A Winning Night!

Thought I'd better slap this down in print as it may be my only chance this month. I played poker last night.....and won! It may well be the first winning session in two weeks. If I can just string 11 more nights together like that, I'll be back to where I was towards the end of November. Woot!

Same ole same ole

My Poker Stars account has now dipped below the $500 mark, which puts my downswing somewhere near $500. Ouch. The pain! I can't take any more! For some reason this isn't bothering me much. It does, of course, make me question whether I will ever play winning poker ever again but the absolute worst case scenario is that I won't. I can probably continue to live a reasonable life if that is the situation.

Anyway, that is all really boring, unlike the great big drama thread which has been going on for days now at 2+2 featuring poker world sex, money and relationship woes. And frozen turkey dinners, bebe tops, penises on backs, finger painting with blood, etc. Pretty standard I guess.

BrandiRose - Never Trust Anyone

Rapidly approaching its 3,000th reply and ruining workplace productivity throughout the world. What a train wreck.

Nuts!

After taking Monday night off of playing poker completely, I ventured back for some more 6-max limit hold'em last night. Due to my recent losing streak, I dropped down to $0.50/$1.00 and sat down at two tables with people who were playing anything pre-flop and going way too far with their hands. Perfect! Not only were the tables good, but I was catching great cards too. Great! Not only was I catching great starting hands, but I was hitting flops super hard. Awesome! While all this was happening, my opponents were catching the mortal nuts at the same time however. Bummer!

At risk of exagerating, I have never in my life been shown the mortal nuts on so many hands where I thought I was way way ahead. I was flopping top two pair, sets, turning or flopping fullhouses all night and in all but one case I rammed and jammed straight into bigger hands. Going broke against quads is probably not a bad thing and by the end of my relatively short-lived night of poker I had to chuckle at the way things turned out. Wow! No bad beats to whine about either. I just ran monster hands into bigger monster hands. C'est la vie.

In trying to identify leaks lately, it appears as though I have been calling down too much with hands that are beat and I have been folding too many winners. How the hell do you fix that!? I'd like to buy some better hand reading skills please.

Monsters under the bed syndrome has plagued me over my short poker career and last night I was proud to have shook it off somewhat and really forced people to pay me off when I caught huge hands. Hahaha, I am sooo going to have a complex for the rest of my life now. Damn you poker!

As for the total damage on this skid, I must be approaching $400 or so now based on the dwindling balance in my poker stars account. Ugh. This will pass eventually though and I can get back to my massive $1/hour poker earnings rate.

Losing Streak Continues

Poker is beating me up lately. I have managed to post some small wins at the odd table but more often than not, I am posting moderate losses at whichever game I happen to be playing lately. Jumping from game to game may be a contributing factor but during these losing streaks, I tend to switch to a different form of poker rather than risk throwing my laptop through a wall.

For some reason, during losing streaks, I tend to get the most enjoyment out of playing tournaments, despite a much better history with ring games. I have made it to the money in a few multi table tourneys lately but have not gone very deep.

I finally finished reading TOP and will either revisit SSHE or check out HOH, depending on which way I go with limit or no limit play.

No Limit SuperStar!

After the nice Sunday night run at no limit I was ready to bust some skulls after work on Monday and as I now had a good two hours experience with no limit cash games it was clearly time to add another table to the mix. So, I sat and prepared to stack fools and then proceeded to foolishly give my stack to others. Repeatedly. I got stacked four or five times but only once did I put my money in the middle with the worst of it. In all cases though, the others were drawing to big hands and I have to go back and evaluate where I went wrong.

My girlfriends advice: Quit going all in! Maybe a good idea, but my my sets look so damned purty.

It looks like my girlfriend is an up and coming degenerate as I konked out early last night, just before midnight, and woke briefly when she crawled into bed 3 hours later after finally busting out of the freeroll she had been playing. 154th out of 10,000 or so. Hah, quit going all in yourself!

Stocking up on Losses

This weekend was full of lots and lots of losing on the poker tables. I don't know (and don't really want to) the exact figure, but it is somewhere just on the good side of $200 or so. I got in a number of SNG's, several small MTT's, some $1/$2 6-max limit and even snuck in some no limit ring towards the end. A second place finish in one SNG was the only money I saw on any of the tourneys, despite playing reasonably well. My chips went into the middle with the best hand far more often than not and if hold'em were a 2 card game that might actually mean something!

Towards the end of the weekend I sat down at a $10NL full ring table just for kicks and had a blast. I can't remember the last time I played a no limit ring game and should mix it into my rotation more often as limit games continue to slowly dry up. I hadn't been playing for all that long when I set a guy off and ended up being called a donkey. I think what did it was me actually playing like a donkey. I raised a big $0.30 first in from middle position with pocket Queens and got re-raised to $0.70, which I only called instead of re-popping, intending to go crazy on a flop with no A or K. The flop brought a K and two hearts and I bravely open checked and was not surprised when he bet $1.50, leaving only $4 or so in his stack. I almost folded there but decided there were too many hands he could have that he would c-bet with that I had beat and really after dropping $200 or so over the weekend, losing another $6 or so with pocket Queens really wasn't going to be too upsetting, so I started making hee-haw noises and min bet raised him. He pushed, I called, I watched as another heart hit the board and then an Ace on the river, either of which must surely be sealing my fate. Much to my surprise the pot got pushed my way and this poor guy went ballistic, cursing all the damn DonkeyStars on this stupid shitty site. To his credit, his 65o did catch a back door straight draw on that flop and gave me some internal satisfaction that although I did play every street like a complete donkey, he deserved it. Well, not every street...I did play the river perfectly.

And that was the last river card I saw in any hand I was involved in for quite some time. The number of pots I took down with continuation bets on the flop was unbelievable. I was very surprised at how tight the table was. Raises for 3BB's took the blinds down far more often that I thought would be the case. The table loved limping but not many people were crazy about calling raises. I didn't think blind stealing would be a big possibility at such low stakes no limit but standard raises from late position often worked and when they didn't, a c-bet usually did the trick. I ended up running up my initial buy in of $10 to almost $40 with a lot of small pots. The only other large pot that I got involved in was when I got it all in pre-flop with AA against KQo when I raised under the gun, got re-raised to $0.70, popped it to $2.50 and the guy pushed his remaining $7 into the pot.

I was having a great time at the no limit table but realized that I had better shut it down when I accidentally bet $20 instead of $0.20 on the flop once towards the end.

$1,300 Barrier

While searching for patterns where there really are none, I noted that every time my poker winnings have broken the $1,300 threshold I have promptly gone on a big losing streak. The first time I broke through the $1,300 barrier I proceeded to drop $600 in a very short period of time - gotta love 6-max variance. The next skid was only $300 and had much less to do with variance and a lot more to do with me messing with limits I shouldn't have been messing with. And now, having broken $1,300 again a few days ago, I find myself in the midst of a mini slide which I hope to stop shortly.

One day I hope to permanently bust through that pesky $1,300 barrier and find a new one a lot higher.

Other completely meaningless stats:
- I have won with AA over 92% of the time recently
- My best game to date, based on total winnings, is $0.50/$1 short handed
- $2/$4 short handed is my worst
- My best site to date, based on total winnings, is Party by a huge margin
- Paradise is my worst
- My best day of the week, based on total winnings, is Friday by a longshot
- Wednesday is my worst by far