Grinding...

Now I can remember why I switched to sngs. Grinding at 5/10 isn't very fun, but I'm gonna stick to it. I've been around even for the last week or so, just hanging in there. After yesterday and today, I'm up a whopping total of $33.08 for the week!!! (I count Monday as the first day of the week and Sunday the last in my stats by the way, not Sun - Sat). This is actually not bad considering that yesterday I started off down about $300 right off the bat in like an hour 2-tabling, and later on I grinded back to about even. And today was a worse start.... down over $400 in about an hour 2-tabling. I've successfully grinded that back up to +$67.25 thanks to a $10 8-person home game tourney at our house tonight that I won which paid $60.

On the bright side though, I'm getting rakeback. I don't know why it took me this long to sign up for rakeback with 1 of the sites that its offered for. I absolutely love it. Just from yesterday and today I've earned at least $80 just in rakeback, which I'm hoping will get to around $250 for the week before its over with. The competition at Battlefield Poker (a Prima skin where I get rakeback) seems to be more tough than say Pac or Party, but I am getting used to the software and beginning to hang better with some of the really good players on there. I've also noticed alot of the same players around there and am picking up on who is good and whos not so great, which is definitely helpful.

Since I'm bored now I'll share a couple crazy hands that happened to me this week.......



5/10 Pacific Poker

I'm 2nd to act with AA. UTG limps, I raise, button calls, bb calls and the limper calls. So we see the flop 4-handed.

Flop: Q J J

Not the prettiest flop for my aces, but oh well. UTG checks, and of course I bet. Button folds, bb raises and UTG cold calls. Now here I'm thinking the bb probably has the Q or something like K10, its the cold call I'm worried about. I had noticed earlier that this player was pretty tight, so automatically I assume he has the jack, but I call.

Turn: 4

The board is rainbow, no flush possible. Now the bb checks, and the UTG checks behind him. This doesn't make much sense to me because I was almost certain the UTG had the jack. Is he slow-playing in that spot?? Not very smart if he is, so I check and hope for a miracle........

River: A!!!!

Its my miracle river..... or is it? BB checks, UTG bets... I immediately raise and hope for a cap out because I know he's got the jack. I'm already looking at the pot size and getting ready for my stack to shoot up another $150.... he 3bets, I cap, he calls with.... JJ.... That sucks.





Home Game tourney

It was 3-handed. Justin=button, Sky=sb, Me=bb. Justin folds, Sky calls the bb (blinds were 4/8), and I look down at 2 black queens. I make a pretty standard HU raise of 12 chips expecting him to call, and he does....

Flop: Q 4 9 all hearts

I was almost certain I had the best hand on the flop, so I bet 16 chips hoping for a call and no heart on the turn. He calls the 16 chips... Now I'm ready to move allin for my remaining 50 or so chips on the turn if theres no heart and he checks to me.

Turn: 5 h

Ewwwww... Now Sky would have definitely called my 16 chips with any high heart, because he's a pretty loose player and of course almost anyone would have to call with the ace on that flop, if not push. I was prepared to fold to a big bet in this spot... I wasn't going to risk my whole stack praying for the board to pair, thats for sure. I was over 90% sure he had a heart. He checked to me. Now I still think he has a high heart, probably the ace. I knew he was trying to get me to follow my flop bet... I checked behind him hoping for a 4 5 9 or the other Q. 10 outs is alot and he just let me see the river for free. And I'm pretty confident that if the board pairs I'm doubling up, just because I thought he had that ace.

River: 4!!!!

He immediately bets 20 chips... Of course I push in the 20 plus my remaining 30 hoping I was right. He says "call" before I can even get my chips in the middle. He says he has the ace and I flip up the ladies........ was great the way that hand played out. Turns out he had Ah6h and had the nuts on the flop... oops. It's just like that hand from the WSOP last year... Andy Black with QQ against Joe Hachem's Ac6c on a queen high flop of all clubs.... but this time they "passed the suga" the other way, mate .

Well anyway I'm kinda rambling so I'll call it a night. I'll get back to the grind tomorrow and see if I can't be down less than $200 after my first hour. It's never fun to start off in the hole.

Back to limit...

I have been playing pretty much solely sngs at party for a couple months now. I decided a couple weeks ago to give limit a try again, because I used to play 5/10 pretty regularly, but switched to sngs because I was bored with limit. I cashed $400 out of poker fantasy, which is all I had in there. $150 of it went to my bank, and the other $250 to pacific poker. Now I know this is only 1 buyin at the 5/10 level, but I wanted to give it a shot. So far, I've ran my $250 up to $1,549.85 with a total of 13 1/2 hours of playing time there. This is 9.6BB/hr (big bets per hour). Obviously this is very good, although its on a short period of time. My results will probably start to even out soon and the BB/hr will go down some, but I'm still happy with my play so far. I play at 6-handed max tables instead of full ring tables, because I like to be aggressive. In a couple weeks I hope to make the jump to 10/20, although by then I won't have the so-called "proper" bankroll yet which is about 300 BB or $6,000. I may give it a try as soon as I hit the $3,000 mark and jump back to 5/10 if I lose $500 or $600 or so. I'm back in the limit world and so far its been fun. I'll probably play some later today on pac. I really want to try to get in the 500k at party on Sunday, so I may play some sattys for that too. Well thats it for now.

Back at it

Well Milwaukee was fun. Not as much snow as we hoped, but it was still nice except for the 900 mile drive. I got back late Monday night and once I got up Tuesday, it was time for some poker. I have slowed down some lately on sngs, because I'm enjoying playing limit again (5/10) back at pacific poker and some tournaments and sattys at stars. I played in a couple sattys for the 750k on stars and didn't win anything. On pac, I played for a grand total of like 45 minutes all day, and walked away +$288.30. Just had a great run. The biggest hand was when I was in MP with K9c, (I play 6-handed by the way), I raised and the whole table called. So $60 was already in the pot just to see the flop. The flop was pretty good for me I'd say, Ac7cKd. They check to me and of course I bet, and I think 3 people called. The turn was the 6c, giving me the nuts for the moment. I bet and a couple people call to see the river with me. The river was the Ks. Now of course this wasn't the best card for me, as it wouldn't fill any of my opponent's straight draws to make them pay me off more, and not to mention it paired the board. I couldn't complain though, and me having the Kc significantly lowers the chance of someone filling up there. So I bet and both call, and I drag in a nice pot. I've played for 2 hours on pac since I deposited $250 and its now up to $734.90. I know I'll have bad days, but I'm obviously happy so far.

And now to the juicy home game I played last night. We had 2 full tables playing a $50 buyin no limit cash game, with blinds at .50/1.00. Now I know the blinds seem small, but let me tell you, these people love action. Sure there were some people at my table who raised the norm, like to $3 or $4, but the others were different. One guy consistently raised preflop to $16.50, I don't know why, I guess he liked that number. Another guy liked raising an even $10....(not to mention this guy was pretty drunk, which made things better). And there was another guy who called pretty much anything and would bluff $20 and $30 at a time almost always, even when he missed. So you can imagine how big the pots were getting. I'd say 25% of the pots were well over $100, some over $300. I couldn't really get anything going myself though. I had JJ once and raised in MP to $5. The button called and the UTG pushed. Now this guy is a pretty decent player, and I don't see him doing that with AK or 1010 and lower. I mean this was like my first raise all night, and hes limping under the gun and playing back at me going over the top. I felt very strongly that my JJ was no good, and put him on AA or KK (I didn't think he had QQ). I folded and showed my JJ face up, and people were acting like I was crazy...(these people can't lay down 22 though lol). He showed me AA which made me feel good about my laydown... until they ran the cards and a jack would have hit the river. Oh well, I made the right play, and thats all I can do. So anyway, I was down to around $35 and was about to leave, so I wanted to try to double up real quick at least. I got AQ in MP and a guy who raised frequently made it $4 to go, and like 3 people called. I felt I had a better hand than him and that others may respect my raise or I might get 1 or maaaaybe 2 calls, so I pushed.... All folded, even the raiser, around to the guy on my right. This is the "$16.50" guy. He said "do you have a pair?". I said "I dunno, maybe, maybe not." He said, "If you don't have a pair I'll call, cause I don't have a pair." I believed him, and right there I knew I either had him dominated or was ahead, because he would've instacalled with AK or re-raised the original raiser. So I told him I didn't have a pair and he said he'd give me a loose call. I was thinking A3 or KQ or something. Nope. This guy had K7 os....... haha. He was a gambler though more than a poker player, and that became more clear to me as the night went on. So my hand actually held up this time and I walked away with about $90, just up $40. Not a great night by any means, but I know where I'll be on Tuesday nights from now on!

Ok so for the day, including the home game, I was +$305.30. Not bad at all. I'm gone for now but I'll try to start updating more often.

Off to Milwaukee, eh

Well since my last post, things have been going pretty well. After those 8 sngs last week, I didn't play anymore and ended up about +$800 for the week. This week, I had a similar start on Monday. I played 4 sngs and cashed in 3 of them, with a 1st 2nd and 3rd which totaled my profit at +$280. It was nice. I was up $280 for the week after those, so I stopped the sngs for the week and got back into some limit and MTTs. I put some money in Pokerstars and have made around $200 this week there. I cashed in the $11 rebuy for $170 and I won a seat to the $750k guaranteed and sold it for $195. As far as my limit went, I deposited $250 into Pacific Poker and played 5/10 for about an hour. I pulled it up to around $445, so thats another $195 for the week. So for the small amount of time I played this week, I am happy with my results, profitting somewhere around +$700.

Me and Cassey are leaving for Milwaukee in a couple hours, and it will be a long, but fun drive. We're visiting my cousin up there and we both like road trips, so we decided not to fly. It's supposed to snow up there a little bit in the next couple of days, and we don't really get snow down here so that should be fun. I went last year and found out they have a casino there, pretty much right in the middle of downtown!! lol. I guess its supposedly some Indian casino, but the location is great if thats the case. I played some 2/4 last time I went there and won a little bit, but I doubt we'll be going there this time. No poker for me until probably next Wednesday or so, but thats fine with me. I still love playing, but it just seems more like work now for some reason. I think some time away will be good.

Well enough with the boring stories, I'll probably update again shortly after I get back from Wisconsin. I'm out......