Saturday, May 23, 2009

Making the best of a slow week.

Haven't had a lot of time to play online this week, but the good news is that when I did, I made the most of it.

With the $75 I had won from PS ($50 for a promo and another $25 for TellAFriend), my bankroll got a very healthy boost that allowed me to play .05/.10 NL. Since then, I've really noticed three things. First, the play at this level is so different than the lower limits. By that I mean, the player skill is quite a bit better. Oh sure, there are still donks, but the overall skill set is higher. Its been a good transition for me so far, but I have to tighten up just a bit more, at least to start off. Played one hand by accident that turned very nice for me though. Dealt T8dd in late middle position, and I accidentally limped in with it after everyone in front folded. Normally, I would fold in this spot, or if I had been in slightly better position, raise to steal the blinds, but I was rushing between tables and hit call instead of fold. Anyway, get like four callers including the blinds to see a flop of 797, with two diamonds. A flop like that, and I'm going to see the river at most times. I lead out and get called by the bb. Turn throws me a brick, 4c, but again I try to take it down here with a 2/3pot bet. I get raised by 1.5times my bet, and I seriously considered folding here, but I have a LOT of outs to fill to straight and flush and call the raise. River comes the magical 6d giving me a rare straight flush, and bb pushes all in on me. Thank you sir. Good thing I hit hard too, because bb had 97 for the flopped boat. Got very lucky, but it feels good to be the one sucking out like that instead of getting beaten up on for a change. ;) I"m sure the bb labeled me with a note right after that hand too, but it didn't do him any good because a few hands later, I felted him again when I hit a wheel straight on the river and took him money again. I'm sure he would have me labeled as a big fish, so I'm sure I'll see him sit on my tables again soon.

I managed to apply some good strong theory to my game and usually ended up almost doubling up on every table I played on this week. Bankroll is at $300 now woohoo!!! I'm purposely avoiding looking at Elephant charts and data this month too even though I'm recording every hand. I want to see what the month end chart is going to look like as a surprise instead of after every session. I found that when I looked at it after every session, I got frustrated more and more, thinking I could have done so much better, and decided I would do it this month only once at the end and then review. Might not be the best decision I make, but I'll determine that next week after I review everything for May. If I had to guess, I've made profit, but it would be rocky up and down, and my personal data will show I'm a lot looser than I think I am, but we'll see.

One of my league players is hosting a game this afternoon, kind of a WSOP warmup for him and his buds who are playing a couple of events this year. Its a $80 freezeout with deepstacks and 45min blinds, so lots of play, and 40 players in total. I've reviewed some of the players and either have played most of them before, or know of them through pokerforum.ca and know they are solid players, so its going to be a pretty good aggressive game. I'm going in with the plan to play a bit looser up front and try to build my stack early, and hopefully change gears after a while and slow it down. Play my monsters aggressively, and try to trap with mid range cards like suited connectors in late position. And of course, there will be a $1/$2 NL cash game as players bust out and if I do get busted out of the tourney, I'm hoping to apply some of the knowledge from PokerStrategy.com to this cash game as well and see what happens. Again though, these guys are very qualified and it'll be a real good test of skills.

Graham, from pokerforum.ca, has asked if I would be interested in updating a couple of blogs for him on a couple of other sites he manages...for pay!!! Says he'll pay $10 per post, and would like to see four to five posts per week. Sounds like a good way to build a bankroll to me. Told him I would be interested, even for a short while, just to see how things go. Haven't heard from him lately though, but it could be fun to do and get a few extra bucks doing it. The best part is they don't have to be very long, mostly just news and views in the poker world. I think I can handle that much so we'll see.

Everyone's been sick here at home now the past two weeks. First, the kid was sick and missed a week of school. Then over the long weekend last weekend, I was sick and never left the house. Then the wife got it and she's been sick all this past week. Seems the only not sick is the dog, lucky her. I think its passed through now though thank goodness, and things are returning to normal...or what is normal for us anyway ;) Mark still has my truck though. He hasn't had a lot of time to fix it lately with everything else in his world so he's asked if he could have another week. I guess why not, at least it will be done and I can feel confident it won't break down on the side of the road anywhere.

Well, that's about it for now. I'll update next week on how I did at the tournament as well as the cash game (but hopefully, I'm in the tournament long enough to not be able to play the cash game).

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