$50 night

Woo-hoo. You may laugh but the last time I had a bigger night was May 8th during my aborted PL Omaha days.

6/24/2006
($2.55)
30 minutes 4 .05/.10 NL tables

6/26/2006
$55.00
2 .05/.10 NL tables 2 hours

6/26/2006
($4.40)
1 $4.40 180 person sng. Ouch. Out in 23rd. Couldn't win 2 huge hands with AK versus 1010 and AJ versus 44. went from 6th with 32 left to out 9 players later. Played well but couldn't win a race late. The best part about the tourney was the 2 cash tables I was playing at the same time. People get even more stupid (apparently) against a big stack in cash games - at least at .05/.10. I don't understand it. Once I got my stack to $25 it just took off on it's own. People were trying to bully me around. It didn't work. At one time I was up $44 on one table and $18 on the other. Crazy.

Blogger Tourney & a couple of .05/.10 sessions

Got off to a great start flopping the nut straight with 74o in the BB and doubling up against 99. In top 20 in chips with 2000 left and got moved and seated right next to another top 15 chipper. So stupid. * sigh* 3 guys at the table and the rest were sitting out and the lower chip stack raising a ton preflop then hit incredible hands. Big 9000 chip hand was him 99 on QJ9 flop me J10. turn J and I'm dead down to 2000 chips. Pushed a couple of times after his constant preflop raising and he finally calls with 1010 versus my A5. Hit 2 pair on flop and he hit river flush.
Oh well. Could've easily been top chips but for some horrible luck and my impatience. Could've easily taken it easy there for awhile but for some reason I was trying to bust the lower chipstack. It's easy to screw around in freerolls but I really was trying to build my chipstack - just way too aggresively and it didn't help running into some bad luck.

Played some more .05/.10 cash along with a $4.40 180 person Tuesday night. In the $4.40 I got it all in on a flop of 10 8 X with A 10 and Mr. Donkey calls off all 1500 chips with J9 OESD. Nice. 7 on the river and I was dead. Lost .10 playing 2 NL tables for an hour so no biggee.

This morning I played 4 .05/.10 NL tables for 30 minutes and made $9 or $10. Made one fairly dumb mistake by calling down on the river after the 3rd flush card came on a 99742 board. I could've pushed on the flop and gotten him off of his flush. Probably - not certain. 1 caller besides me on the river - 1 had the nut flush and the other had K9. I had A9. Lost $5 there. It's nothing in terms of money but that's not the point. The point is making better decisions while learning NL cash and I certainly thought one of the two had the flush.

Funny hand with J10 on Q98 flop versus a guy with Q9. Turn K and river A didn't deter him from calling my $6 reraise on the river (he had bet $1.50 into a $3 pot). To me it seemed like an easy muck for him with that hand but what do I know? :)

Up to $134. I'm mulling over goals at .05/.10 now. $1000 by the end of the year exclusively at .05/.10 NL and $4.40 tourneys? That's what I'm thinking right now. 20 buy-ins is a very safe bankroll for NL and .05/.10 has a buy-in of $10. I dunno it would be hard not to move up once I get to the required $500 level. I always like to be overrolled but $900 at .05/.10 seems a little ridiculous. Then again it would be fun to prove that a person can make $1000 at .05/.10 5 hours a week in 6 months.

More .05/.10 NL 6 Max

I'll detail my blogger MTT tomorrow or sometime soon.

6/13/2006
$3,865.35
$12.55
15 minutes 3 .05/.10 NL tables
6/15/2006
$3,828.36
($36.99)
1.5 hours 3 .05/.10 NL tables. Tilted horribly after getting up $17 on the session and then getting sucked out on repeatedly which led to huge reraises by me when I had the 2nd best hand again and again. Whoops.
6/19/2006
$3,866.88
$38.52
3 hours 2 .05/.10 NL tables and one $4.40 180 person sng. Finished 8th for $18 after running 10 6 offsuit from the button into JJ on BB. Oh well. The players are horrible. I had some terrible beats or I would've had a mountain of chips heading into final table. Put one bad beat on a guy my A6 beating A8 to stay alive but I sucked at races tonight. Played fairly aggressively to gain chips when there was less than 25 left. Would've loved to have someone other than the chip leader sitting directly to my left. Made a stupid laydown of QQ after getting raised and reraised by bigger stacks earlier on. Was really 50/50 for me. I changed my mind 3 times before laying it down and seeing JJ and 77. Stupid. *sigh.* Anyway, it was fun and I almost hit the 'big' cash lol. Pays something like $240 or so for 1st. I'll certainly play one again soon. The players are really, really bad. They kept bluffing into dry side pots when there was a person all-in about to be eliminated - stuff like that. It was not hard to get chips in the 1st hour. You basically just have to play fairly tight and bet your big hands. They call down with crap and love to bluff with nothing.

Back up to $129 online at Stars after a low of $41. That's my real bankroll now since the other money is going to new house stuff. The offline roll will be all gone within 6 weeks. I've been having fun at the lower stakes and improving my NL game. It's nice to not want to break things after dropping 3 or 4 hundred dollars on a night of badbeats (or one badbeat in a 1/2 NL game - still can't shake that memory lol.)

A little poker

Played a 2 1/2 hour session tonight. 500 FPP tourney busted in 57th out of 253 when my AJ was drawn out on to lose a 7000 chip pot and then I got flushed again on the river to knock me out when I had fought back to 9000 chips. Oh well.

Played in a $1.10 MTT at the same time lol. Busted in 100th getting $1.48 for my troubles lol. It's always fun to play with guys that are a little worse than me.

Played 1 .05/.10 NL table the whole time and built my $6 stack up to $29 and then somehow lost it all the way back down to $7. I was pissed and tilted a little bit but I just kept on running into the nuts and then bluffed off a few more dollars. I got almost all of it back on this funny hand:

PokerStars Game #5238505079: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2006/06/13 - 00:23:00 (ET)Table 'Eridanus V' 6-max Seat #2 is the buttonSeat 1: matrix777 ($12.35 in chips) Seat 2: NSomNiac78 ($31.95 in chips) Seat 3: Scandolf ($2.70 in chips) Seat 4: Whatever ($10.20 in chips) Seat 5: KMarko ($2 in chips) Seat 6: justall ($6.10 in chips)

Scandolf: posts small blind $0.05
Whatever: posts big blind $0.10

*** HOLE CARDS ***Dealt to Whatever [Qh Qc]
KMarko: raises $0.30 to $0.40
justall: calls $0.40
matrix777: folds
NSomNiac78: raises $2.50 to $2.90
Scandolf: calls $2.65 and is all-in [5s 4h]
Whatever: raises $5.40 to $8.30
KMarko: folds
justall: calls $5.70 and is all-in [Ks Ac]
NSomNiac78: raises $5.40 to $13.70 [9d 9s]
Whatever: calls $1.90 and is all-in [Qh Qc]

*** FLOP *** [4c 3d 6h]
*** TURN *** [4c 3d 6h] [6s]
*** RIVER *** [4c 3d 6h 6s] [5d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Whatever: shows [Qh Qc] (two pair, Queens and Sixes)
NSomNiac78: mucks hand
Whatever collected $7.80 from side pot-2
justall: mucks hand
Scandolf said, "****ing bs"
Whatever collected $9.70 from side pot-1
Scandolf: shows [5s 4h] (two pair, Sixes and Fives)
Whatever collected $10.65 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***Total pot $29.60
Main pot $10.65. Side pot-1 $9.70.
Side pot-2 $7.80. Rake $1.45
Board [4c 3d 6h 6s 5d]

NSomNiac78 (button) mucked [9d 9s]
Seat 3: Scandolf (small blind) showed [5s 4h] and lost with two pair, Sixes and Fives
Seat 4:Whatever (big blind) showed [Qh Qc] and won ($28.15) with two pair, Queens and Sixes
Seat 6: justall mucked [Ks Ac]

Tons of golf

And a little poker. Still just playing .05/.10 online about 1 to 2 hours a week or so. Up a few dollars - that's it. Gonna try and build my $80 to $200 on Stars and play in the June 18th blogger tourney. The $10 tables are so very soft. I make money 9 out of 10 times when I sit down but then get bored that 10th time and just play way too fast and lose $15. No excuse.

Played in a pub poker tourney last night for the first time since that dude got shot in the head. I had forgotten what it was like. I certainly need to play more hands early on when the blinds are low. J4o 1st hand in the BB and flop comes 6 4 2 with like 5 limpers. check, check,bet, raise, fold, I fold, call, call. With blinds 10/20 and about 200 in the pot bet 40, call, call. River bet, call, call. 94 beats 54 (pair of 4s with 9 kicker beating 5 kicker) and ace hi. Wow, I had forgotten what it was like lol.

2nd hand on the SB I get aces. 5 limpers and a raise and I reraise to 150 (start with 1100 chips, blinds at 10/20). 3 callers. Oops. 862 with 2 clubs on the flop so I push. They all 3 agonize before eventually folding. My brother shows up and gets aces on his 2nd hand and gets busted when 2 8s come on the flop and he can't fold. Whoops.

Went broke after about an hour and a 1/2 pushing with A8s after getting down to 900 chips and blinds about to go to 200/400. A set of kings on the flop along with a guy holding queens along with KJ hitting her king on the flop had me going home. Nothing quite like finishing in 4th in a 4 man race on your bust out hand. I had a great time anyway and will be playing again.

Live Poker is rigged:

I saw about 50 hands and saw aces twice, quad Kings, quad 2s, kings over queens on my last hand along with a set of 8s. Here's the funniest hand of the night:

AJ versus 23s. A22 flop gets AJ to go allin immediately called by 23. Ace on the turn and a 2 on the river. Rigged.

Oh, back on May 1st I joined a par 3 golf course that's like a mile from my house. Nice greens and a great place to practice chipping. So freaking important to have touch around the greens. Anyway it was $100 for 6 months so you can't beat that. Let's see... I played 17 straight days lol. Got down to +2 a couple of times but can't seem to get it to par. It WILL happen sometime this summer.

I've played big boy golf at the country club about once a week since April and am gradually improving. Bought a nice driver about 3 weeks ago and am finally hitting it decent. I've been a lifetime slicer but a lesson right after I bought it helped me out a lot. I almost drove 2 par 4s yesterday on route to 8 pars. I suck at golf so that was a big deal. Driver/wedge, driver/wedge, driver/9 iron is not a game I'm accustomed to playing lol. My 3 trips to the range this week to work exclusively on my driver have paid off. Alas I hit it out of bounds on like 4 holes so I still stumbled home with a 92 but that's still my best score of the year. Like I said, I suck.

I'm gonna try and get out for 18 more holes this afternoon and hopefully hit the range first for driver work.