Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011

Well my first full year of playing poker for real money has come to an end and overall I can't complain. In March I won my first (and unfortunately last for the year) big field MTT when I took down the $4.40 4 max for $640. After a slight losing month in April I continued to finish each month with a profit until last month where I finished slightly in the red.

I've learned a lot this year and my game has improved considerably. I'm certainly not where I hope to be by this time next year but hopefully I will continue to win more and more. Poker is a never ending challenge and online poker is truly challenging. I've had moments where I just wanted to quit and moments where I never wanted to quit when things were going so well. Poker is tough roller coaster to ride but hopefully the end results will make the uphill climb well worth the struggle.

I've made some truly great poker friends and found a great support network of fellow players. I can't stress more how important it is to find others to share your love of poker with and to bounce hands and plays off of. Thanks to everyone who's made this year so great with your friendship and support.

In a few days I'll post my goals for 2011 and for this month. Right now I'm taking a bit of a break to decide which game to stick with. This has been a constant battle for me and one of the biggest hindrances to my success in poker. I truly believe specialization is the best way to become a good player but I've just struggled with finding the game for me.

Good luck to everyone in 2011! May all your poker dreams come true.

Merry Christmas and Poker Prosperous New Year!

Well my first winning year at poker is coming to an end. I am hopeful for a last minute bang up win for a real end of the year bankroll boast but I'm just happy to end the year with a small but decent profit and a double digit ROI.

Last February 1, I was broke on PokerStars and decided to make my last deposit of a mere $30, swearing I wasn't going to ever deposit again. Well it's been all uphill since then. By the end March I had turned that final $30 deposit into $1000 and actually made a withdrawal. It's been up and down since then and at one time I managed to lose back down around $30 but quickly pulled that back up and haven't gotten lower than a few hundred since. So no more deposit since then.

Below is my graph from PokerTracker3 showing my information for the this year. I love seeing the lovely line continuing to head in an upward direction.

Here's to a great 2011! Hopefully I'll add at least one more digit to my profit by early 2011.

We've been screwed....

Well looks like our wonderful crooked, stupid politicians have figured out a way to push through legislation to make online poker legal, but at what price?

I'm all for legalization, regulation and I don't even mind the taxation too much but there are many things that may be in this bill that I don't like at all.

The worst thing is 15 months with no online poker. What are people who play online for a living supposed to do? Their online winnings pay their bills. Many of them have families and mortgages and other bills that have to be paid.

Many online players live no where near a casino and even those who do can't make anything like the same amount of money live as they do online.

Why does there need to be a 15 month blackout? In my opinion it's in order to give brick and mortar casino corporations like Harrah's and MGM a leg up in starting up their own online poker rooms. It's obvious both companies have Harry Reid in their back pockets. Unfortunately I think if this bill gets through we can anticipate Harrah's and MGM having a monopoly on the U.S. market.

Another thing is the part about non U.S. citizens not being allowed to play on U.S. sites. Oh no, no one but U.S. players for 3 years, tell me it isn't true. Why should the U.S. not want to get tax dollars from foreign depositors.

And my favorite, the state opt out clause. If this goes through with most states who currently have no law prohibiting online gambling or skill games automatically opted in then fine but if only states with legalized gambling are automatically opted in then I'm so screwed because Georgia will never put through legislation to opt in.

I feel screwed over by the PPA, I really don't know how they can support this legislation. I think we will all be better off if it doesn't pass. I could be wrong but there definitely needs to be some serious modifications to the original bill.

Poker as we know it may be coming to an end. So let me grind away while I can. What really sucks is I recently lost my job and was hoping to be able to make some money playing poker and now if this bill passes I may not even have that.

Hummm, my husband's company has an office in Montreal. Maybe I should start learning French.

Over a month...

...and things are still going well! I really need to step up my volume and narrow down the type of games I'm playing but things are still going well overall.

I'm currently 3rd for the month and year in the PokerStars Women's League and can hopefully finish the month 1st in both, wish me luck and send me good karma. First for the year is a great accomplishment and comes with a $1500 bonus plus a luxury package to a live women's tournament.

The Women's League was a great idea on PokerStars part. It has brought many women to the world of online play who would have never tried it without the comfort of a special league where they could play with only women.

I never understood before how many women just didn't like playing with men. Playing against men never bothered me even when I first started playing so it never dawned on me that some women wanted to only play against other women. So that said I'm so glad PokerStars created the league to give them a comfortable place to play.

I have met some of the nicest women through the league games. Many of us have become friends on Facebook and talk with each other through Skype. I have gotten involved with several women's poker groups. I can't wait for the opportunity to play in a live women's game. So funny a few months ago I would have never thought I would have said that.

Well here's to more good poker days to come...

Appears that not working agrees with me...

I have now been unemployed for 24 days and over that 24 days I have won several nice MTsngs and had some cashes in a couple of MTTs. Overall I've never played better. My mindset is good and it shows in my games. I still have several nice size leaks to work on but don't we all.

I finally took down a $3.30 rebuy 180 man on Stars for a very nice profit. That's a pretty tough game and 5th is the best finish I had before. I've also taken down a few other MTsngs and it certainly feels nice to finish first out of 90 to 180 players.

I played the Turbo Takedown on Sunday and finished in the top 10% for $105. Not bad for the biggest donk-a-ment of the month.

Well onward and upward!!! Hope to report more winnings soon!

Wow I think this is the shortest blog I've ever written.

Suckout Saturdays and Shitty Sundays

Well after a really good week the weekend just sucked! I made within $50 of my former weekly salary last week so I really can't complain but yesterday and today I just took one ass whooping after another. Boats sunk by quads, flush over flush but you know it's time to quit when it's straight flush over the nut flush. Weekends are so rough with all the lucky weekend warriors out there getting lucky at every hands turn and sucking out with trash hands that any half decent player would snap fold. But hey it's poker and that kind of crap happens all the time.

As you may have noticed in the second sentence I said former job. That's right lost the day job about a week and a half ago. Not unhappy to be rid of that crappy job and through with the nutty bitch I worked for but it was unplanned and it's an adjustment. Last week I was relieved and in a great mood but this weekend I think some of the reality has set in and I'm trying to adjust to that.

I've come to the realization that my mood so directly affects my game. Last week when I was in a great mood I played wonderfully and won and cashed plenty but this weekend my mood has sucked and so has my game. I'm going to have to watch that and be careful not to play when I'm not in a good mood. Luckily I'm not a moody person so as soon and I get through all this adjustment to my new situation I think I'll be fine and my game will be fine.

Right after the job status change I was asked to be the official moderator for the PokerVT forum and that carried a free membership and few other nice perks so I was really happy about that.

Well life goes on donkeys suck out and we continue to improve our game and most importantly WIN MORE!

Good luck at tables!

Donkeys, can't live 'em can't win without 'em...

As anyone reading this knows, I've been playing in the women's league games on Pokerstars and despite the number of women playing who are the biggest, luckiest, donkeys I've ever seen I've been doing pretty well in these games. The first month I played I finished number 8 on the women's tournament leader board and I finished last month in 8th place as well.

I had really hoped for the top five but I seemed to run badly and play badly in these game the first half of the month. Around mid-month I realized the reason I wasn't doing so well wasn't run bad it was play bad. As I said above these games are so donkey filled it's not funny. I was letting the awful play of the luckbox donkeys put me on perpetual tilt and thus found it impossible to get anywhere in the games.

It wasn't obvious tilt, like cussing, screaming, mouse throwing tilt it was underlaying attitude tilt. With obvious tilt you tilt, scream, holler and get over it. With attitude tilt you often don't even realize you are tilted but it effects your game negatively. I was underestimating my opponents and I was overestimating them as well. Both over and under estimation is bad but by overestimating them I was screwing up my thinking about their ranges and such and this was causing me to make incorrect decisions. The same problem is true with underestimation in that I don't put them on correct ranges then either.

I have now faced the fact that 75% of the women playing in this league are inexperienced novice players, i.e. fish or donkeys. I was an inexperienced novice player at one time myself and I was as big of a fish/donkey as any of these women. So I decided to try to remember how I played and thought when I was at the same point they are with my play and honestly this has helped my game against them tremendously. I pulled up some old hand histories and looked through them and after being appalled at my horrendous play I realized what I was learning from these old hand histories is how these ladies are thinking. Now when involved in a hand against one of these fish, er I mean women I try to think how I would have played certain hands when I was where they are now and it really helps me make better decisions.

All in all donkeys get lucky and donkey suck out on us with their trash hands that they had no better sense (or experience) than to play but the more we get our heads around their thinking the better we can effectively play against them and have positive results.

So hoping for much better results this month - top five here I come (I hope).