I haven’t updated in a long time because I haven’t been playing as much as I’d like to lately.  Through June I only played about 1000-1500 hands, so there was virtually nothing to mention.  I started back up in July a bit more but switched gears since I’m a bit rusty – I went from MTT’s and occasional 6-max play to full ring limit hold-em.  When I first started playing poker, limit hold-em was the only type around, so it’s kind of where I got my start.  Sadly, it looks like any skills I had in that arena are gone, but I’m working on it.  Through July, I’m only up 10 big bets across 5k hands played, so the results are less than stellar, but I’m getting adjusted to playing again and that’s my main goal for the time being (being break even for now isn’t so bad).  Based on how things go, I will probably keep playing LHE until I can prove to myself that I’m a solid winner again before I move back into playing a lot of MTT’s and back to NLHE.  I do plan on heading to Charlestown sometime soon to check out their new poker room.

I’ll check in later and hope to have some good reports on winnings!

Well, I didn’t get nearly as many hands in as I wanted to in April and it’s very unlikely I’ll make Silver Star for the first time in a few months.  I ended up playing about 2400 cash hands at $25NL with the slightest winrate ever of $12.40.  I kept my tournament involvement up a little more with 102 events.  I made right around $100 for the month in tournaments, which I felt was pretty sad considering that I had 2 decent scores for $215 and $100 within the past week.  I played the most brutal hand of poker I’ve ever played today and it had nothing to do with being on the wrong end of a bad beat.  I was playing the $3+r event (60k guaranteed) on PokerStars and the field was down to 70 players after about 7 hours of play.  Things were really going well and I was in a complete zone, making moves and picking spots in exactly the right spots.  I was short stacked for more than 2 hours and had been playing at approximately 10-15BB’s for all that time.  I just doubled up and was about about 20 BB’s and picked up A9 in the cutoff seat.  As soon as I saw my hand, my plan was to shove if it was folded around to me and to fold if any prior action had taken place.  The UTG player raised 3x and everybody folded; the only problem was that this happened so fast, I didn’t even notice the raise and shoved all in.  The UTG player tanked and eventually called with pocket 5’s, he flopped a set and I went out in 69th place.  I’m not upset that I lost the hand, in fact, given the action I’m thrilled he only had 5’s.  I’m just sick to my stomach that I made such a huge fuck up and didn’t notice my opponent raised.  Had I noticed he raised, I would have just mucked my hand, assuming that his UTG range has my A9 offsuit dominated, but instead I just shoved.  It may sound stupid, but I was just so certain I was going to make the final table by the way I was playing so well for so long then only to make a silly PREVENTABLE mistake and missed a very legit chance at a $3k-5k cash.

I’m planning on playing as many SCOOP events as I can get into for the month of May and I’m hoping to continue my recent string of tournament success in one of these events and who knows, maybe make a final table?

Well, things in March didn’t go very well for me, I found myself losing a fair amount at the cash games and as the month started coming to a close, the tournaments started heading south too.  I think the biggest problem I ran into was that I was trying to retool my game too much instead of playing what came naturally to me.  I’ve been doing better recently at the cash games since I had that epiphany and that’s a big confidence booster.  As for the tournaments…I’m still struggling and it’s really coming from me putting myself into tough situations when I know I shouldn’t be getting involved.  For example, I made 2 fairly deep runs into events recently, but I ended up stacking off super light in both of them especially after playing solidly for hours.  I think I’m getting frustrated in the tournaments and that’s breaking my concentration.  I’m going to try to work on keeping more focused on every hand as I play a tournament and not letting my concentration waiver; if it does, I’m going to try to force myself to step away from the table for a few minutes.  I made Silver Star in March (just barely) and I’m on pace to remain there for the month of April.  Hopefully my May report has better results.

I haven’t posted in a few weeks and I thought I’d drop in with a little update.

I’ve just been getting crushed at the $25NL game, which makes me feel like a total donk;  I’ve been working hard reviewing stats and seeing where I’m having problems.  I seem to be calling too much and just becoming a showdown monkey that’s paying off my opponents.  I also tend to be value-owning myself a lot, so I’ve got lots to work on.  I had some spare time today, so I decided to play a few tournaments, I played 5 events 4 @ $10+1 and 1 at $8+.80; I made the money in 2 events with a total winning of about $230, so it was overall a big success.

To update my star status, I made Silver Star last month, which was very exciting for me; this month I’m on pace to keep it up at the the Silver Star level, but I don’t think I’ll be playing enough to get to Gold Star.

Well, I started playing a few S&G’s and MTT’s yesterday and things didn’t go great.  I took an EB style exit to 3 of my events losing with pocket A’s which tilted me a bit, but I was able to get beyond it and keep playing my other events – I still was able to only bubble one event, so no big scores today.  After the tournaments went south, I didn’t want to lock myself into playing a full day of events, so I opted to get into the cash games.  I noticed right away that I was still playing a little off, so rather than play my normal stake of NL, I moved down a level and played some PLO.  If things aren’t going well for me, I’ve found that if I switch to low stakes PLO I don’t mind losing and just the act of playing as many wild hands puts any NL variance in prospective.  After my PLO dip (losing a bit of course), I started grinding the $25NL game and ended up winning about 4 buy-ins in a couple of hours.  I also redeemed the new $40 credit from Poker Stars so all things considered, I came out about even for the day.  I’m very close to my Silver Star VIP level, which I know isn’t much, but since I’ve started this, I have only come close once to getting off the Bronze Star level, so it’s a happy achievement for me to get to the Silver Star level (I wonder how close I can get to Gold?).   I’ll post my play at the end of my next set of sessions.

Hello,

I started this blog several months later than originally intended.  By the title, you can see it’s built around my progress of tracking my success/failure as I try to build a bankroll that I hope to someday play with professionally.   My original deposit was made on Poker Stars in March 2009 and I’ve tracked every session I’ve played since that time in an effort to improve.  Until recently, I was playing cash games almost exclusively.  After listening to the interviews with Nick Rainey and Space Gravy I decided to try the S&G route for 6 months to see my comparative levels of success.  Between March and January, I was able to turn my inital $50 into $325 – which isn’t overwhelmingly impressive, but I’m proud I was able to increase my bankroll 600% over 9 months.  After switching over to the S&G side of things, I was able to get my bankroll up to $450 in about 2 weeks; a significant improvement in speed from my previous pace.  I chalk a lot of that up to running hot and getting lucky, because those results were in about 25 events, we’ll see as the volume increases how much I win/lose.  On Saturday I had a big score in one of the $8k guaranteed events on Stars with a 3rd place finish  for $1865….needless to say this has me thinking that the tournament strategy might be the way for me to go if such results are sustainable.  My longer sessions (2+ hours) are going to be dedicated entirely to tournament poker and my short sessions are going to be dedicated to getting better at cash games.  My bankroll is currently about $2400 and I will be tracking my results here.  I’m currently playing the $25 NL game and S&G’s/MTT’s up to $10+1 – I know I’m rolled for more, but I’m concerned my level of play might not be up to par with the players at the next level up.  If things go well and I continue to show a substantial profit through the rest of February, I’m going to move up to $50 NL and $20+2 events.   In order for me to consider being able to play for a living, I feel that I’ll need a bankroll of about $36,000 – enough that I can live comfortably off of 10% of my roll for a month.  By that standard, only $33,600 to go…