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!