including a diet plan. Can't say I followed the diet much beyond trying to eat healthier and in the better 5 medium meals a day category (and I got a little addicted to chocolate protein shakes. Delicious), but the exercise portion did me well. Sure, my results weren't as drastic as, say, this stuff, but I definitely got some good results. Highly recommended, but it's a grueling workout. After finishing it last month, I've slacked off a bit. Sadly, I haven't done a workout in like 2 weeks.

Funny story about starting, though. The ab workout killed a muscle group I didn't even know the proper name for, much less have ever worked out. I say ab workout, but it's really full core. That's why my hip flexors refused to work the next 3 days. What's a hip flexor? Hell if I know. I just know that you need them to walk upright. Because I looked like an old man at the rife old age of 23.

The receptionist had a good chuckle out of that.

Maybe after I get married I'll start workin' out again. We'll see.

Full Tilt is down? Possible alternatives...

I woke up extra early to get an hour of poker in before work. Little did I know that Full Tilt would be down this morning. Shucks.

What's worse, now that I've cashed out of Stars, I've got nowhere to play! I could always go back to Stars, but where's the fun in that? It's time to try new things.

I think I'll go check out Bodog. Why? Well, it's reputable, the cash games are supposed to be pretty soft (yay, gamblers), and most of all, they have an awesome %110 bonus up to $1100. Sure, at the volume I play now, I'll probably only clear like $100 of that with my play, but you get 10% ($100) instantly when you first deposit. That's a pretty freaking awesome sign-up deal. Plus they have this friends with benefits thing where friend referrals might actually happen, ya know, since they don't do rakeback affiliates.

So I'm going to make an account there.

Edit: Meh. Looks like you can only deposit $500 using a credit card, and they only take visa. Haven't tried yet, so I'm not even sure it'll work. To deposit $1000 you have to use an ewallet that charges 8.8% on deposits AND 10% on withdrawals. Definitely not worth it. We'll see, I might still deposit via credit card for the bonus :)

Further edit: Full Tilt's back with many eurodonks. Forget Bodog for now. Muahahaha.

Boldly Charging Ahead!

I'm moving up to NL50 after just a few thousand hands at NL25. This is happening for a few reasons.

1. I believe that I can beat NL50. One stake to another isn't supposed to be that different, really. Just a bit more aggressive.

2. I have the bankroll. Sure, it isn't on Full Tilt right now, but it's in the bank, ready and waiting to be used.

3. After this last round of working on my game, I believe that I've gotten much, much better. So I'm going to try out higher limits and see if I have enough skill, even if I haven't mathematically proved to be a winner at the previous stake. I've been getting the feeling that I'm leaps and bounds ahead of most or all of my opponents at the tables lately.

4. I've found myself daydreaming about the day that I can actually make a good income off poker. Hell, I'm going to keep studying and playing until I get as high as I can. Getting good enough to become a professional would be absolutely wonderful. It isn't that I hate my current job (it's actually an excellent job that I'm very grateful for), I just don't absolutely love it. I've been inspired by poker pro Kathy Liebert's story. From her web site bio here:

"Becoming dissatisfied with the job, Kathy took the advice of her mother who encouraged her to do something she loved and the money would follow."

This could be a recipe for disaster, of course. But I want to walk the road less traveled, blazing my own trail outside of the Pre-K to elementary to high school to college to 9 to 5 grind. I'm young, I'm shooting for the stars, and I'll be damned if I don't take a few risks to get there.

Thorn's Big Mistakes ... In Real Life!

So, I've brought up drinking in my "big mistakes" section before, but this time it's for my drinking habits in general!

This weekend, we partied. One of my friends just moved into our group house, with plans to replace me after I get married and move out. To celebrate the occasion we decided to get a keg. And visit the liquor store. Grabbed a bottle of wine, too.

I ended up starting to drink with my good buddy... at 4 in the afternoon! I remember watching tv, playing some drinking games, chatting with friends, party party party, night ends when I vomit all over myself and my lovely fiancée helps me clean off and get upstairs to bed.

Of course, that's just what I remember. I got to hear the full story the next day (fiancée Thorn always gets this twinkle in her eye when she gets to tell me my shenanigans of the night before).

There was a rowdy trip to McDonald's where I kept stumbling over and spilling water everywhere. There was the drunken run back home, complete with sporadic attempts by yours truly to relieve myself in probably too-public areas. There was me forgetting right then and there at the party, a McDonald's burger in my belly, that we had even gone to McDonald's, loudly denying the trip had happened despite the many burger bags littered about me.

In short, well, I looked like a doofus, and drank way, way too much. Gotta stop that. My fiancée may be amused now, but you can only clean up after the guy who got trashed and made a mess so many times. I get a feeling my liver will thank me for it later, too.



On the good side, my run-good continues at NL25 (no drinking there, hah)!

Bankroll is up to $780.83. Yummy, pokery goodness.

Ego says post

I'm definitely noticing the blogger tendency to post more when you're winning. I just finished a massive 200-hand heater where I find myself up 4 buy-ins for the day, obliterating my 2 buy-in downswing over the last 800 hands before that as I moved up to NL25. And here I am, ready to brag to the world about it and massage my silly poker ego. It craves the massage. Loves it. Particularly massages with happy endings. Yeah, yeah, bad taste, but I had to work it in there after talking so much with someone else who's lived in Asia tonight (hooray for visiting friends! And seriously, soon-to-be Mrs. Thorn, if you ever read this, I've never gotten nor felt tempted to get one myself).

Anyways, back to poker posting. It really is all about ego, too. I've noticed that my habit of only posting when up has grown in direct relation to my belief in being a winning player. When I was most definitely a huge fish, posting was more analytical, more centered on review and plugging my biggest leaks. On the one hand, I miss the big leaks; they were so simple to spot and so easy to see improvement in. On the other hand, screw the nostalgia, my poker ego has self-esteem, baby!

Keepin' it loose,

Thorn
25NL DOMINATOR (so far)

Hooray Bonuses!

I love rakeback, and bonuses. Full Tilt's are so easy to clear with Rush Poker.

And they're the sole reason I'm up since the last update. Hah. I feel like an advertisement for Full Tilt.

"I couldn't beat the games, but with Full Tilt's exclusive bonus and rakeback offers, I can eke out a meager profit, now! Play Rush Poker! It sure clears bonuses fast, jeepers."

Hands Played since August 27: 17,064
Table Results: -$11.36
Bonuses+Rakeback: $69.67
Total Winnings: $58.31
Current Bankroll: $638.11

Moneyin' the VeryJosie!

Last week, as I was looking around the tournaments on Full Tilt before the Mookie started, I saw the Very Josie Poker tournament. It's a KO, double stack structure, just how I like it, and I've heard a bunch about it from Waffles's blog, so I decided to register!

And I waited.

And waited.

... and then the tournament canceled because I was the only entrant. :(

9:00 PM EST, Wednesday... that's right. Where did ol' Thorn go so wrong?

It turns out the Very Josie is only held the first Wednesday of each month! Boy, did I feel silly being the only one who didn't know what was going on. The ever-spunky, lovely Josie herself cleared that up for me, though.

Tonight, I got in on the right day, at the right time. And I'm glad I did! I ended up taking 3rd, finishing just in the money, and taking one bounty, courtesy of wolfshead.

I ended up being taken out by the always pleasant Mojo, who at this very moment is STILL battling heads up for the win. In hindsight, I misplayed the hand I went out on, and Mojo was there to collect.

Mojo 3x raised from the button, and I just 2.4x 3-bet him to put half my stack in with 66. He had pretty great odds to call me since antes were in effect, so he did, he hit the flop, called my inevitable shove, and voila, here we are. The best play would've been just shoving pre-flop so I would have a bit more fold equity. Ah well. I'll remember for next time.

Update: Just watched him take it down. Congrats, Mojo!

Moving

Poker hasn't been a huge priority lately. Partly due to the fact that I'm one of those normal downswings (I finished 3 buy-ins below AIEV today in just 1200 hands... only lost a total of 6.5bb for the day, though, so no biggie), but mostly due to actual life concerns.

Alrighty. I admit, I haven't been completely honest with all of you. I've been engaged for ten months already. Now I'm getting married in two!

I originally started this blog to be solely about poker, but life intruded. Things are more interesting this way, anyhow.

Back to the future Mrs. Thorn, she just moved last weekend to what will be our marital apartment. We're old school, dyed-in-the-blue Catholic folk, so we're not going to be living together until after we tie the knot. Which means I'm paying double rent for a couple months (no biggie, really; I'm a frugal guy and have more than enough saved up). The downside was that we ended up moving on a weekend when most of our friends were busy/also out of town/moving themselves since we all basically moved into our places at the same time (graduating from college will do that).

So we had to move by ourselves. Turns out I can handle that big ol' sleeper couch all by myself. Not bad for a 5'6" guy. Still, we've got so much stuff to move on over. Wedding gifts have been arriving, gifts from the bridal shower, furniture my fiancee inherited this last year, etc. It's crazy. I had a "Fight Club" moment where I wanted to go all Tyler Durden and burn it all to the ground.

It's a nice place we're moving to. Top floor of the apartment building, beautiful view, down the block from her workplace, 30-minute commute from mine.

Stil... you can blow anything up with enough soap...

Switching gears yet again

With my new-found gadget PokerTracker, it's become obvious that my win rate completely plummets at NL 10 Rush. I've got over 35,000 hands on both, and the numbers don't lie. For Nl 10 Rush, my winrate drops to about 1/4 of my of my winrate at NL 5 Rush. In other words, it's not even close to worth it for me. Heck, without rakeback, I might even be a losing player there long term (gotta love statistics).

I've decided that to get better, I'm going to grind up my bankroll with NL 5 Rush (say 1000 hands a day, put in 1-table sessions on the regular tables, and climb the micro ladder that way.

This way, I get the best of both worlds, both grinding up and improving my game, all in one! Bonus: On one table, I can actually play and work on real poker. You know, the kind where you actually make reads on people and adjust. :)

Moved my $260 over from Stars, FullTilt all the way!

Current Bankroll: $579.80

The Humbler: PokerTracker 3

I finally caved and bought PokerTracker so that I could keep track of my results. It's really interesting, actually; I'm still a very marginal winner. The only reason I've won up to this point, actually, is because of rakeback and bonuses, but it's still been good enough to roll my $110 deposit up to $366.15.

PokerTracker reveals that in cash games, I'm down $21.87. My losses are mostly due to getting destroyed at NL 25 Rush, losing $161.55 over 3,290 hands. Meh. I'm going to be bringing my PokerStars roll ($260) over to Full Tilt because of Rush, and the fact that PokerStars cash games have a slightly higher rake, after rakeback. The bankroll will be $526.15, rolled enough for NL25 again at 20 buy-ins, but this time I'm going to wait for 30 buy-ins and make sure I'm beating NL 10 at a good clip. I've also definitely overestimated my win rate; my total win rate for all stakes only stands at 2.32 bb/100, a pretty marginal rate, really. I've gotten much better since my hand history began, though, so I'm going to optimistically peg myself at 3bb/100 for right now.

I'm planning on switching entirely to cash games, specifically Rush Poker; I was very slightly up at tournaments until a month or so ago when I decided to try and mass multitable KO tourneys, and that's what knocked me negative there. So no more tournaments.

I'll try and do a weekly/monthly/yearly update so I can keep better track of my progress. Here's the first one:

Lifetime Summary:

Deposited: $110
Cash Game Winnings: -$21.87
Tournament Winnings: -$65.07
Bonuses won: $115
Rakeback: $228.09

Total Winnings: $255.15

The Park51 Mosque Is a Win for Muslim Extremists

Rambling, non-poker posting time. Caution: This is a political issue.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, I'm sure you've come across the news that there are construction plans for a mosque in NYC, a couple blocks away from Ground Zero. Unfortunately for us all, this is very, very bad news. Before you left-wingers start saying I'm trampling the Constitution and the right wingers start saying "I told you so," let me explain why it isn't bad news for the reasons most people have been talking about lately.

I studied International Relations not too long ago, and we covered things like National Security and that little ol' problem of Muslim extremists. Pretty extensively. And I can say with almost absolute certainty that the Park51 mosque debate will increase the number of violent, Islamic extremists in the United States. That's right, I said the "debate" would. Let me walk you through how this happens, giving you a bit of history that the FBI and CIA have found out since 9/11.

Basic Recruitment in Armed Groups

So how do those guys recruit people to blow themselves up and kill innocent people in cruel acts of terrorism? By rallying the marginalized, downtrodden section of a society and giving it a "higher path" where a culture of murder and terrorism is embraced.

Society's marginalized people suffer. They begin to resent the majority because it spurns them. For the extremist looking for followers, this presents an opportunity. They show the downtrodden that the society those people live in is out to destroy their ideals, their culture, and their livelihood. They snatch them from their suffering and their aimless lives, shoving them how the cruelty of the world isn't really their fault, it's society's. They give them a renewed sense of purpose in life with the "higher path," and the recruits' newfound sense of pride, self-respect, and self-righteous anger will lead them to do whatever you want them to, up to and including butchering innocent people. It's a universal recipe, used throughout the world by warlords and armed groups everywhere.

Application to Radical Islam

The "higher path" in the Islamic extremists' case is a twisted version of Islam. It's simple for them to corrupt the message because the Quran is in such a high, pure, and perfect form of Arabic that literally NOBODY can perfectly translate it anymore. It is not too difficult for extremist imams to turn "Jihad for the defense of Islam" into "Jihad for murdering anyone for the promotion of OUR Islam" when they teach it to gullible people who can't read Allah's divine work for themselves.

The societal marginalization of Muslims came after 9/11.

As humans, people tend to be bigots when dangerous things happen. We fall into an "Us vs. Them" mindset because our brains like to make confrontation simple. It's the product of thousands of years of evolution and survival in a world where quick stereotypes helped mankind to survive. If something is big and has large teeth like what ate your friend last week, but isn't exactly the same as that other beast, it's better to assume that it's deadly and kill it or run away than it is to ponder the various possibilities in search of the truth while being eaten. So we all naturally stereotype to simplify our decision making processes.

The 9/11 attacks were an act of strategic genius by Osama bin Laden that used this human tendency against us. The resulting backlash against the Arab Muslim community after 9/11 was enormous because our attackers were Arabs and "did it in the name of Allah." Ding, the stereotype switch goes off in peoples' heads, and suddenly every Arab is subconsciously feared to be a Muslim terrorist.

You had old, conservative fogies trying to run down Muslim women to "save America," kids nicknaming or outright calling their Arab classmates "terrorists." It was not a good time to be an Arab in the Western world, particularly if you were Muslim. As a group, they became marginalized by society's predictable and misdirected hatred.

As became clear in the years since, Islamic, al-Qaeda-inspired militants made full use of this. Arab Muslims became a marginalized part of the Western world. As a result, militant recruitment into terrorist cells increased. Not in Arab, Muslim countries, but in developed, first world nations like the United States and the UK. What’s worse, these recruits have full access to any number of targets in their countries of residence. The terrorist plots in NYC and the terrorist cells popping up in London were the new breed of extremist; these terrorists were not foreign nationals formally tied to a vast organization plotting the downfall of the US. They were dangerous in a new way, being local residents who could come and go as they pleased, almost completely isolated and self-sufficient, separate from al-Qaeda. All of these cells were created within the span of a few years, something that was literally unprecedented in the history of Islamic extremism; all because of 9/11. Thankfully, the post-9/11 NYC and London plotters and the shoe and Christmas day bombers were incredibly inept and got caught thanks to the vigilance of ordinary citizens and the efforts of law enforcement, but it only takes one to slip through security, one lucky group flying under the radar to do incredible damage.

The 2004 bombings in Madrid, Spain show that in spectacular and tragic fashion. It was an attack planned, coordinated, and executed by Muslim extremists who were Spanish locals "inspired" by al-Qaeda through the internet. It's impossible to catch them all when they pop up on your home ground. What's even worse is that the cycle is a self-propagating, positive feedback loop. You carry out a terrorist attack, society recoils from Muslims, you get more converts to the cause. Repeat.

The Park51 Mosque debate is a cog in the wheel of that process.

Whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf realizes that or not is a matter of some debate (personally I think he's just misguided and self-righteously naive), but his decision to build the mosque and community center in an emotionally significant area has put the wheel in motion.

People react strongly to the news of the Muslim mosque. It's a polarizing piece of news that it's being built near Ground Zero. Either you're against it because you feel it's too soon, too close, insensitive and inflammatory, or you are for it, citing freedom of religion, its several-block distance from Ground Zero, and the need to uphold Constitutional protections for all. And of course, because it's a polarizing piece of work, the issue has gotten vast amounts of media coverage and has become an important debate in the public arena, spreading that polarizing, confrontational idea around the nation.

This is creating the same bigotry and backlash against Muslims that we saw post-9/11. We have conservative right wingers, the most strongly evolved stereotypers, going completely off the walls and protesting not just the "Ground Zero Mosque" but also other mosque projects around the country. There is national blowback against the Muslim community, and it's all over the news. Again.

No, we won't tolerate that community center and mosque here because it's insensitive, because Islam in general is clearly bad. Congratulations to us and our highly evolved, stereotype reasoning.

Recruitment season is on its way. It is now more likely than ever that there will be yet another "home grown" terrorist plot in the US. Maybe we will catch them. Maybe not.

Lost with a Straight Flush... Yay?

Darn you NL 25. This hand knocked me below my BR requirements for it again.

Idiot end of a straight flush. I'm in such disbelief that I lost with a straight flush, I'm almost... happy. Like I've seen something special, that only the guys who put in a ton of volume get to experience...

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 837736

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $28.05
Hero (UTG): $25.00
MP: $12.04
CO: $24.62
BTN: $100.27
SB: $35.01


Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is UTG with 6 7

Hero raises to $0.75, 3 folds, SB calls $0.65, 1 fold
Flop: ($1.75) A 9 T (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $1.15, SB raises to $4, Hero calls $2.85

Turn: ($9.75) J (2 players)

SB bets $6, Hero calls $6

River: ($21.75) 8 (2 players)

SB bets $24.26 all in, Hero calls $14.25 all in

Poker Update: Up and down... and knockin' fools out!

The good news is I did it! I ground my bankroll up to $750 and moved up to NL 25 in short order.

The bad news is I hit a downswing and promptly lost 6 BIs in ~4,000 hands to knock me back to a measly $596 (hah, alright, so I'm still happy I've come so far). My confidence was pretty shaken. Although a good amount of it was unavoidable (I lost 2 buy-ins with 99 on a J92 rainbow flop... he had JJ), I was wondering if there were too few fish for my style. I rely on the stations paying me off with their whole stack to make a profit, and there just weren't enough of them willing to give me that. May be variance, may be not.

Either way, it's a habit that I've picked up on my path to continual poker improvement; I won't chalk it up to variance unless I actually start winning with the same game next time I try.

I took a bit of a break, went back to the very comfortable NL5 to grind up to $600 (I actually made it to $601!). Then I decided to move half my roll back over to PokerStars to try some tournaments. I've been eying the knockout tournaments lately and decided to try mass multitabling tournaments this Sunday, trying out both Stars and Full Tilt. I'm glad I did; I made another $23 on 20 games of assorted $1.75, $3.30, and $6.50 90 man knockouts spread out over both Stars and Full Tilt. Stars treated me much better, really. I only broke even on Full Tilt; all my profit came from Stars. The Stars structure is slower, and therefore has less variance, but it takes a good deal longer to finish a tournament... I'm on the fence as for which structure I like more.

On a related note, Rush Poker prepares you really, really well for some important aspects of mass multi-tabling tournaments. Solid fundamentals and quick decisions are all you really need to win at these low level stakes. The fish are plenty, and the bounties really bring out the crazy in people...

Also on a somewhat less related note, the inspirational true story of Boku87 gives me hope! This crazy robot (because really, what human can play that much?) took a $100 bankroll and turned it into $10000... all in 15 days, over about 7,000 sit n gos. How he fit in that much volume (50-tabling 500-600 games a day) boggles my mind...

Power Company FAIL

We take some things for granted in first world countries. Like working electricity. We've got that down, right? Right? Wait, what's that, power company? Your power lines are all precariously built by tall trees and a little seasonal storm completely screws up the power grid? And you let it get so screwed up that you're calling in teams from as far away as Ohio to help, and you STILL can't fix the problem in less than 3 days? What the hell, it went out last Sunday, and I still don't have power. I'm mooching off a friend's netbook at the moment. And I'm jealous my fiancee and her roommates have power. They live 3 blocks away. They had power restored the morning after the storm.

Rub it in, Pepco. Rub it in.

No lights, cell phone charging, refrigeration, cooking, or TV? I'm good to go. No internet? No poker?!? FML.

Addicted? Perhaps just a liiiiittle bit.

Poker update, lovely rakeback

Got $60 in rakeback for this week!

Although I'm still gnashing my teeth at fulltiltrakeback.com, because my balance said $97, not $60. And that's not including whatever I've played the last 3 days. They're frustrating me.

As far as hitting $750 on my FTP account, the rakeback brought me up to $400. I'm on track to get there by mid-August... although I'm not sure I'll be ready to move up by then. Why not, you ask? Well, because I haven't fully made the transition to NL 10 yet. Yup, I lost 5 buy ins and moved down as per my BRM guidelines (hooray discipline!), and then stacked donkeys at NL 5 to get back up to $315 (13 buyins, woot woot), and then I got rakeback and "cheated" with FTP's quick deposit bonus of $15 for a $10 deposit, adding the last $25 to get me to where I am now.

I love me some deposit bonuses. Thought briefly about making my goal $800 instead, but nah, we'll see how we are in another week.

Good luck at the tables!

Thorn's Big Mistakes #6

So I 4-table Rush Poker now, getting in around 1,000 hands an hour. Yup. 1 grand. That's like 14-16 tabling a normal internet table. Or playing 50+ hours at a live table. I squeeze that into one hour. Thank you FTP. Truly.

So how is that a big mistake? Well, it isn't, really. But it's led to an entirely new mistake that I not only didn't have before, but also can't just look at and quick fix it like my earlier leaks.

The mistake: Mistyping bet amounts. Going so fast, I just type numbers into my numpad and hit enter. Once, that led me to lose about 4/5 a buy-in more than I should have, essentially going all in instead of just betting pot in a bet/fold situation. That was my first encounter with the issue, and it made me die a little inside. Since then, I've mistyped a few bet amounts, betting $2 instead of $1, etc. Thankfully, most of the times it didn't matter, villains folded or I minraised preflop instead of 3x BB.

Heck, it even probably made me money once. I was dealt everyone's favorite aces in MP, I open with a standard 3x BB bet, half-stacked button calls, 100BB stack 3x 3-bets me from the BB, and I go to 2.5x 4-bet him... only to end up sticking my whole 180 BB stack in the middle due to a typing error. Amazingly, by the grace of the poker donkey spirit, the button calls. Even more amazingly, the BB tanks for a while, and then HE calls! They show 77 and QQ, respectively, the BB says he put me on AK since I shoved so hard, I dodge the 4 combined outs, and it's suddenly Christmas in July.

Still, I'd rather be able to control my bet sizing a bit better.

Massive Update: The winning life?! + Poker goals

Disclaimer: LONG post! It more resembles a Hoyazo lifestream thesis than my usual posts. You've been warned!

I know I haven't updated in a while. No, I'm not dead, I didn't get crushed by the 4k water bill (still not resolved, btw, don't wanna talk about it), and I haven't lost my liferoll to poker.

Quite the opposite, actually. As the sharper ones among you may have gathered from the title, I've been running incredibly well at the poker tables. So well, in fact, that I have a very hard time believing it's true. Just a month ago I was almost positive I was just a marginal tournament winner and a cash game loser. The numbers since then are pointing to the possibility that all my hard studying and review might be showing really, really good results.

My bankroll on FTP a month ago was around $60. It's now $300, and I'll be getting $51+ in rakeback soon. How? Well, it started when Waffles posted about superturbo sngs. I tried them, ground out a few hundred of them, and rolled myself up all the way to $145. Woot, hooray for the run good!

And then, just a week ago, I decided to hit the Rush Poker tables again in preparation for Rush week. This is when the fireworks went off. I made a few significant changes to my cash game, and suddenly shot up 12 buy ins at 10NL! Sadly, that was over maybe 5k hands (hardly a good sample size), and another few thousand hands later, I lost 10 of those buyins, putting my roll at $156. So I studied my game again, closed a few big leaks that I noticed, and moved on down to 5NL (hooray good bankroll management!). I've played somewhere from 15k-20k hands at 5NL since then and got myself up the 19.5 buy-ins to $250, accumulating $50 in rakeback along the way (Rush Poker spits out rake and rakeback like a BP oil well!).

Then yesterday I moved up to my previous nemesis, 10NL Rush Poker, and promptly lost 3.5 buy ins. But lo and behold! I felt I was just running bad, and gave myself another 1.6 buyins to lose before moving back down, and just 20 minutes ago I finished grinding my way to finally breaking $300.

Rakeback's gonna be enormous o.O (Can't tell, www.fulltiltrakeback.com doesn't update very often, maybe every 3 days. So meh, no link for them).

And I've set an ambitious poker goal! I want to grind my bankroll up to $750 by mid-August, and move up yet again to NL25 Rush Poker. I know even the 20-30k hands I've played recently are most likely largely due in part to running really, really well and FTP's Rush Week, which has probably brought all the donks out to play. I've got like a 8-10 pt/bb win rate, not certain because my PT3 trial ran out, which is ridiculous since I was a losing player a month ago. Still, I figure I'm playing really well and I'm probably at least a 5 pt/bb winner at these tables that I've been crushing.

I'll try and post goals and progress reports more to keep me motivated. Oh yeah, and I 4-table the Rush. Boo yah. The sky's the limit, and I'm gonna run with this as far as I can.

Best. Hobby. Ever.

May the run good be with you!

$4000 Water Bill? Wha...?!?

I haven't updated in a while because for the past month or so, we had a nasty little surprise. Still working on it, too.

You know the water bill. That cheap utility. Our quarterly bill is usually around $150.00 or less for four people, and our usage is even a little below average.

Imagine my surprise when I cracked open the latest bill and it reads $4,000. For using 300,000 gallons of water. Imagine my bigger surprise when I called the water company and they told me no, it was not a mistake with how my meter was read. I think I died a little inside.

More updates as I have more time to write them!

The good news:

New FTP bankroll high- $199.40. I went on a heater and made $52 off 10NL on Rush Poker in maybe 600 hands. People are so bad. And I've gotten much better, I have to say. My game was oddly helped by parallels drawn during my time logging thousands of hands in the superturbo SNGs. Universal poker truths and all that ;-) Then again, maybe all the donks are just coming out like me to practice for Rush Week (coming up!). No complaints here.

Back to breakeven, and beyond!!!

It must be all the donks from that Full Tilt event last weekend. God bless them. With the $12 in rakeback I just got, my FTP roll has swelled to a nice $121.46 from just $70 a few days ago. While that may not look like much, this marks the point where my formerly losing, now somewhat profitable self has climbed and clawed above break even, and by a healthy margin, too.

I started with $100 on FTP, lost $100 while keeping my bankroll the same with rakeback and the first time deposit bonus, lost a bit more down to around $40 donking around, and I've been slowly climbing my way back ever since. It's sweet to have finally come to this point, and I'm $20 over, too!

Now I just need another $80 and I can say that my profit's all due to my play, rather than Full Tilt's generous deposit bonus... I can't wait! Here's hoping a severe downswing doesn't completely wipe me out, especially since I'm on a super heater right now. Only time will tell...

Superturbos!!!

So I've gotten hooked on super-turbos at Full Tilt recently. Still STTs, but now I can still 3-table and crank out a good volume of games. To start 'em off, I'm running super hot. For example, the last 8 games I played (all of them within like half an hour lol), I've outright won 3 and then got 3rd in another.

All in all, for these first 70 or so games I'm up around 15 buy-ins. Which totally rocks, although it's impossible to sustain such a great win rate over the long term, from what my forums reading has told me :(

I love these things. People are so bad, shoving with garbage and calling with garbage. It's amazing. Also, with the number of games I'm playing, maybe I can actually generate some decent rakeback! Hehe.

The game is perfect for a hobbyist like me without too much time to devote to poker. Not to mention, since it's 99% a preflop game, it's much easier and allows me to multi-table with at most a very marginal effect on my play. I played 5 tables for a little bit, but i like being able to get some reads on people, really. I might try that again, though.

Hooray for poker!

Wha? I'm... censored?!?

MY blog's been censored by my work censor. That's right. The Thorny Road is apparently too extreme for the workplace. That's mostly why I haven't updated in a while. What bums. I probably get an average of zero clicks per day. They must be pretty good to single out the one employee out of thousands (me) who goes to my specific blog once every few days.

Also, I just saw that I got my first follower! Hooray! Mojo is a real blogger, too. Someone more entrenched in the blogging poker community. It must have been my rebel attitude, being censored and all, that lured him in...

The funniest part about being blocked by the man? I can still read the profanity strewn madness that is Waffles.

What the hell, big brother.

Poker ADD?

Alrighty, so I've jumped from heads up sit n gos to full ring cash to mtt's to 6-max cash these past few months as a solidly break-even player/marginal winner or loser. What's next?

Well, my friends, the hottest new thing are STTs for me! It's kind of like returning to my roots, how I learned the game with my high school buddies. I've played 4 so far with pretty awesome results:

1. Loss
2. First!
3. Second!
4. Second!

Not bad at all. I like STTs. They've let me combine everything I've learned so far into one, and I've pretty much dominated these first few STTs through table selection (yeah sharkscope!) and the ability to read people much, much better postflop. The cash games and HUSNGs really helped with that.

I've easily felt like I was the best player in all of the games I played, and have gotten the chips in good most of the time. Of course, this sort of winning streak is said to be unsustainable (I'll prove 'em wrong! ...maybe), but it's a darn good way to start off my newest poker love.

Well, I'm running below EV again...

I'm starting to think posting about running good makes the poker gods smite me. Venting the inevitable bad beats that happen on the Rush tables, where cards fly and donkeys play.

Two pair getting turned against a better two pair.

ACES! I 3-bet you, foolish fool. 2 callers. AK3 flop. I get shoved on by A7ss. Woohoo!!!! Haha, he raise/called from MP with A7 soooted then shoved on that flop, he's my favorite.

I'm gonna celebr... wait... spade turn? Please no, please no, please... GAH!!! Yup, runner runner flush... he's no longer my favorite. For now.

The good news is, I'm still up 2 and a half buyins after dusting off two and a half. Not to mention, I managed to reign in my tilt. I see progress being made.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Freerollin' the Dank!

Another BBT5 event in "The Dank" is tonight, as termed by everyone's favorite Waffles, and I'm free rolling! Alright, not really, but I got that itch for RUSH poker and won another buy in in just a few hands because some donk shoved on me with A6o. Too bad I had Aces. Thanks for the gift! I'll be sure to think of that donk when I win... then get into the WSOP... then win that, of course, too.

Donkey love. Not just for the furries.

Oh, and I heard buddydankradio.com is temporarily being hosted here for this tournament. Something about a stoner not paying the bills on time. Hah.

Running well, doing well

I'm up 3.8 buy-ins in just 829 hands at 10NL Rush. I'm running half a buy-in above EV due to the fact that I haven't gotten sucked out on. In other words, life is good, and the weekend Rush players are so deliciously horrible.

Here's a sample hand of how I won so much from the weekend donkeys:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Hand Converter from HandHistoryConverter.com



CO ($5.69)

Hero (Button) ($13.09)

SB ($9.65)

BB ($5.70)

UTG ($48.36)

MP ($10)



Preflop: Hero is Button with 9, 9

2 folds, CO calls $0.10, Hero bets $0.40, 1 fold, BB calls $0.30, CO calls $0.30



Flop: ($1.25) 9, 10, 10 (3 players)

BB bets $0.40, 1 fold, Hero raises to $0.80, BB calls $0.40



Turn: ($2.85) Q (2 players)

BB bets $0.50, Hero raises to $2, BB raises to $3.50, Hero raises to $5, BB calls $1 (All-In)



River: ($11.85) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)



Total pot: $11.85 | Rake: $0.79



Results:

Hero had 9, 9 (full house, nines over tens).

BB had J, A (one pair, tens).

Outcome: Hero won $11.06



Love it.

Stock opportunity? Or end of the world as we know it?

Good God.

Read this.

Maybe I should start selling BP short. Should've done it as soon as news of the leak came out. Buy back in in a few months, maybe buy for real if they ever plug the oil leak and start producing oh, a million barrels of oil/natural gas a day.

Hrm. Of course, this assumes that the spill doesn't wipe out all ocean life as we know it. Which would then kill off a lot of our oxygen supply. Which would then... well... it's out of my hands. No need to think about that alarmist junk.

People will stop it. I hope.

Thorn's Big Mistakes #5

I think it's number 5, anyways. I forgot to keep track.

1. Brief recap of NL50
2. I need to work on my 3-betting

Alrighty, so first the brief recap. Not only did I get outplayed hard at 50NL for the couple hundred hands I played, but I also ran bad. I'm about 2 buy-ins below EV, KK falling to 88 all-in pre for a buy-in vs. an aggro-donk (seems to be a lot more of them at NL50), and losing a few races with AK vs. JJ, etc. Enough about NL50's losses (there goes my employee of the month bonus). Let's talk about improvement.

I need to improve my 3-betting before I get anywhere near NL50 again. For someone who likes to play aggressively in 6-max games, this is an absolute must. Luckily, thanks to this great thread on 2+2, I've found a ton that I can work on.

I'm heading on over to NL10 Rush, which doesn't require the heavily read-dependent 3-betting plays to win, to see if I can grind back some of my losses. 3-betting experimentation can come after I get $100 or so back.

Impatient

So PokerStars' latest promotion has just led to me popping $500 onto the site, seeing how tehy had a $100 reload bonus for it. Although you only have 20 days to clear it. Hrm. Seeing how I'm a 2-tabler, that's not gonna happen.

Or is it? I just jumped all the way up to 50NL haha. Let's see if my winning ways at 2NL and 5NL are transferable. First impressions after a thousand hands? People are way, way, way more aggressive. Too much so, in fact. I have people shoving on me with flush draws and no history on an ace high board.

Good thing my set held up.

Mookie

Bah. I nitted it up tonight, and I probably folded too much. Poor form. I think it's because I ran into the brick wall known as Hoyazo... I got intimidated by his aggression, and then I just gifted all my chips away with a poor table image as people kept shoving on me and I kept laying hands down. I finally went out with QJo from the CO vs. A9o. Flop came down ATJ, but no Q, J, or K and I was out. I could've done better. Ah well.

Amateur Poker Night

Good God.

I played some cards last Friday, as you know if you've read my post below. I call it cards, because it by no stretch of the imagination can be called "poker." The night was donktastic, and the cards just didn't fall my way like you need when playing against a table of loose, poor, and often overaggressive drunktards.

We were playing 8-handed. To give you a picture of how much these guys knew what they were doing, I had to deal more than a few stupid ideas and house rules.

Stupid Idea #1: Let's play a cashout game... but we'll raise the blinds every revolution.

WTF?!? What type of idiots want to raise the blinds every 8 hands? And while playing essentially a cash game? At this point, I looked around for the exits, only to realize that I'd hitched a ride from my friend. Mistake numero uno. With that call, I had literally no outs.

Stupid Idea #2: Declaring small, inconsequential dealer mistakes worthy of taking all the cards back, reshuffling, and redealing, despite how much longer this takes. Inevitably, the dealer f*#$s up when a bunch of drunktards get together and play "Pass the deal." For example, someone just got knocked out by shoving 2nd pair in a 6-way pot on the flush card (no, that's not even the worst part). The next hand, the dealer accidentally deals out 7 players instead of the 6 remaining. You'd think we'd just take his cards, which nobody's seen yet, and put them under the deck, right? No such luck, despite how I tried to reason with them (I don't know why I even tried logic), and I have to muck my KK, glaring daggers at the rest of the idiots.

Stupid Idea #3: You can't keep raising back and forth in NL Hold Em'. This "ruling" came about because two people got into a minraising war. Someone heard about the Limit hold em cap and decided that it applies to the NL hold em game, too.

So even though I ended up losing $10 to the donkage going on, I felt lucky that that was all that happened, because I was mega-tilting, through the roof inside, due to the combination of the stupid ideas (there were more, trust me), getting sucked out on the river by the guy calling my turn all-in with a gutshot vs. my set, and running into a set vs. my two pair against an aggrotard, and then some poor play that resulted from the tilt. Knowing how badly I can play, especially when alcohol is involved, I really didn't do too bad. No shoving vs. the stations, although I definitely played too loose against a table where you saw 6 to the flop in any raised pot. $10 was letting me off easy.

Still, some good came of the situation. I've got a few new, bad candidates for my own poker game, with actual poker rules and tournament structure. I'll definitely make up for what happened.

Unless their idiocy is contagious. Because if it is, then I'm doomed.

Friend Break Ups? Poker can handle that.

Friend break ups are weird. I'm not talking drifting away from friends you haven't seen in a while. I'm talking abrupt break-up, where you deliberately end a friendship because it isn't working out. Friend breakups are even weirder than romantic ones, since you at least know in the back of your mind that unless you've gotten really lucky, your relationship with your boyfriend/girlfriend is probably not going to work out for you anyhow in the long run, and a break up is likely to happen. You don't have that expectation when you make a new friend, and since you don't have to see them all the time, you generally forgive them for their faults and just let the good times roll. But sometimes, things just don't work out.

My only friend breakup happened in college. I was really good friends with this one guy. We founded a club together, lived together for a semester, ran in the same circle of friends, and dated two girls who were pretty much best friends themselves. Of course, I got to see the ugly side of him, being so close for four years. His big personality flaw is his enormous ego. Basically, if he doesn't think that you are on par or above him in terms of intelligence, people skills, women skills, and physical capability to beat someone up, then he looks down on you. A tall order, considering he's pretty darn good at all of them. That's probably why I was his closest friend; I was the only one who met all of his criteria for being someone "worthy" of his respect. He was fun, and I got a little sense of satisfaction for being in that category. It's everything you could ask for in a friendship during your college years, when you enjoy doing the wild and reckless things college men do just for the hell of it.

Once we got out of college, though, he had a nasty break up with his girlfriend. If you get a mental image of a burning bridge, blazing away to nothing, that's pretty close to what happened. And I was caught in the middle, being close friends with both, needing to decide which way to jump before falling into the abyss below.

With all of his cockiness, I realized that my college friend really didn't care too much about other people. Also, my girlfriend (now fiancé) went to high school with his ex, and so she was clearly on her side.

So my choices were:

Choice A): College buddy. Fun to hang out with. Very self-centred and narcissistic. Moody. Physically aggressive, vulgar, and treats most people like crap. Chubby, kinda bipolar and reckless, Mr. Full-of-himself-to-the-point-of-alienating-everyone?

And choice B): I avoid pissing off my girlfriend. I get me some sweet, sweet loving at night, look forward to a peaceful future with my soulmate, and get to keep a good, loyal, and very attractive friend (his ex) that would eventually help me pick out my fiancé's wedding ring.

Hrm. Seems tough, doesn't it. And so my college buddy and I parted ways.

So how does poker figure into this? How does that exhilarating game of chance and skill overcome the mighty friend break up?

Well, ever since I got engaged in October, he's been contacting me again. Sending me texts to hang out, a facebook congratulations message, email, you name it. I'd get one every 2-3 weeks.

"You wanna go to happy hour? Soccer? Party? My place?"

Hmmmm, that's some suspicious timing there, buddy. Seems like someone just wants an invite to my huge, awesome wedding. It's out of character for him to beg so much to hang out with someone, even someone as awesome as I am. Hell, he even swallowed his pride and sent his ex an email asking if she could pass a message on to me.

But then I get this invite:

"You wanna play poker on Friday night?"

You $^%#$#%^, haven't I told you off eno... wait, poker?

I love poker. I get to take money from people who are ignorant of how much skill goes into the game and arrogant enough to wager money on it. Ignorance and arrogance. Self-centredness... that's being ignorant of other people's needs, right?And arrogance, being a narcissistic, overbearing prick kinda qualifies. And he wants to play poker with me?

Hell yeah. I'm so there. Of course, I still don't trust him. I'm skeptical that he's anything but a smooth-talking sack of shit, but I've got a test for that. You see, he's not getting an invite to my wedding, no matter what. My fiancé gave that the big ol' hell no. She isn't happy about me going to hang out with him, but it's too late for her to pull back from me now. I liked it, and I put a ring on it (hah, I actually got to say that). But when it comes to the wedding, bridezilla gets what she wants. 5 feet nothing and under 100 lbs. can be scary, sometimes. We'll see how he takes that news, but I'm going to wait until after the poker game tonight.

You see? I believe in giving people second chances. It isn't a lie. So long as you invite me to a poker game.

The Mookie

Played the Mookie for the first time. Waffles' post about it being an avenue to the WSOP ME piqued my interest. ;-) I had some really nice situations early on, letting me stack up a bit, and I eventually finished 15th, in the money but not by much.

I definitely made a few mistakes though. The biggest one being on the final hand. Villain with a small stack (M=2.5, aka he would be blinded out in 2.5 revolutions) shoves UTG. I've got ATo in MP... and I shove for 2x his stack on the 8-handed table. Big mistake. I put the UTG raiser on Ax or small pairs since the blinds were coming, maybe even hands like KQ. I read him right, he had 77 for a race, which wasn't bad, because I definitely needed to chip up for shot at the bigger money.

But I shouldn't have made the shove with ATo 8-handed. I should've just folded. Because an even bigger stack woke up with AK and made the call. Silly me.

The Mookie was nice. There were definitely a few fish there, but a lot of the bloggers were really solid players. It was a good time. The tournament's likely very -EV for me, but I just might come back for more next week, dreaming the dream of the WSOP.

Til next time,

Thorn

Edit: For those interested, the Mookie runs on Wednesday nights at 10:00 PM EST. $10+1 buy in. Password: vegas1

Running bad

The good news is that I'm playing well, and by expected value, I should be up by a little less than two buy-ins. The bad news is that, in reality, I'm down a little more than half a buyin again. Crazy variance.

I do love PokerTracker telling me that it isn't just me whining, though. I can now look and see the mathematical support for evidence that I really am playing well, but I'm getting unlucky. It probably doesn't help that I'm likely only a marginal winner at the Rush Poker tables, running below 3 PT/BB, so my variance is going to be pretty big.

If I get up another 4 buy-ins, I might move back to normal 5 NL tables instead of Rush for a bit, and see if I do any better with the ability to actually read and adjust a little bit.

On the other hand, I've also joined a local home tournament game. It's a cheap, $20 buy in game at a place on the DC Metro system without rake, and the players I do know are pretty bad. I've got a feeling that I'll be the best one there at all times, really. First game's in about 3 weeks with a fairly decent, medium length structure. We'll see how it goes.

Still going strong over 3300 hands...

I'm up a buy-in and change at 5NL Rush after 3.3k hands. It's a miracle! I'm actually about a half a buy-in below EV, too. Graph of a marginal winner to come.

Running Good

On the poker front, my housemate and I are looking to set up a home poker tournament. Which would be awesome, because I'm pretty much far and away the best player out of everyone I've invited so far. 99% sure I'm the only one who's actually won money at online tournaments. And yes, I do win money at tourneys, I'm at around 11% ROI over 600 tournaments at the micros. Shocking from such a marginal, probably losing player at cash, I know. Then again, I'm a firm believer that tournaments are easier.

Also, I rock. It's official. Really.

I just got Employee of the Month in my ~300 person company. Apparently I'm the only one from this office to ever get it haha. So our site manager came and bought everyone in my office lunch, gave me a letter from the president of the company, a fancy certificate of achievement, and slid me an envelope under the table with an American Express Gift Card inside.

That last part felt baller. And a little like I was doing something illegal. Hah.

Back to the donkaments!

So after finishing off the promotion for a free $25 on Full Tilt, I decided to go back to the donkaments and pulled up two of my old favorites: the 90-seat $2.20 sit-n-go on Pokerstars.

I have to say, I'm really glad that I did. I just broke the bubble in both of them and I'm now on the break. About to break final table bubble for one, with 3rd in chips. Woot. More updates later. Break's running out :)

Finished! 3rd and ninth. Not too shabby at all. I have to say, playing cash games has improved my post-flop game a hundredfold. These tournaments are as juicy as ever. So much easier to make money than cash games.

Doh, tilt issues.

Darn. So I'm still positive on Rush Poker, but now only by about 10 BBs. What happened? Well, I got coolered for 1/2 a buy-in, began to tilt, and then gifted away another 1/2 a buy-in.

Fail. Sad.

Hooray for Rush Poker!

Yay! I've played almost 1000 hands of Rush Poker so far for a profit of exactly a buy-in, winning at a little more than 5 pt/bb. And I'm actually running a little bit below EV, according to PT3 :).

I like this thing more and more.

Coming back to Rush Poker

So I couldn't keep away. Full Tilt's Take 2 Promotion, plus the need to kill about 15 minutes waiting for my fiancé, led me to pull up a table and play for a bit. And by a bit, I mean 200 hands at 5NL, the lowest stake, and that netted me a buy-in.

The Take 2 promotion, running now, basically gives you free moneys if you play Rush Poker or 2+ cash game tables at the same time and get 5 FTP points a day for 5-9 days of the promotion period. I'm pretty sure that's made all the donks in the world come to Rush Poker.

I will have fun taking their money :)

Multitabling!

Alright, so I have impulse control issues. I ended up playing four tables last night instead of just three. I did pretty well, actually; there are enough donkeys around that my multi-tabling "B" game was enough to end up a buy-in after a few hundred hands.

Then again, my winrate definitely suffered. People tend to call off too light postflop rather than pre. My guess is that the huge preflop donkeys, even at 2 NL, lose their stacks quite quickly. Most either learn better or stop playing poker. And you can get a read on these postflop fools who will be a station with third pair in a 4-way pot a lot quicker when you can actually watch all of the action going on. When I was stacking 4 tables on top of one another, I couldn't do that. Most of my multitabling play revolved around HUD reads, with the occasional traditional read if I happened to be watching a particularly noteworthy hand at table.

I'm going to tone it down to 3 tables tonight. Can't stop, after all; I'm clearing that fancy Full Tilt Take 2 bonus on 2 NL.

I've considered taking out the "losing poker player" tag in my headline, but sadly I realize that my sample size is STILL too small, despite my successes running at 5 PT/BB over a couple thousand hands. I've decided not to take it off until I win back everything I've lost, though. It'll probably be a few months at the rate I'm going since I plan on moving up to 5NL before my bankroll gets anywhere near that big. I might actually have to buy PokerTracker 3 before I hit my goal :P

So... about $200 to go? Blah.

The beginnings of HUD-enhanced play.

Here's my first successful cash-game graph!

As you can see, I started off my PT3 graph by losing 2 and a quarter buy-ins. It turns out I haven't quite gotten to the level of automatically being able to play well; while setting up my HUD, researching the different stats, and playing two tables at the same time, my focus and game went to high hell. I chased, I was a station, all in all just terrible play. That's taught me how unprepared I am to become a mass multi-tabler. There's just no way I can play anywhere near optimal without analyzing the hand for a bit. I might try tackling three tables in a bit after I've gotten used to using the HUD.

I really haven't consulted the statistics as much as I should have at each hand decision, relying more on my conventional reads and notes. Not really a negative thing, but I won't be able to do that if I try mass multi-tabling some day.

Once I started playing without the distraction of learning about PT3, however, I was immediately back to flooring the tables. I won it all back and then some, so my graph has me up by 1 and a quarter buy-ins. Of course, that doesn't include my earlier successes before getting PT3 at 2NL, so I'm really up about 3 buy-ins more than that at these stakes. Here's hoping that my 1000-hand sample or so is indicative of future success and not just some incredibly awesome, positive variance. Considering that I understand the plays being made and am hand-reading much better against villains, though, I don't think I have much to be afraid of.

Thorn

PT3

I just downloaded the free trial of PokerTracker 3. I have a HUD, now. And fancy graphs. And analysis tools. That kinda sorta makes me a real internet poker player :)

Hazelnut Hot Chocolate Recipe!

My future mother and father-in-laws got me a really great gift: a book of hot chocolate recipes. They are sooooo good. Lucky for you, I've decided to share the wealth and post my favorites on the blog every now and then.

This is one of the easiest, simplest, and most delicious recipes in there.

Ingredients:

2 heaping tablespoons of chocolate-hazelnut spread (Nutella, World Market brand, etc.)
3/4 cup whole milk (Yes, whole milk. More fat, but the creamy richness is essential for a good, hot, hazelnut-chocolatey drink)
Whipped cream

1. Heat the milk in a small saucepan over medium-low heat.
2. Right when it starts to simmer, add the Nutella and stir with a wooden spoon until thoroughly blended.
3. Pour into a mug and serve immediately with a dollop of whipped cream. Enjoy!

It makes one serving. You can easily double the recipe if you need to; I suggest using a ladle to portion it out if you make more than one batch at a time.

Make it for your spouse/significant other, too. Trust me. This is some of the best stuff you'll ever drink, and they'll be incredibly impressed. Cooking skills are sexy. ;-)

Definitely the Promised Land

And the hot streak continues! 130 BBs in 115 hands lol. People just can't find the fold button, and I'm doing great at extracting value. My days of inevitable losing may just be over! It seems about right... taking me around 6 months of online play to transition from big loser to smaller loser, marginal loser to marginal winner (Although with the enormous skill level difference between 10NL and 2NL, I just might havae been boosted to solid winner... we'll see.) Honestly, all the talk about all of the micros being the same is a huge sack of lies.

I wonder how long it'll take me to grind back the $150 I've donked off in cash games already... ah well, I'll be taking a shot at moving up to 5NL once I grind back $50 of it or so. Time to get myself PokerTracker.

2 NL- The Promised Land?

Well, well. I think I've finally found the land of the uberfish that even my meager poker skills rate better than. My biggest leak is calling too often when, if I looked at it closely enough, there's really no standard, ABC-played raising hand in large pots that I could possibly beat.

Enter 2 NL. I can peg most of these guys' calling and raising ranges pretty easily, which makes things so, so much easier. Even better, my biggest leak isn't bad at all since most of their continuation ranges are hugely enormous anyways. Half the time the big fish seem to show up with ace high or fourth pair. I love it. I've finally found a limit I can crush. 210 hands: Up 110 BBs. But even more than that, I can actually see all the huge mistakes that they're making and take advantage of them accordingly.

Boo-yah. This must be what a real poker player feels like...

In other news, I got a raise at work today! 4.7% in this economy! Because I rock like that. It's a good day :)

Update! 114 hands in the night time session: +305 BBs!!! Awesomeness. I've definitely found my level for now. Maybe I can start climbing the ladder of the winning player now. So exciting. I know, ridiculously small sample size in the grand scheme of things, but I definitely felt like I was crushing the games at this level. I'm thinking of getting Pokertracker to track my results.

Oh God. Why Chipotle? WHY!?!

I am a man who loves to eat. So much so that my fiancé predicts fatness in my future since I absolutely will NOT stop stuffing my face with food in front of me. I will clean my plate two or three times and still polish off her portion of whatever scrumtious meal we had. A food that I don't like is a verifiably rare commodity; I've run into maybe two or three in my gorging on the craziest fare the North American and Asian continents have to offer.

That's right; I love dog meat and fried locusts. Duck's blood, spam, and fertilized chicken fetuses fresh from the egg. I've even been known to enjoy brussel sprouts.

And so it is with great and terrible sorrow that I seem to have developed a new food allergy to that massively scrumtious, essential part of any American fast food lover: the Chipotle burrito.

I had one for lunch for the first time in a month or so last Thursday, and then started to break out in hives all over my body. I've never gotten hives from anything, ever in my life, and my only three known allergies are all synthetic, man-made pharmaceutical drugs.

So what do I do? I gulp down some Benadryl to help with the hives and take a few puffs of an old asthma inhaler to calm my poor fiancé's worries that I would choke to death in the night on my swollen windpipe, wondered briefly what set it off, and went about my business as usual.

Maybe it was my afternoon run, since I haven't exercised in months. Maybe it was the beautiful spring weather we've had in the DC area lately, with all the pollen and junk that floats about. I hadn't eaten anything even remotely unusual except for the Chipotle, but I've been eating that for four years, so it can't be that, right?

But my Friday morning jog, carefully retracing my steps with Benadryl in my pocket to try and see if I'd get a reaction, produced nothing. I ate all the other foods that I had on Thursday, and still nothing. I even wore the same clothes, just to be sure. Nada. And then I had Chipotle again. Within a half hour I was getting hives again, with a vengeance. My face was puffing up and part of my neck, which finally forced me to begrudgingly accept the fact that it might choke off my windpipe one day if I kept it up.

Then again, "Death by Chipotle" doesn't sound like such a bad way to go, does it?

Free Taxi Rides on St. Patty's Day!

It's a good day. Not only is it St. Patty's Day (My fiancé is Irish, so I have to go big), but I found out that there's a subsidized taxi service today in the Washington DC metro area. Majorly subsidized. We're talking $50 subsidized, so I'll be getting a free drunken cab ride tonight. Even better, they do this for a lot of holidays. Here's the link for any other happy drinkers:

http://www.wrap.org/soberride/

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Note to self: Make sure to stay away from the poker tables when drunk... maybe put a post-it on your computer to make sure. Then again, it is a holiday, and I'll probably spend $20-40 on a bar tab just tonight.... hrm....

Moving Away from Rush Poker

It's time for me to leave the Rush Poker games and head on back to the regular cash tables.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fast pace and the number of hands you can get in per hour. I've probably played as many hands of poker in a few weeks than I have all last year with Rush Poker, and I've learned a lot and closed a lot of leaks by sheer virtue of that fact.

On the other hand, I'm a definite losing player at the Rush Poker tables. With all of the aggro-donks everywhere, it's next to impossible to exploit overaggressive people's play. You don't know if they're usually folding or double and triple barreling with air when they make that pot-sized bet. Add to that the chances that they actually DO have you beat, and you just have to let the hand go.

So tonight I finished off my last few hands of Rush Poker to clear another ten bonus dollars, and headed on over to the normal cash games to try and get a good, old-fashioned "read-and-adjust" edge over my fellow micro-stakes players. I have to say, it went really well. I finished up two buy-ins in about 200 hands, most of it coming from incredible luck.

Highlight of the evening: Having my turned straight making a straight flush on the river vs. villain's rivered nut flush to scoop me up a buy-in.

Hell yeah, I'll take it. I love upswings.

I shall poker until I become a long-term winner, and then I shall poker some more!

Thorn

New blog

While I'm not the greatest poker player in the world yet, I've decided that I like blogging. It's a great way to vent frustration, too, so I've made one to detail my confrontations with our ugly healthcare system. You can check it out at the following link:

battleswithhealthcare.blogspot.com

Hah I'm kind of a blogger. Now to get some actual followers.

Hangover

Slightly hungover this morning. Gah.
No drunken poker last night. Win.

Sober poker results before friends' arrival and storm of beer pong:

+1 buy-in despite getting stacked with a flush vs. a rivered full house; in hindsight, I shouldn't have stacked off there on the KK37A board. AK was definitely a big part of his range there... he ended up having AA. Even better. Could've saved 2/3 of a buy-in on the river, but c'est la vie. I'll remember for next time. Good thing other people make huge mistakes at the micros, too. Muahah... ha.

Now I'm going to go hiccup some more and wonder if my stomach can handle the ultra spicy lunch I just ordered. Wish me luck.

March: A New Month

I've got a long way to go in my Rush Poker transition from TAG to LAG. Mostly, I need to stop pushing things over the edge and know when to just let it go instead of making a move.

Example: Minraising a pot-sized bet on a AK3 rainbow flop (just one club) with JT clubs, in position but in a raised preflop pot.

Why, me, why? That hits an enormous part of the standard Rush Poker raiser's range, and he probably isn't folding the AK/AQ that he's holding so often in this spot. I should've just checked and hoped to hit my gutshot on the turn.

Still, I can't complain on the poker front. A few buddies and I have been tossing around the idea of getting together a regular live poker tournament. I'm positive that I've got a much larger edge over these guys than I would ever find at an online STT these days, so I'd be really happy if it did happen.

Real life? Old high school buddies coming into town tonight!
Quarter keg for Friday.
Burgers... need to pick up some of those plastic red cups. Yesssss.

Upping the Aggression

Mostly thanks to a few pointers from Waffles, I've opened up my Rush Poker cash game a bit. I think I've been playing too nitty lately due to a few bad experiences with fish that couldn't fold at all and seemingly ready availability of fish stacking off light... but my winrate wasn't really doing so well after a few thousand hands. I was losing a good amount of money, and I couldn't call it all variance as easily after 5,000 hands or so.

So I started bluffing more in my session last night, and ended up a buy-in after my logging on to play at the NL .02/.05 Rush tables, which was really good considering I got hit on the wrong side of set over set once to lose a buy in and had my JJ cracked on a AJ4 flop shove by AK when a 4 turned and ace rivered (runner runner better full house? I run so bad haha). It's definitely working out for me so far; I think I picked up at least a buy in on my bluffs alone, and it was much more fun being so much more active. I ended up playing 1000 hands before I even knew it (I usually just play 500). Thanks Waffles... let's hope this isn't only the "good" side of variance, and that I'm on my way to plugging another leak and becoming a winning cash gamer. Time will tell!

Atlantic City, great cash games

Last weekend, I had a blast. I went to Atlantic City with 6 other guys, all packed into two Super 8 motel rooms near the boardwalk. The first night we got there, we decided to start the night off by taking down a 40 oz. of Hurricane malt liquor apiece (I know, disgusting, but it was $1.50 each to get pretty much wasted).

From there, we let our inner degenerates out. We hit roulette, the craps tables, even some slots in a drunken haze. While it was definitely fun at the time, I need to remember to never, ever, ever gamble on non-poker related games ever again. Let's just say that I ran through a few hundred pretty quickly while betting the minimum $10 wagers or on the penny slots.

Around midnight, I finally started getting that itch to play some good old poker, and wandered off on my own to the Trump Taj Mahal (I was the only one of the guys who was really interested in the cash games). It was completely packed, wait list and all, but it went through pretty quickly and I found myself sitting down pretty quickly amongst the crowd of drunken hooligans throwing their money around without much skill or regard to the cards in play. Unfortunately, I blended in a little too well, still being a drunken hooligan myself and helping myself to the drinks that cocktail waitresses brought around. The night was a blur, but I remember coming back to the motel around 6 am, staggering into bed, and miraculously waking up with around $20 more than I'd gone to the poker tables with.

Huh. Imagine that. Drunk, spewy me, the side of me with some of the worst poker skills ever if you've read my other posts, managed to actually win some money playing against the live crowd. How the hell did that happen?

Needless to say, I felt compelled to go back Saturday night, this time completely sober and itching to win back some of the money I tossed on over to the casinos the night before. Midnight on the weekends was like heaven in the poker room at 1/2 NL. People were raising from early position with junk like K8o to 6 BBs and getting 4+ flat callers. While there were certainly a few people who knew more or less what they were doing, the crowd was by and large incredibly way too loose preflop, not accounting at all for stack sizes or even position, by and large.

What's the best way to exploit that, I thought to myself. Why, a simple shortstacking strategy would be the best, of course. So I buy in for the minimum, and by the end of the night, I quintupled my $60 buy in to $300. Good game, suckers. I can't wait to go back already. I did notice, however, that the huge fish seemed to have lost all their buy-ins by around 3-4 AM. The fish go quick. Here's probably the worst drunken play that I saw that night:

The big fish calls all-in from the button after a UTG raise, my 3-bet raise, and a big stack's 4-bet, 10x shove for 200 BBs. UTG folds, I ditch my QQ, and the 4-bet shover turns over the obvious KK (Hooray for good laydowns! I would've even folded KK in that spot, actually). Silly drunken fish. His hand? Q2 off-suit.

I can't wait until I get to play live there, again. While you may not see many hands compared to online, I love being able to talk to and see other poker players, just shooting the breeze between hands. It also helps that the play is generally just much, much worse since you're in a casino full of degenerate gamblers and the lowest limit is $1/2. Just a little bit, though.

Thorn's Big Mistake #3: Not adjusting for deep-stacked play

There won't really be any hand examples here. This is a pretty general problem for people who transition over from tournament play, like I have. We're used to starting maybe 200 BB deep, sure, but the stack to pot ratio (SPR) gets cut in half when the blinds go up... then cut again, and again, and again. The vast majority of a tourney player's game is between 5-50 BBs. "Deep stacked" isn't really in the small stakes tourney player's vocabulary.

I've played poker for years, and have always done terribly at cash games while doing much, much better at tournament play. I've finally found the exact reason why: I've been treating all play at around 50+ big blinds exactly the same. While I got away with it in tournaments, it's lost me a lot of money in the deeper cash games. If you're playing with and against 100+ BB stacks, you need to tighten up a lot more when someone shoves it all in, both preflop and postflop. My pocket Jacks and Queens called way too often. Even my Kings did, when you approach the 200BB+ stack sizes. I didn't place enough credit in the strong draws and the implied odds that come with them, particularly calling with and putting people on gutshots, which go from total spew at smaller stack sizes to good calls since they're so hard for some of us to put people on.

In short, deep stack play is a different game entirely. I've started making adjustments, though, and I can see the changes happening already. I'm no longer spewing cash everywhere. I can lay pocket Kings down preflop. I can call raises preflop with more middle pairs and suited connectors. And best of all, I can start to laugh at the poor, fishy fools that I take to the cleaners because they haven't gotten it yet. I feel like I've finally started to get a grasp on deep stacked play... here's hoping I can turn my habitual losing streak at cash games around. I've certainly paid enough in dues.

I can't wait to polish my skills up a bit more, then hit Atlantic City this Friday :)

I'm too excited with the progress I've made... can't sleep now. Back to the tables I go! Looks like a caffeine day tomorrow.

Snow, as far as the eye can see

So I got snowed in this whole week. My neighborhood got a TON of snow, something around 2.5-3 feet. I've lived in this area for a combined total of four years and have never seen more than six inches on the ground at any one time. I remember one of my housemates saying we got close to/maybe even broke the area's all-time record since the U.S. started recording snowfall way back when, and I believe it.

What this meant for me is that work was canceled the whole week, which meant a lot of drinking and a lot of poker... which was a bit of a bad thing if you read my post below. I may or may not have donked off $50 or so playing inebriated. I still need to work on that, and I'm moving down in stakes to build back up again.

I've also made an account on Full Tilt Poker because of the 27% rakeback deal you can find through affiliates. PokerStars' rewards program has the reputation of being the very best... but that's only if you've got Supernova Elite status. Considering that I don't play enough/high enough stakes to even get to Silver, the 27% rakeback deal makes a lot more sense for a casual player like me. More on that later; the next post will probably about next weekend's Atlantic City trip! Here's hoping I have some good news.

Edit: Also, RUSH Poker is incredible. Topic for a new blog post for whenever I can pull myself away from this addictive, addictive game.

Thorn's Big Mistakes #2: Playing while not entirely sober

When it comes to poker, I have a drinking problem. It doesn't happen often (just twice in the past six months), but when I do end up drinking and then playing poker, I pretty much go donk off a buy-in or two. Sure, that doesn't sound like much, but since I don't put in a huge volume of hands (maybe 100 a day on average), it absolutely kills my winrate.

For example, last week my Godfather came to DC on business and took me out to a bar. We had a good time, some delightful fish and chips, and a few beers. I admit, I'm a terrible binge drinker (I live with 3 other guys, and we have a beer pong room, complete with ball holders and ice racks to keep the beer cold while playing), so the 2-3 that I had seemed like nothing. Not so on the poker table. I pulled up PokerStars, sat in a cash game, and on the third hand I 3-bet a CO open-raiser with 44. He 4-bets. I don't even think about it because my non-completely sober mind is still stuck on the "hey that open-raise looks like a steal attempt" and I shove over the top. He's got KK. Oops. 100 BB in the sewer. What's worse is that I had notes on him from previous play, marking him down as a solid, multitabling TAG who I've only ever seen 4-bet with the goods. If I'd thought about it at all, took the time to read the notes, etc. I would've made the better play of folding to the 4-bet. Sadly, buzzed me doesn't think much.

I'll definitely have to remember to stick to one drink an hour, if that, when I go to Atlantic City in two weeks and am confronted with free drinks at the table. I'm sure I'll have some good stories to tell with 8 good guys coming along and much poker fun to be had. Here's hoping that includes winning.

Thorn's Big Mistakes #1: Not Folding Postflop

"The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself." - Sun Tzu

As a poker player, and definitely as a micro-stakes player, this quote is truth incarnate. The biggest advancement in my game won't come from all of the fancy, advanced bluffs that'll just go over the heads of most opponents at these limits anyways; what helps most is the ability to plug all of my own leaks, spot them in others, and take advantage of them.

And so, I've decided to start using this blog to catalog and analyze the big, huge leaks in my game that I've committed as a reminder to myself of what to watch out for both in myself and others.

First hand for analysis and my largest, repeat offender leak: Not folding premium preflop hands postflop.

Example hand from the week (sorry, I don't have access to my hand histories atm so it's gonna be story-telling style):

I'm playing 10NL on a loose table, full-ring NL cash game on PokerStars. I get AA in the big blind. There are 3 limpers, UTG+1, MP1, and SB. Heck no I don't want that many limpers in with me, so I make a standard raise to .60 (3x BB + 1 BB/limper), and everyone but the SB calls. Flop comes down 78J rainbow; looking at a straight drawy flop like that in a 4-way pot, I bet about 2/3 the pot to price drawers out and, with the loose way the table's been, I'd expect to get a hand like AJ, KJ, QJ, JT, Jx to call despite my obvious representation of AJ or an overpair. The pot is $3.10 at this point... and then UTG+1 suddenly shoves to make it an extra $8.20 for me to call a $12.50 pot.

I definitely should have folded, but here's where my mind gets all crazy, like it does, and tricks itself into believing it still has the best hand despite all the obvious signs. It's a fast table, so I have 30 secs to think, and all I can think of is:

"He can't have the straight. No way he limp/call/shoved T9 from UTG+1. First, he's been pretty tight preflop so T9o is NOT in his range. Not to mention, it's a weak, mostly disjointed board. Maybe he has AJ or JT. I've got pot odds of about 4:3, so I can't be off by that much. Heck, I'm probably ahead, right?" Running out of time but pleased with my analysis, I call with a second left on the timer, and mentally bitch slap myself.

I was partially right, he didn't have the straight. But he didn't have AJ or JT, either. He limp/call/shoved the far more logical 88 for bottom set. The problem there was I only thought the hand half through. Why didn't I consider the set when he limp/call/shoved on a straight drawy board? It fits the action perfectly for a set-miner on the micros when someone (me) clearly has a big hand like aces. The problem isn't that I'm not capable of the analysis (I've sometimes caught myself and laid down big pocket pairs), it's that when I see Aces or Kings and a ragged flop, I get too excited. I'm too used to winning the hand and thinking "Goddamn, I've got a premium pair. Of course I deserve to win, I'm practically invincible!" It's an emotional response now. Too bad emotional response doesn't account for the chance of the villain with a lower pocket pair getting a set, two pair, or a straight. Emotional response, paired with my concern at the time running down (I hate getting auto-folded) and my literally half-assed analysis led to my donkey call, losing me 82 big blinds that I really shouldn't have. On the other hand, I ran really, really well the rest of that session getting KK, QQ, JJ, TT, and 55 in about 60 hands (hooray!), and I ended finishing up 12 BB. If only I hadn't donked away 82 of them on that one hand!

I'm working on plugging that leak, but I've got a good way to go. It's kind of like an addiction; I know I have a problem, but I can't stop. The ironic part is that I can spot the tendency in others pretty well, but I can't always catch myself doing it. Oh well. The first step to recovery is knowing you have a problem.

Stay tuned for my next big mistake... here's hoping it's later rather than sooner (Hah, yeah right)!

Upcoming Atlantic City Trip!

I'm heading to Atlantic City in about a month for a weekend. 8 guys, 2 motel rooms, all amateurs. To bone up for that, I've started single tabling cash games at NL10 for an hour or two a day. With all that I read about the necessary volume and good sample sizes, my 60-120 hands a day really don't seem like much. From what I've read on the 2+2 forums, 20k hands or so is when you start getting to a good sample size. At my current rate, let's say I average 100 hands/day, I won't hit that for almost 7 months lol. For the 600 hands I've played so far, though, things have gone my way. I've closed a lot of leaks, the largest of which was not knowing when to fold overpairs like AA or TPTK postflop; that always used to unnecessarily cost me around half a buy-in or more when I called down. Cutting that mistake out, combined with a lot of postflop play that I picked up from HUSNGs, has made me a much, much better player. On the 5-6 tables I've sat down at so far, I definitely felt like I had an edge on most if not all of the other players sitting with me... but again, I haven't played too many games, so I can't be sure that I'm a winner. Caution's always a good thing where gambling's concerned.

Back to the AC bit (yes, my cash game discussion did have a point), the notion of small sample size even when playing online for an hour or two worries me a bit. The AC tables are extremely high variance... they tend to play much, much worse but bet much, much higher with marginal holdings, giving a better return for more risk (the risk is when they actually have something or if they draw out on you). Over a small sample size, it's pretty likely that I'll be going through some swings in the hundreds of dollars playing the $1-$2 games. Also, with how slow live games are compared to online, I wonder how my psyche will stand up to any bad beats that happen early. While I'm definitely life-rolled for the $1-$2 game, I don't think I want to risk more than 4 buy-ins on this trip. Only time will tell if that turns out to be a good decision or not.

As far as HUSNGs I'll be taking a break from them for now; it's full ring cash game for my daily hobby.

The Background Story

This is the story of how I got into poker. I warn you, it's pretty long.

I admit, I'm not a complete beginner. I was introduced in high school to the game of Texas Hold 'Em by friends in 2003 during the Moneymaker Era. We'd get together, hang out, have a beer or two and play a good game. I got hooked because I tended to do better than all of my friends, having stumbled early on upon a long-since forgotten ebook detailing the TAG style. A mediocre book, in hindsight, because it was a cookiecutter strategy manual without any provisions for adapting to your opponents, but the games I played in were so incredibly loose and passive that I basically dominated by playing just quality hands.

I tried playing online once I got to college, depositing $50 on a site here or there and trying my luck at STTs like I was used to playing with my buddies. I lost it all because I understood literally nothing about bankroll management, playing $10 games with my $50 bankroll. Sure, I got it up to $100 in no time once, but I inevitably lost it in no time too.

In 2009, I found a decent job the week after graduation, something I was pumped about because of how bad the economy was and is. It's a pretty nice setup really. I'm a government contractor that literally cannot work more than 40 hours/week. That means I have pretty much the best work/life balance an 8-hour job can give you. With a steady paycheck and a ton of free time, I turned back to poker.

I decided to do it right this time, though, investing in good poker books like the Harrington on Hold 'Em tournament and cash game books, Gus Hansen's Every Hand Revealed, and a few others that got good reviews on amazon.com. I also lurked (and still do lurk) in the twoplustwo forums, learning what I could there. I learned the LAG style and adapting to exploit an opponent's holes in their game, how to bluff better, how to hand read better, and most importantly, how to properly manage a bankroll.

I definitely had tilt issues, though. My Sharkscope graph looks kind of crazy... it has one major upswing from a 2nd place, $125 finish in a $4.40 180-man tournament, which was my favorite game up until a month ago (I'd play one every day or two after work). Then I had a pretty awesome, exciting time in my life because I was preparing to propose to my girlfriend (now fiancée!), donking off most of my winnings in a $50 and $20 tournament a few days before the proposal to vent some of the tension. Note to self: stay away from the poker tables during extreme life moments, good or bad. Even though I felt ridiculously awesome, it threw my game off. Poker requires a middle-of-the-road, confident mindset. I'll have to remember take some time off when I get married this October... but we'll see if that happens!

A month ago, though, I stumbled upon the HUSNGs, and just noticed how absolutely terrible the majority of my opponents were at the low stakes. I grinded up through the $2.20s in no time and had basically one long heater into the $5.25s, building my bankroll from $120-$250 with an utterly ridiculous record. I went something like 36 W 6 L in the span of two weeks, I think. Sure, some of that's skill, but a lot of it was luck, too; you can't get those numbers without some good fortune.

Last week, though, the poker honeymoon period ended. Deciding that 25 buy-ins was enough, I took a 5 buy-in shot at the $10.50 level... and got smacked down going 6 W 11 L in 3 days. Even worse, when I moved back down to the $5 level, I discovered the games weren't just magically handed to me like they were before.

So here I am, with a bankroll hovering just over $200, trying to grind up to the $300 level before I try the $10.50 again. I'd love to try and get there by the end of January, but monetary goals are always iffy in the poker world.

I'll stick with a volume goal of playing 7 games a day, and eventually the money will (hopefully) follow.

I'm excited to see if I really am a long term winner... I haven't even played 200 heads up games yet hehe. I've got no illusions about how small a sample size that really is. Am I just a fishy donator running good? Or do I really have what it takes to be in the coveted top 26% of poker players, that high section that actually makes money instead of loses it? The jury's still out, ladies and gentlemen.

EDIT! Recap at the end of March 2010:

Hah. HUSNGs. After playing for a while, I'm actually still not sure where I stand in them. Oh, how naively optimistic I was. Then again, I've started focusing exclusively on cash games since just before the AC trip. They seem more steady and predictable, with quite a bit less variance, in my experience. That said, since I still have $30 or so on PokerStars, I'll probably take that and see how I run in HUSNGs some day, trying to build it up. Til then, cash games all the way (I think I've finally turned the tipping point and become an online winner)!

Beginning of the Thorny Poker Road!

This is the first time I've written a blog. From what I've read so far, it seems to work well motivating those super-elite professionals that I am insanely envious of, so here I am.

Sadly, I am not one of those superstars pulling down tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the poker realm (Yet? Hopefully? Pretty please, poker gods?).

No, this blog will follow the humble beginnings of a current 10 NL cash/$5.25 HUSNG/$3 STT/MTT player on PokerStars. It doesn't seem often that you see blogs from players at the low stakes... maybe because we're really not even sure we're winners yet at this level. That's part of the lure, though, eh?