OK Maybe it's going up a little

Well, I am doing much better. I had my lesson with jkrantz tonight and he said I played well, so I'll take his word for it. I my demise, the stars qualifiers stopped at 2:30, so I was shut out of those. Since I am dead money in MTTs, I didn't slap down the t$215 to play. This week, however, the entry is $500+30, and the qualifiers are $70, so I am looking forward to playing in some of those. In other news, I have now figured out how I will make money. I am going to play the Stars 11s, with maybe a qualifier running at the same time, because I seem to be absolutely murdering those. Everything clicks, and I feel like my opponents play with their hands face up.

On Party today, I saw a $70 qualifier for the 1M guarenteed next month, and I figured it was a bunch of pissed off people from Saturday, so I hopped in. I got my buy-in out of the way. I didn't do that hot in the Stars MTT Qualifiers, but I also got my J3 sucked out on AI on the turn of xJA3 by AK, who got the K on the river. The thing I am most happy about is my short-handed play, but I guess I can thank 6-max for that. I seem to have a huge advantage when it becomes 4-5 handed on Stars, so I can fire up 6 SNGs and not even pay attention until it goes down to that many people. Also, on the Stars MTT qualifiers, there seems to be a bubble at 3 people, since second place gets almost a full refund, which I knew but it didn't even cross my mind during play until someone got mad that I made an isolation raise with K8s. He'll live.

I feel like these tournaments have really improved my hand reading ability, and that carried over into my lesson tonight. I am still going to take the week off from cash games though, as my confidence is still subpar.

The most impressive stat about the tournaments has been my heads up play. Assuming being a big stack vs. a small stake averages out, I was 9-3 heads up today. This is huge when there is such a difference between 1st and 2nd in terms of prize money. Oh, one of those was in a 11 HU SNG that I lost on Party, so I was really 9-2. Anyway, it's annoying when $640 of your profit gets through down the drain as a wasted buy-in, but it is the way it is. With that said, on to the stats:

Tournaments: 51 Tournaments, +$718 (+$78) ROI: 58.71%
Cash Games: NL200, 797 hands, +$346.09
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Total: +$1064.09 ($424.09)

I am slowly getting there. Tomorrow I have to keep working on a paper, and my roommate wants to watch me play some of the Stars SNGs (he's a HSPMNL (High-Stakes Play Money NL Holdem :P ) player, so it's remotely relevant. That's all for now, signing off.

Roller Coaster, but not going up

Wow. I'm not really sure what is going on. I have been running the worst I ever have in my life. Even my coach, JKrantz, seems to think it's unreal :). Anyway, I had hands like my 22 vs. K8 on a 2K8 flop, of course K turn. Then there was my AA vs. KK all-in on the flop, K turn. Let's see, QQ vs. A9 AIPR, quad aces. It has been unreal.

So, I plummeted in NL200, which was 85% variance 15% tilt. Still that 15% cost me at least a buyin, so maybe it's more 70/30 or 75/25. Either way, I am slowly recovering. I have been playing MTT qualifiers on Party, where I managed to accumulate about 5 buy-ins for the 1 million guarenteed, and a buy-in for the 750k next week. So, Party is forcing me to play in those. Oh, that QQ vs. A9 hand was the second to last hand HU between the last two people in the 1M qualifier, so effectively it was a $640 suckout. Good times.

I am banning myself from cash games for a while. I am doing quite well playing the MTT qualifiers, and finally figured out Stars tonight (I decided to deposit there, and turned a profit. Also, the 3 qualifiers that jsup from pocketfives.com and cardrunners.com was in, he got sucked out and I won all three :) ). I sucked out vs. his aces though in the most gresome bluff ever. runner runner K8 giving my 8K two pair. Like I said, except for my lessons with JKrantz, I will basically be playing these SNGs until I bring my bankroll up to about 10k. Although my actual bankroll is much larger, I only alott a certain amount as my "Partypoker bankroll." The profit from the stars SNGs will go into that fund, though.

In the stats, I will put in parathesis the profit if you count the Party MTT buyins as profit, as you have to take the first entry, and the ensuing ones are deposited as cash in your account. I try not to because I feel I am dead money in these tournaments anyway. Of course, I played the 1M great today, after one stupid play (double barrel) in the first hour and down to 3450/5000, I built it up to 20000 at the second break by a couple really good reads, two real cards in my hand, and a couple steal. My fate was sealed when I called a minraise from a fish who I felt I could outplay postflop about 30 minutes into the third hour. He had about 30000 and I had maybe 17k. I held 68, and creamed myself as the flop was 79T. He check called a 2500 bet into a 3500 pot. Then, he c/red AI on a 5 turn. I instacalled, and he flipped over 8J. I cried. I felt good about playing a solid 2.5 hours of good poker, though. Well, I need to get some rest so I can hit up the Stars SNGs tomorrow before the 1M tourney. I'll leave you with my stats.

-Greg

Stats from 4/20-4/23 3 AM

NL200: 1707 hands of pure, unadultered rape. -$2025
PP SNGs: -$108
PP MTT SNGs: $960 ($1987)
Stars MTT SNGs: $921
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-$252 ($813)

On second thought, I really hate how Party makes you play all those entries. These days wouldn't be that bad otherwise... maybe I should learn how to play MTTs...

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog. Here, I will chonicle my journey as a poker player. First, let me tell you a little about myself. I am an 18 year old college freshman who attends Wake Forest University. Outside of poker, I enjoy working out, and attempt to do moderately well in school. I am a Health and Exercise Science major.

Now that introductions are out of the way, we can get into the point of this blog more. I want to track my progress in poker, as I am always striving to get better and eventually move up in stakes. I am a no limit holdem player, and I play NL200. In a month or two, I want to move up to NL400. When I get bored, I play heads up SnG's on Party ($11s), and SnG's in general. Today, I experimented a little bit with B2B and playing the SnG's there. Basically, I was able to play 6 tables fine without paying attention to them. Although it was a small sample size, I didn't need to pay attention at all and this will be very convenient if I am clearing a BJ bonus or want to watch TV, etc.

I recently have hired a coach to help me with my cash game play, as I want to completely conquer the current level before moving onto the next. I feel like I am playing too many hands for NL200, as my image really isn't paid attention to that much. Otherwise, I feel I am moderately successful, but I feel like recently I have just run into some bad situations. I'll try to post some hands, and if nothing else, give updates about the day/week depending on how much I play. We are in crunch time with school as finals are coming up, but I'm tired and rambling so that will be all for today. Here is what I did poker-wise:

NL200: 895 hands, -$722.73
Party 11s HU: 2 tournaments, +$18
B2B 11s/5.5s: 57 tournaments, +$493.08
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Total: -$211.65

Although I lost overall today, I did have about a 70% ROI in the tournaments. Also, I got set over setted twice today, including QQQ vs. turned AAA, which is always fun. If those hands go my way, I'm up about $450 on the day, so it could be worse. Anyway, I have a lesson tomorrow at 7, where we're going to discuss preflop play, and I hope to get a good session in. My 9:30 tomorrow got cancelled, so I only have 1:30-2:45 Human Physiology tomorrow. I should be able to get to the gym, do some schoolwork, probably not play any of the B2B tournaments during peak hours (4-8:30 EST), and have my lesson at 7. Should be somewhat eventful. Until then, "play well."

-Greg