Remember When Poker Was Fun...

... well it still is to be honest :-)

I was just looking through some old screenshots and came upon the one above. This was my very first MTT win on March 19, 2010 in the $4.40 4 max 1000 capped game on Stars. I wasn't very good back then so I have no idea how I won this tournament. Well  I guess that would be luckboxing for sure because I had little skill then. 

What's the funniest thing about this is how excited I was to win $640. Now I bitch and moan if that's all I win in a tournament, and unfortunately with only being able to play on the remaining US facing sites $640 is often 1st and 2nd place money in so many of the tournaments available. So I guess this is the part that's no fun really.  

Poker is just so much more stressful now for several reasons. First not having the big field MTTs that we had on PokerStars or Full Tilt makes the payouts so small it's very hard to win any significant money. Second playing the same real good regs in almost every game is extremely tough. Third playing for my only source of income (well household secondary income to be honest), especially in the current US conditions, is very stressful. So while I still enjoy playing and wouldn't give it up for anything it's just not the fun past-time that it used to be. 

There are some positives to the current situation though. I've had to really work much harder on my game than I ever would have if I were still playing on PokerStars, as I'm sure I've said previously, but all in all poker was just way more fun on Stars and Full Tilt.

On a different, but somewhat similar note, I'm contemplating spending a few weeks in Rosarito, MX playing back on Stars and the soon to relaunch Full Tilt. I don't have enough details to make a decision right now but it is currently an option. It would be so much fun and a great experience, not to mention an opportunity to make much more significant money. Some of the people going are really great players and it would be a great opportunity to learn from some the best, which makes it even more enticing. 

Hoping to finally have a good weekend, especially a good Sunday, this time so I have my fingers crossed. Making lots of money is always fun. 

The Day Off....

I had planned to not take any days off from poker until after Poker Maximus was over but after the last few grueling days I changed my mind and decided to take today off, it is after all Labor Day. I had planned to go to a fine arts festival at Marietta Square but the weather decided not to cooperate with that idea. Instead I slept until I decided to get up then went out for dinner and frozen yogurt. I'm about to watch a couple of movies with my daughter and then go to bed. I have to admit I couldn't help but rail one friend's final table but that was my only transgression for the day. He's been running pretty badly and I really wanted to rail him in hopes that he wins this. He works hard and he's really good at poker but he's been seeing the bad side of variance without much of a break for a too long. I'm actually railing him while writing this and he just suffered a couple of really nasty beats. I guess since technically this is a poker blog this is my second transgression for the day but what can I say. 

I'm really excited about Poker Maximus and I'm planning to spend the next couple of days reviewing, reading and working on leak finding to get ready. I'll play some but I'm going to play a bit of an abbreviated schedule and devote more time to working out some kinks. I've been getting way too frustrated after suffering some too frequent but typical beats over the last few days so I'm going to try to work on that aspect of my mental game as well. 

On another note PokerStars is running WCOOP with guarantees up in the millions while we poor U.S. players get Poker Maximus with a $530 buy in high stakes Main Event with only a $200,000 guarantee and a $60 buy in mid stakes Main Event with only a $150,000 guarantee. Lucky people who don't live here. Last Poker Maximus all the guarantees went up pretty high since the turn out was much higher than expected but with the departure of Lock Poker who knows if that will happen this time. 

I'm going to remember the 6 Ps while trying to get prepared for Poker Maximus: 

Proper 
Planning
Prevents 
Piss 
Poor 
Performance 

So here's to the 6 Ps and Poker Maximus! May the rungood commence!

Update: My friend finished 3rd, he recovered nicely from the first beat but lost a hand with QQ v JJ, the guy hit a set and that hand took most of his stack :( 

Practice as if you are the worst...

I recently realized after going through a long downswing that part of my problem was that my confidence level was really low. I second guessed every play I made and just didn't believe I'd ever get to playing winning poker. The lower my confidence sunk the more I just couldn't win. It became a vicious circle. 

During this time there were some poker friends who were very critical of my play and while I'm sure they meant to be constructive it just made my confidence even lower. I'm now around a new group of players and have found that I can hold my own with most of them. There are a few serious sickos who I will continue to strive to play as well as but for the most part I don't feel totally outmatched. When I first joined the Imawhale staking group I was really worried that the other MTT players would be so ahead of me that it would just make  my confidence worse but I found the exact opposite to be true. This is the nicest group of guys and they are all so supportive and helpful and they never make me feel like a poker moron, even though I can be one at times.  

Things are going so well, I just finished my first set of games and finished with a nice profit. My second set started off a little rough but it's starting to pick up. I had two final tables tonight with a first and second place finish and one other cash. Tonight at one of my tables I think I got one of the nicest compliments a tournament player can receive, two people at the table told me I scared them, LOL. I didn't think I was that scary actually and I'm glad to know I may have been mistaken. 

Just remember, poker can be a brutal game. Play your best and study hard and surround yourselves not with people who make you feel worse but with people who help you to feel better. 

The Monster Turn Around

It appears that my downswing is on the upswing. This week I won the coveted Mid-Week Monster on Merge for just over $4000 and the same night I made two other final tables with a second and third finish for a $5K day. I love $5K days and they’re hard to come by in the U.S. online poker world these days. 

Between last Saturday and today I made 7 final tables one of which was my first final table on the Revolution Network and two were on True Poker with the others on Black Chip Poker (Merge).  Since starting with Imawhale (see blog here) I’ve  made 11 final tables. My second biggest cash was forth in the True $50K guarantee for $3400. 

I have to say that my game today is much improved as compared to even six months ago. A lot of things that I had a hard time with a few months back have really started coming together and making sense to me . Poker is such a complicated game and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get to a point where you can really win consistently. In retrospect I really was running bad but I was also not playing my best either and the longer the runbad continued the worse it affected my game. 

I did a good bit of reading over the last couple of months and I read Jared Tendler’s The Mental Game of Poker which is a must read for any serious poker player. It will not only change the way you look at variance and your poker game but it will even help you with everyday life things as well. I love the learning concept and I’m really seeing where as my A game improves so does my C game so that even on a not so great day I’m playing the same game that I considered my A game a few months back, thus helping in the consistent winning department. 

Two other great books I’ve read that I highly recommend are Kill Everyone and Raiser’s Edge. Kill Everyone covers a lot of fundamentals without being boring to an intermediate player and Raiser’s Edge goes into much more complicated play on a more advanced level. Reading these three books helped me tied up many lose ends with things I was struggling with as well as giving me ideas for adding new twist and turns to my play book. (LOL I think that sounds lame but I’m leaving it.)

No matter how rough things seem and how shitty bad variance gets just know that:

1. It’s probably not all bad variance so work hard to step up your game.

2. The part of it that is bad variance is something you can do nothing about so deal with it and stick it out and it will end eventually. (Try to whine as little as possible, it's really annoying but a little is allowed)

My very favorite quote and one I repeat to myself often is...

“You will eventually run worse than you ever thought possible, the difference in a winner and a loser is the loser thinks he doesn’t deserve it” 

It’s true you will, I just did and guess what, I’m sure sometime in the future I’ll run even worse than this time. I’ve had a few stretches of bad variance and the good thing is with each new one I’m able to handle it better than the last one and that is progress. Yep that sounds lame too but oh well. Here’s to some extended run good and play good!

The Decision!

Wow it's been awhile since I've written a blog post. Well I wrote a couple but decided not to publish them since I felt they were unnecessarily negative and served no good purpose. I'm really good about blogging when things are going well and I have something to brag about but I don't blog much when things are going bad or just not so great. 


Variance reared it's ugly head the beginning of May and it's all been downhill since with little recovery. I think the runbad has improved and I've made a few final tables but no wins or decent cashes so my bankroll took a hard hit. As a result I made a decision to go with Imawhale.com staking group. I've looked into other staking groups before but I've always decided against them because I didn't want to have to worry about getting knee deep in makeup and I didn't feel that there were enough positive aspects of the groups I've had offers from. Imawhale is different, they reset makeup after each set of 300 games so you don't end up up to your eyeballs owing them every dime you make. They also have a Skype group for the MTT players and it's a great group of guys (yeah as usual I'm the only female) all of whom are good winning players, some even great winning players. We can share hands and strategy and help each other to improve. The support is great! If anyone is looking for MTT or cash game backing I highly recommend this group. 


I really think this has been one of the best decisions I've made in a long time. I'm really feeling good about poker again and looking forward to working with this group. I've never fully understood why so many poker players were staked but I'm starting to really understand it now. So here's to all the good that's to come! 

Up, up and away...

Well looks like the graph is moving the right direction. After a fairly slow month it's finishing up with a bang. Tonight I finished 4th in the $22 $17.5K guaranteed and 8th in the Sunday High Roller $60K guaranteed for a total of $2993 for the day bringing my total profit for the month up to $3666.  So far this year I've made just over $11K.


I really feel like my play has improved considerably. I've had a few coaching session over the last few weeks and they've help tremendously. I'm more willing to make riskier plays when necessary and I seem to be getting the timing of these plays right more often than not. I made a pretty dumb mistake tonight in the $17.5K which probably cost me a thousand or so, yep costly mistake. It was due to a couple of my worst leaks, 1. Acting too fast and 2. Not fully thinking through the villains range in that situation. I was also being a bit of an aggrotard with that play. Live and learn though, mistakes might cost me but at least I think I'm learning from them.


One more day to go so maybe I'll get lucky and win some more money tomorrow. Until then....


Edit 4/30: Finished 3rd in the $33 $6K guarantee tonight for another $740. Ran like God in that game until I ran my AJs into 99 and whiffed. Oh and I forgot about swapping some money to Hero so my actual profit for the month was actually about $4100 before the $740 tonight which actually counts for May since the game finished after midnight. 

Black Friday One Year later...

This time last year was one sad sad sad day for online poker in the U.S. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first found out, I doubt I'll ever forget it. It's kind of like when Elvis died, yeah I'm that old, or when Princess Diana died. I remember where I was and what I doing when I heard about those two tragedies too.

I was just starting to actually become a consistent winner at the game. On Black Friday I was getting ready to go out and run some errands and looked at my phone and saw an email from Lupe Soto and LIPS about the indictments. I remember throwing my phone on the bed a saying some things about it. I didn't realize the full extent of what was happening until a couple of hours later when I got home and saw all the talk on Skype, Facebook and Twitter and realized I couldn't register for any games on PokerStars.

I had over $4000 in my account and of course panicked a bit about that. I tried to make a withdrawal but later went back and cancelled it. One of my very first reactions, and this was way before anyone knew about the mess Full Tilt was in, was thank God my money is on PokerStars. I always felt that it was safe and that I would eventually get it. As everyone knows PokerStars came through and had everyone paid in a very short period of time.

PokerStars was starting SCOOP and I had already won a couple of satellite seats through the blogger freerolls and I was looking forward to the SCOOP games. It was the first time I was actually rolled to play most of the mid stakes games and I had great hopes of doing well. The ladies Sunday $55 had just started back up and I had final tabled 2 of the first 3 games and had gotten to play with Vanessa Selbst and Liv Boeree, I had even busted Liv in one the game and had gotten doubled up by Vanessa in another. These things like everything to do with Stars was over thanks to corporate greed, political corruption and government meddling in our private lives. Thousands of professional online players were out of work in the worse economy in decades. A billion dollar industry was shut down and all for what? I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Well that's the past, it's still sad but it's over and there is nothing we can do about it. On to the present, of course I'm still playing online and I'll continue to as long as there is a place to play. It's been a rough year with lots of poker ups and downs. I've managed to bust a bankroll more than once during the year but I had a good month in October and the last couple of months have been the best ever. Hopefully the DOJ will leave the remaining sites alone for awhile and things will continue on an upward trend. My game has never been better and it's improving daily. I have to say I don't think my game would be where it is without Black Friday. Making money on PokerStars was so much easier than it has been on Merge. For so long the competition was so tough there was no choice but to work hard on improvements. So I guess as they say every cloud has a silver lining and when one door closes another one opens.

Nevada and now New Jersey seem to be making great strides in legalizing online poker within their states and maybe this year we'll finally see some good federal legislation pushed through. We can continue to work for it and to hope but at least the states are starting to move in the right direction.

Well Happy Black Friday anniversary to everyone, such a sad day it was.