Weekend is Over :(

I think they should seriously start considering at least three day weekends in general. It seems to me that friday always goes by just laying around after mindnumbing weeks worth of work and then on saturday you just get wasted in some party or so and then you spend the sunday recovering from that...

Yeesh... Enough about that. I spend yesterday playing couple of home game tournaments with some friends in the center. First we played Texas No-Limit tournament with 10 participants and I ended up finishing at 6th place after pushing all in with pair of queens after seeing a ten high flop. The only opponent that was in the game bet 700 (7 * BB) after the flop and I figured that he tried to buy the pot there but unfortunately he had a set of deuces :(

Then we played a round of Seven Card Stud with 6 players who were left and once again I ended up dropping out early (5th) :( Nothing really to report about that. Just played one hand too aggressively at the start and then didn't really get anything proper to play with.

I think that the biggest problem with these home games is that you generally get to see only a very small number of hands and whenever you get something you basically need to play it quite aggressively unless you have big enough hand for slowplaying. Well... Still the more skilled players usually are able to get more chips out of the opponents in these situation anyway so I guess I just have to keep on training ;)

Oh, almost forgot. When I came back yesterday from playing I decided to show my Omaha Hi/Lo skills on PokerStars and ended up donating 15$ on the micro limit table. Live and learn. I guess I'm just a bit hard headed about this issue since I don't seem to realize that playing Omaha drunk is not propably the brightest idea ;) Not even in micro limit tables...

But. Something good came out of that too. I decided that I will start training Omaha Hi/Lo on PokerStars the same way I've been doing with Limit Hold'Em on Party. Now I just have to figure out that what would be the proper buyin, bankroll etc levels to be able to raise the bar somehow in a 'controlled' way.

Ok. Now I'll play some Limit Hold'Em on Party and then get to bed... Current situation: 136$ so still 64$ needed to get to the next level...

Good Night! Don't let the bad beats bite!

Another Tuesday - Another Wasted Opportunity

Sigh... Once again I participated to the Grand Casino No Limit Hold'Em Freezeout Tournament and yes... No success what so ever :(

The tournament started in the best possible way. Pocket Rockets on the first deal :D Nice! I bet out 3 times the big blind from the Small Blind after couple of guys had limped in looking weak. The flop was looking quite scary Q T T and I checked to see that what will happen... The next guy bet 3 * BB and the other one called. I thought that the first one might have AQ at most but I was more concerned about the caller. I decided to pull a little check-raise stunt and raised to 10 * BB to see if they really have something and what do you know they both folded...

Good start anyway and this time I can't blame the cards for not getting better results. I had AA once, AQs once, AQ twice, TT twice, AJ and KJ once and 88 once. Of course I ended up pushing all in with AQ at the end and 66 took the pot :( I finished around 37th or so so nothing to tell the grandkids about ;)

Well... I guess I can now continue my Limit Hold'Em quest ;) I'm still balancing on the 100$ limit since I have ended up losing in the 0.25/0.50 level and then won everything back quite fast on the 0.15/0.30. And this has now happened about 4 times or so. I guess it also has to do with the fact that I play multiple tables when playing the lower limit but play only one table on the higher level. Maybe I should just multitable all the time. That way I wouldn't get too frustrated and start playing crappy hands...

Anyway. Time to go to bed now... Or maybe after couple of games or so... C'Ya!

Bad Beats'R'Us

Uh... Last 6 session that I've played I only managed to win in 2 of them :( Sigh... Just as I thought that I might be starting to get the hang of this thing. I know, I know... That is just normal swing but since I don't like losing at anytime this REALLY SUCKS!

And since I managed to drop my bankroll below 100$ I have to get back to 0.15/0.30 tables... Ok. I have to start winning again so see you later...

Enter The Next Level, Please!

Thank you, sir! Just took my first stab at the 0.25/0.50 level and doubled my buyin in 10 minutes ;) I guess it's not going to be as smooth sailing all the time but at least at the moment everything looks good.

I just noticed that there's a lot more players playing at the 0.25/0.50 level than in the 0.15/0.30. Anyway. That suites me better because it means that there's more players willing to invest to my future and that's always a good thing ;)

Ok. I'll go back to table after walking the dog to see if I can get to next level by the end of the week :D Current situation: 111.08$ so only 88.92$ to go :D C'Ya!

Reaching For The Next Level

Haven't really played that much this week but decided to update the situation since the last posting. Just played a while and now there is 96.97$ in my PartyPoker account so after I get about 3 more bucks I can switch to the next level which is 0.25/0.50 ;)

I know, I know... Don't quit your day job and all that crap :P You just have to remember that I'm doing this to learn and to prove myself that I can get my bankroll back to where it was at the start of the year. However, it might take a bit longer than I though...

Anyway. That's the situation today. I did play a little bit on PokerStars last weekend but I think the situation didn't really change there at all.

Oh yes... Have to mention this one. I had 44 on an early position and called 1 small bet after UTG limped in as well. There was 5 limpers in the pot when the BB raised and everybody called making the pot 12 small bets when going into the flop. The flop was 5 4 4 :D Yesh! After that I just checked and called the raises of the player on the button and hoped for as many players to the game as possible. By the river there was only three of us in the game and I was first to act and checked in the hopes of getting one extra bet from the button but unfortunately they both checked as well :( Well... I won a nice big pot anyway so nothing to be sorry for ;)

Ok. Now it's about time to go to sleep so good night. Play tight!

Summer is Over :(

I guess it's about time to get back to business since the temperature outside seems to be going below zero soon. So... What has happened during the summer? Not much. Too much eating, drinking and lying around. I sort of decided in the beginning of the summer that I would try to play poker so that I would really focus on it. Unfortunately what I actually did was that I almost totalled my whole bankrolls on Party and PokerStars in the beginning of summer when playing Omaha drunk (bad combination) and was left only with about 10$ to both accounts. Well what can I say... My bad... Uups... Shit happens... I think you get the picture ;)

After that I didn't really play for a while because I decided to focus more on the actual living for a while and went fishing etc with my friends and my wife and enjoyed the finnish summer in general. I think that was quite a healthy decision in any case.

Since I didn't empty my bankroll totally I decided that I will try to get back to business the hard way. It's against my principles to just deposit more money on the account since I messed it up while playing drunk :) Yes... I have some principles after all.

Anyway. I think that it was more or less a good decision since it sort of forced me to think about what game I should play so that I wouldn't take too big risk of losing everything at one go. So what I did was that I bought a new book during my summer holiday called Small Stakes Hold'em by Ed Miller, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth and decided to read it and start learning how to play Limit Hold'em.

To be honest at first I thought that Limit Hold'em would be quite boring but I decided to give it a go anyway. Now I've been reading the book slowly chapter by chapter trying to sort of get the hang of the ideas that are presented in the book. At the same time I started playing the micro limit cash games in PartyPoker and in PokerStars sort of doing a field testing of the ideas that I learned from the book. And what do you know... After a while I really started to enjoy playing Limit Hold'em :)

First I started playing on the 0.05/0.10 limit so that I bought in with 2$ and decided that I can go to the next level after I have at least 10 times the required buyin for the next level in my bankroll. So for example:

0.05/0.10 -> 20$

0.10/0.20 -> 40$

0.15/0.30 -> 60$

And so on... I just decided that I will always make a buyin that is 20 times the Big Bet of the game. That just seems to be quite a decent amount to play with in my opinion.

And what has happened so far? When I started my mission in the middle of July I had about 10$ both in PokerStars and in PartyPoker account. And currently I have 65$ in PartyPoker and 35$ in PokerStars so at least the direction is right ;) Here's some stats that I pulled out of the CardPlayer statistics:

Cash Game Count : 40
Total Won/Lost : $48
Total Hours : 74h 37m
Average / Hour : $0.64
Wins : 28
Losses : 12

So as you can propably guess I'm not going to quit my day job any time soon but if you look at the stats as a graph you get a better idea of the results ;)

So I guess it's safe to say that sometimes reading helps or what would you say ;)

Anyway. That's more or less the situation today. Currently I'm switching to 0.15/0.30 games in PartyPoker and still have to keep on grinding on the 0.05/0.10 level on the PokerStars (haven't really played on PokerStars that much during last few weeks though).

So... What have I learned this summer? DON'T PLAY POKER WHEN YOU ARE DRUNK!!! Except with friends of course :D What else? Limit Hold'em can be quite interesting as well and for me at least it's better way to protect the bankroll. And as a final conclusion I think that studying helps when starting to learn a totally new game ;) Live and learn :D

Oops... Almost forgot to mention that I visited Grand Casino two weeks ago and participated to a 35€ Freezeout tournament but didn't really get into action at any time. I had couple of premium hands (KK, AK) in the beginning of the tournament but didn't really get any action with them. At the end I finished somewhere around 40th position after 2,5 hours of play or so. So nothing really to report. My friend however is still going strong in the live tournaments and finished once again on the final table. Congrats Jabba once again! Keep up the good work!

Ok. That's all for now. I'll keep on grinding and make some reports about the progress in few weeks or so... Keep playing and keep winning!