Good start

Always like to get off a new week with a nice score. Was making a play with AKs on one hand and ended up hitting big and my AA held up against a maniac. Lets hope this is a trend.

Couldnt do it

Last week I didnt do anything wonderful, made some mistakes, ran into some hands and just blundered my way to a $400 profit for the week. Puts me short of my $1k a week goal but such is life. I havent been dedicating much time to poker for a long time and I am going to try and put more time into it starting this week. Whether that pays me off or not is another matter. But if I am going to set the lofty goal of $50k for the year I need to be more focused and into achieving it.

Time to start playing some solid hours with my "A" game.

Had a game of golf with my friend Carl who is a focused tourney player and I managed to play fairly good but the most fun of the day for me was discussing poker with him. He is the only live player I know who puts as much into poker as me and plays the game well.

Shuffle up and deal!

No headway

This week has gone nowhere. As of today I am up $50 for the week. I was down $300 the day prior. There is still time to salvage the week but something needs to change for the better. Yesterday I got hit hard with good cards and good flops but hardly made much from them. Maybe I am blowing people to quickly out of the waters because I am so scared of flush draws and there is almost always a potential flush draw on the board.

I am most likely to focused ont rying to maintain my $1000 per week goal. Whatever. Lets see what happens.

Bleh

Title says it all. I cant seem to get it going, though I shouldnt be so hard on myself as I lost the majority on this hand. This is on a 1/2 table: I raise to $7 EP w/AQs 2 callers, flop come AA2, I check, LP bets pot $23 and I raise $23, then he bets pot and I push he calls. He has pocket twos and I dont improve. Just one of those high action flops and one of you has to lose. Anyway I lost $250 early then jumped on some 2/4 tables and won $200. So for the week I am now even.

I will turn it around! I still want my $1k week.

Loosening up

I dont think I am playing very well at the moment. I am being looser and trickier than normal and I think it is costing me profit. I got down $300 early last night and only managed to get it back because of a slowplay AA vs QQ where the QQ guy played his hand badly. I ended up $50 for the night but only because I made a risky move and it happened to pay.

I limped UTG w/99 and the button raised to $10, I was the only caller. Flop came 257 and he bet $25 which I called. Turn was a Q, I checked he bet $50 and I raised to $135, he folded. Now if he had a high PP I am sure he would've called my turn raise. Now what would I do on the river...let it go or try for it with a big bet...Too risky for my blood. I get more often burnt than not.

Good news is I am up $50!! WOO, lol. I want to tighten up from here on in and hopefully make a $1k+ week.

$0.01/0.02 NL is fun!

I took a break from the grind this week and played the low of lows NL and loved it. Buy-in is $2 and on 3 seperate ocassions now I have worked it up to $10. Show a lot of marginal plays and bet BIG everytime in a hand and you can get paid off huge. Ton of fun and great stress relief.

For Week 3 I ended with a profit of $1550 which allowed me to maintain my target of $1k per week. I am happy with that amount as I hardly played at all this past week. Lets see how this weeks grind goes...

Grind

The money isnt coming easy at all. Its a real f-ing grind. Of course it doesnt help that everytime I sit down I get off to a losing start and am always fighting an uphill battle. You know things arent going well when you get dealt AA-JJ and you just wonder how you will be beat this time. It seems the smallest thing can throw you night to the wind. I am up a little bit for the week but it just seems like it could disappear in a second. Threes seem to be my killer at the moment. My AA-QQ are getting destroyed also. I dont know the correct way to play them anymore. I am thinking of trying a new tack with them and betting them moderately PF and continue to bet modestly with them on the streets. I wonder if there is anyway to play them correctly for a good sized pot. They literally are only good for a small pot but will lose you a big pot. Something to ponder...

Here is an example of what has been happening to me but this time I resucked.

I raise PF w/JJ get 2 callers. Make a reasonable cont. bet on a low flop say 368 (cant recall). A shorty pushes all-in for about $100 more. I figure (as I always do) I am probably beat but am not going to fold an overpair to a short stack, thus I call. We flip cards and he has A3!! But of course the turn came a 3 and I was drawing to 2 outs. But as I stated this time I got my Jack.

Many stories like this without the happy ending.

My goal this week is to make $1200, far too early to guess whether I will or even if I will be up anything by the end. The grind has been that much of a slog to make me so negative. Ah well...if I can get a run going my attitude will change. Poker is a fickle mistress.

No good last week

Ok, last week wasnt much fun and I ended u losing about $430 total. I basically lost a big chunk on one day and couldnt recover, ie. $1200. I got a ton of good cards too but they always got compromised or beaten. That is, I lost with the following pp's tripping on the flop - AA, 99 & 88. If those werent enough lost w/QQ 6 times! JJ a few times and KK a few times. Easy to lose $1200 when that happens. Never could get it going for the rest of the week either.

Monday I managed to win $150. Lets see how this week goes...

New Dell XPS

Got my new computer last night so I got no poker in. Its the XPS 600 with a ton of improvements and way faster than my old one. I have a game I play called City of Villains that I couldnt play with full graphics and I had lag when playing it anyway. Now I have maxed graphics and zero lag - it rocks! I also bought a second monitor so now I have two 20" flatscreens hooked up to the new desktop. Took me a while how to get it running right but I got there in the end and now I feel rather cool. They take up most of my desk space so I am not sure where to hook-up my new printer/scanner. I also bought a wireless kepyboard and mouse which I also think is pretty cool. I am going to keep my old computer and hook it up to the second monitor whenever I want to. I also need to transfer some files over tonight.

Once again, thank you to poker for giving me the cash to spend,

In bits and pieces

Always nice to start the week with a profit, it pretty much came in small chunks but I dont care how it comes as long as it keeps coming! Cant think of anything worth saying so I guess I'll leave it here.

Week 1 2006

First week is over for the year and was a good one. Managed to squeak out a $2200 profit and had a couple of swings doing it. Had a $700 down day on Weds. and then on Sunday I lost $400 to fight back and turn it into a $200 profit - now that made me happy! On the flipside twice this week I was doubled up when I shouldnt have been. By that I mean the person should have folded their piece of shit hand but didnt...I do love them though, bless their hearts. The hand that really brought me back from my loss on Sunday night was this...

2/4 NL, UTG limps, UTG+1 limps, me in MP raise to $24 w/QQ folds to UTG who thinks for a while then pushes all-in an additional $50 (he often does this), UTG+1 also thinks for a while and calls. No way I am just calling here so I raise UTG+1 another $200 leaving me $90 left. UTG+1 puts me all-in. Board 4xTT4. UTG had JJ, UTG+1 had A5s!!!!

The $400 hand I lost in hindsight I bet incorrectly PF but here it is. UTG limps, me in EP raise to $20 w/AA, MP calls, LP (bigtack w/$1100) raises to $40, UTG calls, I reraise to $200 (I had a $530 stack), MP calls putting him all-in and LP calls too. Flop was Q55 and I bet $200, LP puts me all-in as he has QQ. In hindsight I realize that because LP had a huge stack I needed to just go all-in. I was being my usual self and making it expensive but low enough someone might call and it bit me in the butt. I was going to be committed to any flop so I needed to have bet all or close to all my stack PF. Live and learn.

Either way very happy witht he start to the year...how good/bad will week 2 be?

I said I would...

YAY me, I won all the money back I lost the other day. Puts me back up for the week and on target to aim for a $1k+ week...whether I do or not remains to be seen.

Lets see the big hand that got me going was as follows...

On 2/4 I called a $18 bet w/JJ which put us headsup and the flop came 234 and he bet pot $46 and I raised $46. One because I do have an overpair and plenty of people make cont. bets so he could have AK/AQ. Well he called. Turn was a J (hehe), he checked and I bet $125, he called. Turn was an x and he checked and I pushed $250 and he called w/QQ. Not sure what he put me on to call me the whole way bit thank-you!

On a 1/2 table I raised a bunch of limpers to $14 from the BB w/AA and got one MP caller. Flop came 47T and I bet $25 and MP raised it to $60 (MP had $170 left). Decision time...it took me a while to decide but I decided if I am not the best so be it and pushed, he called w/KK and I held up...whew! In a similar situation where I am MP and hit a set I think I will make his sized raise, as to me it doesnt look like a set bet, thus my push. It might be the best way to get an overpair all-in on the flop vs a set.

I also overplayed a couple of hands for a lot of chips (about $350 total loss) but maanged to get the chips back eventually. Hate when I overplay, trying to bully someone out of a hand - rarely works.

Anyway a great day and put me in good spirits for the remainder of the week. My private goal is to make $50k this year which is a BIG ask but its what I am aiming for. Talk to me in 11 months...

Oh!...one of those days!

Yep, had another one of those days where you get shat on and nothing works. Admittedly I also tried to outplay people a couple of times and got burned but most of it was about flops either missing me or fucking me. Lost all my profit for the week so far and a bit more...meh, such is poker. But that is ok because I feel confident today will be a good one. I'll let you know tomorrow.

2006 begins

What a year 2005 was for me!! Amazing. My poker profits have helped me out so much it truly astounds me and I simply wonder how long this good fortune will last. I know without a doubt poker is the main reason I was able to buy my very first home in 2005. I know meeting the monthly mortgage payments would have been tremendously hard without a boost to my income. Poker made it easy to meet those bills. I now have the money to do some things I have wanted to do for decades and I dont worry about spending significant money anymore. At the same time I am not stupid and realize that my good fortune could end at any time. Thus I will always make sure I keep a significant portion of it in my bank for a rainy day.

So I was back to the grind this week and can happily report I am off with a profit for the week (at least so far). I am going to play at 2/4 NL now rather than the much easier 1/2 and see how I do. Its time to go up and give myself the opportunity of increasing my potential profits. Time will tell how well it works, but I am hopeful.

Wish me luck!