My new positive outlook is not natural for me. It can be quite a chore staying positive in the face of poker purgatory. I endeavor to persevere as we all must.
This year I am up a little over $100. Anything is better than the 7 week drought I was mired in. I am having a bit of trouble adjusting my game to the latter stages of tournaments. Something to work on, but at least i am getting to those stages now.
I discuss my New Year’s resolution over at Holdem Poker Chat. you will have to sojourn over there to partake of this tasty morsel of down-home wisdom.
The new year opened decently. I won some money and am now less of a donkey I hope. I still cannot make headway at cash games, so I guess I will stick to tournaments for now.
Not playing much the last couple days. I even missed the Holdem Poker Chat game at Ultimate Bet last night. I will probably not play today until the Holdem Poker Chat game at 9 pm et on Cake Poker. I have some food prep to get into and have to bring my father to an eye doctor appointment at 4 pm.
I hope your new year is going well. Mine is mediocre I guess, but at least not a suck-fest yet.
Well, November was a poor month with a $390 profit. Some would say “well you made money”, and while this is true one has to consider that I was +$314 for November 1st!
You read that right, +$80 for 29 days following. Pretty sad. At least this month’s Holdem Poker Chat marathon was profitable (+$40). but the month itself is a major disappointment. I am starting December slowly and seeing if I can fix my play to become more profitable.
Sadly, I think I need to move away from the Cake Network. the structure pays too many people, its too top heavy and the blinds are too fast. I never liked PokerStars structure and it seems Lee Jones is destroying the good part of Cake and turning it into PokerStars Lite. Gotta tell ya Lee, there is already a PokerStars. the people who want 25% payouts and only doubling your money at the final table are already playing there. At least the original has decent blinds structure. You haven’t even got that.
So, last we left I was wallowing in self-pity. I came out blazing with a nice $212 day. Won it all back, all happy etc. And then it happened. I forgot how to play poker apparently. I have had five straight days of losing. All that $200 is gone and I am wondering what I am doing wrong.
I am playing badly. real badly. I know enough to know that my game has all of a sudden become horribly flawed. I am playing just like the people I usually exploit.
Well I managed to win my way into this Sunday’s Bodog $100K guaranteed tournament again. I hope I can straighten my game out by then. As a bailout, PokerStars has a $100k freeroll to congratulate Joe Cada for winning the WSOP Main Event. I am in that also, so hoping for a good payday to straighten my ass out.
After that big buyin, stuff just fell apart. All my wagers sucked. I had no clue how to play poker. A real miserable week. Finally last night I turned to playing cash games. Analyzing what the players were doing and how they played seemed to help.
I still made mistakes in that cash game, but knew they were mistakes and hopefully learned from them. Today, i have won two tournaments and gotten a 2nd in another. Everything I am playing is working. Its not just cards either, but a lot of good choices not to play and when to play.
After making about $200 before 6 pm today, I took a break and did a lot of the drudge work on setting up the November 24 Hour Poker Marathon. Most of the hard stuff like data entry is done. Some passwords still need checking and a couple of corrections need to be done, but otherwise we are ready to go for November 28-29th.
I did poorly in my big $162 buyin. I finished 12th with 9 being paid. Most of the rest of my poker was mediocre too. I was bailed out by the Breeders Cup a little to post a $14 profit, but thats just a tease.
I haven’t done well in an OFC in a while. I think I need to post a good result in this weekend’s Full Tilt OFC. Other than that, no earth shattering games are on my slate this weekend. Just the usual suspects. maybe the Double Deuce at Full Tilt. The Sunday 1/4 Million at PokerStars is also a possibility.
Lost a total of $50 over the last 2 days. No one but myself to blame. Most of the losing came last night where I just lost my vaunted patience and started spewing in every game. Yes people make bad calls, but reshoving versus the donk makes you the double donk.
Full Tilt OFC coming up this weekend. Holdem Poker Chat needs another win. We really want to be the place that the good players hang out and new players come to learn. Hopefully I, personally, can last longer than 20 minutes in these games as well.
The good news probably should come first. In Event #1 of the Bodog Poker Open, I managed 40th place for a $241 payday. I also swept the NFL. So a nice $300+ day should make me happy? Normally yes.
Doyles Room held a twitter user freeroll. There was only one prize. $1,000 in spending money and a weekend with Doyle Brunson and his Doyles Room pros. they call it the Doyle Brunson Vegas Experience. So doing well in this and getting heads-up for the prize is pretty good, no? How about shoving against your opponent’s raise with Ace ten and having him call with all his chips with Ace eight? Wee I am going to Vegas Baby….unless there is an 8 on the…OMG there it is!
Fairly soul crushing. maybe I will get my $300 in ones and rifle through it to make me feel better.
October ended on an up note. I managed to drive the total for the month up over $850. Not as high as I would have liked, but not horrible as it was a steady increase over the last couple weeks. my worst days over that time were -$20 or so but they were few. There were a few $100 days too with multiple cashes.
The Multiple cashes is the goal. stabilize that and the roll will grow. Spew chips and everything becomes more difficult.
I plan to start November with a bang by playing the first event of the Bodog Poker Open today. It is a $109 buyin with $15,000 added. Yes, i won my ticket into it, but soon I may be looking at those buyins as routine. here is hoping for that day and success this day as well. Have fun out there
A couple of small negatives followed by a couple of small positives. Up a tad, but its not a living. not even close. I wouldn’t mind making a grand for the month, but will fall +200 short of that if I just seesaw the last two days.
A couple of Halloween special tournaments going on the 31st, so maybe I can get near the mark. Also have to think about a mass withdrawal in case the UIGEA implementation actually slows down withdrawals
