Day 7 update

I just finished with my day 7 games. I've moved up to four tables and I'm still moving upward with the bankroll. I had a couple of losing sessions but that's to be expected. I now have in almost 7000 hands of 4NL and my Carbon bankroll is $75.45 with a 10bb/100 win-rate. Of course 7000 is a tiny sample size but it's a good start. Today's profit was $18 but yesterday I was down about $12 so today was getting back my losses from yesterday while still managing to make a few bucks.

No progress on the Hero roll, it's still just under $20 but I've been concentrating mostly on my cash game and haven't really played any MTTs or even freerolls on Hero the last few days. I may or may not work on that much right now.

Surprisingly, at least for now, I'm actually enjoying playing cash which is pretty much a first. I'm not tilting much at all and I'm doing better at staying focused. I just hope it last!!!

Step Over it and Keep Walking....

Day 5 of the bankroll building challenge is complete. I got in 1000 hands of cash today and made another $7. Carbon bankroll is now $61 for a $50 profit since the start. It's totally baby steps and is taking some patience but it's still going well, so far. It's poker, bad days are bound to happen. As a matter of fact after my first session today I was down 2.5 buy ins but the next two sessions went much better and I ended with a small profit.

The last few Sundays playing MTTs were pretty brutal and I ended those days in a pretty terrible mood. Playing cash today was so much less stressful and I'm really starting to enjoy playing cash. One of the hardest things about poker is getting through the downswings and bad days but you have to push on and realize that every day can't be a winning day.

For now I'm still crawling through 4NL and hopefully by next weekend I'll be up to 10NL with a little luck and lots of study and review. I want to have 25 buy ins for 10NL so it'll take some volume and some run good to there in a week. Here's to doing it!

Yoda "There is no try"!

After my fourth day of playing 4NL cash my Carbon bankroll after rakeback is up to almost $55, so I've made $41 so far. I'm actually enjoying playing cash, it's so much less stressful than MTTs. I started the first day with only one table, then day two played two tables and then three tables the last couple of days. I can handle five or six pretty easily but I'm trying to pay closer attention and find any leaks I can, so for now I'll keep it at three for awhile.

As for the Hero challenge, Friday night I finished third in the 3 am 6 max freeroll for $20 taking me up to $32. Today I played a couple of $2.20 45s and a couple of supers and I'm now down to about $19. I think I'm going to just stick with cash on Carbon for the next few days except for playing some freerolls on Hero. Hero has some exclusive freerolls that play much better than the Merge freerolls so I really don't mind playing those.

Hopefully by the next update I will have doubled my Carbon bankroll. Wait, as Yoda said it's either do or don't do, there is no try! So by the next update I WILL double my Carbon bankroll. My the flop be with me. God that was cheesy, forgive me. :-)

The Bankroll Grind

In my last entry I talked about crossroads and decisions and I'm still in limbo as far as that goes. In the meantime my bankroll has suffered much damage after a lengthy period of what is more than likely a combination of runbad, playbad and play even worse due to the runbad. So I am trying to grind it back up as follows...

Hero: Bankroll $16.50

Will play freerolls and micro MTTs and some micro SNGs to try to build this back up.

No progress at this point.

Carbon: Bankroll $11.50 as of Jan. 10

Will play 4NL on Carbon to grind this up.

After playing a few hundred hands yesterday and today playing one to two tables (omg how boring but necessary) I'm up to $24.32 so I've more than doubled my starting amount.

I'm keeping the two separated as to what I play to see which I can run up the fastest. So only cash on Carbon and only MTTs and SNGs on Hero.

I've ran my roll up from a small amount more than once so I have faith and lots of hope that I can do it again. I will post updates at least every other day as to my progress.

Onward and upward!

Crossroads and Decisions

I've reached a point where I'm going to have to make some decisions. It happens, things don't always go like we hope. Obstacles get thrown in our way and we have to decide which path to take to get around these obstacles. We can stay where we are spinning our wheels and trying to hang on to something that is clearly not working out or we can choose the easy path or the more difficult, but most likely better path, around the obstacle. That is where I am now after doing quite a few months of wheel spinning instead of moving on.

Since it's a new year it seems like the perfect time to make some decisions and start things out right especially since this may be our last year on earth ...

A little humor always helps.

Anyway a little over three years ago I discovered the game of poker and fell head over heels, obsessively in love. I fell in love with the game and the poker community as a whole. I worked on learning everything I could about the game and worked on becoming a winning player. I was doing okay between February 2010 and April 2015 and had moved from a breakeven player to a small winning player and was loving every minute of the game. Then came the obstacle otherwise know as Black Friday when the U.S. Department of Justice shut down the three major poker sites. After losing my job the previous October I had thrown everything into improving my poker game and so for me April 15, 2011 dealt me a pretty crushing blow. I had a tough time getting over the feeling of being totally screwed over by my own government and getting over the loss of playing on a site that I dearly loved, PokerStars.

As I said, I've spent the last few months since April trying to figure out what to do. I've been playing since then on Merge but with the exception of October I haven't managed to have another winning month. So here I am standing at the crossroads trying to figure out which path to take.

On a side note, is having a blog and assuming more than two people, if that, even give a rats ass what I have to say egotistical and arrogant? I tend to think it might just be but I digress...

I'm considering the following:

The difficult and scary but possibly very rewarding path - Investing in a franchise and starting an elderly care business.

The easy but very unrewarding path - Getting a regular job in some field in which I have some experience.

The wheel spinning stagnant path - Continue trying to make a living playing poker.

So there it is, path one will more or less mean giving up poker for now because I doubt seriously I'll have any spare time. Path two will mean dropping poker for awhile but probably picking it back up in a few months. I tend to think I'm to the point where taking an extended break from poker is a good thing for me to do, as hard for me as it will be. Ah but the conundrum, winners never quit and quitters never win but I think it's at least necessary to make a decision between one and two and take that much needed break or give up poker completely.

I'll know more about the franchise opportunity in a few days and if anyone actually cares I'll keep this blog updated as to my decisions.

Happy New Year!

Here's to a better and more prosperous 2012.

One of the poker forums I participate in has a new thread "Best moment of 2011", only one person has posted so far and the thread was started on December 27th. Unfortunately, at least for U.S. online poker players 2011 was anything but a great year. I've honestly tried to reply to the thread a few times but just can't come up with much. I did win a couple of MTTs with over 300 players on Merge and had quite a few final tables and overall my game, mindset and thought process has improved quite a bit but it's just hard to say those things would qualify as a best moment. So that said I'm hoping for several best moments in 2012. Hopefully I'm due for some.

As for legislation, the DOJ statement on the Wire Act applying only to sports betting, while not as big a deal as some people thing it is imo, is at least a step in the right direction as far as hopefully getting some online poker legislation started in the U.S. You can read more about it here.

On a bit of weird note, I seem to have picked up an obsessive hater. It's pretty weird actually since this person has only played about 91 tournaments and 1600 hands of mostly limit holdem cash on PokerStars and really played nothing I even played. I must have pissed her off in some game on Merge but I have no idea what her username on Merge is so I have no idea what/where it was. She (I'm assuming she since I referred to her as dude and she replied saying she wasn't a dude) left me a nasty message on Poker Table Ratings on my Merge username rating page, to which I replied with an apology for whatever is was I did. She said I berated someone, her I'm assuming, which I admit to very rarely but occasionally saying something to a very few people in chat but usually only as a reply to something said to me and I try my best not to since it's really dumb and inexcusable but we all have bad days once in awhile. She has continued to reply back with really outrageous statements, foul language and name calling, even after I apologized initially. She has obviously googled me and found this blog and other information about me since she mentioned these things in her crazy replies. I made the mistake of replying back to her a few times but I really wish I hadn't. I have no idea what in the world I did to this nut but no more than she plays I couldn't of run into her on more than couple of occasions. I've reported her to PTR and asked that she be banned from posting anymore on my ratings page and I informed her that I had done this. She's obviously a bit unbalanced or just extremely young and immature but damn how nuts this is! As they say haters gonna hate!

Well I hope everyone has a great 2012! Good luck at whatever you pursue!