I'm back baby!

Wow it's been almost 4 years.

I busted that last $500 playing poorly and then deposited another $300 and eventually busted that playing worse.

I deposited $50 last week on Bovada and I have ran that up to $157 playing 6 max Zone NL. 

45 minutes first session and 55 minutes tonight.

Seems easier for me to fold pre-flop when there's no table dynamics other than position.   Less talking myself into dumb plays because of 'image'. 

Or maybe it's just beginners luck. 

Oct-Nov

I didn't play nearly as much this past month but the account is still doing fine - $559.  That includes two or three $10 tourneys that I didn't cash in.

I haven't played since almost a week ago but I certainly had a good 30 days.  

There were no huge downswings this time thanks to good luck and playing a little better.  

Balance $523.59

Well it's been a month and I still have money so it's time for another update I guess.


The bankroll shot up to $355 a few days after my last update and then I went on tilt for the first time calling off with 2nd and 3rd best time and time again to lose almost $200 in a couple of days.  Bad times.


I have since rebuilt back up to $344 still sticking to the $25 zone/rush tables on Bovada.  My plans are to stay at this level for the forseeable future as I gain experience with NL cash.  It feels good to recover everything that was lost after that downswing but I know there are plenty more downswings in my future if I stick with it.

My latest try

6 days after my last post I cashed out a little over $1,000 again after running my $2,000 down to $1,500 playing mostly 2/4 with a little 3/6.

 I then jumped up to 4/8 and made $65 but figured the $1,500 was at risk doing stupid stuff like that so I cashed out down to $500.

 In the next 2 weeks I made $250 at .5/1 and 1/2 and then lost all of that in one night playing 1/2. I made $300 playing 2/4 in the following 3 days and then my last entry was a negative $127 playing 2/4 and 3/6. I quickly lost the remaining $653 playing 3/6 and 4/8 with some 2/4 thrown in. I think.

So all told in 3 1/2 months I made around $1,750 playing poker on Bovada which neatly lines up to my MTT score. Yay me.

 I certainly have proven that I can't handle the swings of limit poker above .5/1. I get much too emotional watching the money go up and down. I have never been able to disassociate myself from the money. I've always been much too invested in following it's progress and that's something the good players don't do. They concentrate on the skill of the game, not the $$s going up and down.

I have said all of this to say I finally deposited more $ on Bovada at the beginning of July to play MTTs. I quickly lost the $150 playing cash omaha and one $33 MTT. 2 weeks later I tried again with $50 deciding I would try zone NL poker at the $25 tables.

I have never been a good NL cash player, always way too loose and constantly trying to outplay the other players at the table. Zone poker allows me to fold hands and instantly be seated at a new table so I play less hands. I have been playing ABC poker, just stealing slightly more than usual since the tables are a little too tight pre-flop IMO. I have found that I hardly tilt since I am not trying to outplay anybody after a beat - it is a table of entirely new anonymous players that don't know that I just screwed up or got screwed. The play is typically bad so I am interested to see where it takes me this fall as the tables load back up with football gamblers.

Pokertracker tells me I am 11 hours and 2,400 hands into this experiment and my bankroll is up to almost $240.  I am looking forward to playing 3 or 4 hours a week and see where the cards take me.

March was a wild ride

March was puttering along better than expected as I beat up on the 1/2 and 2/4 games and then, playing out of my bankroll, I lost $300 in a 3/6 game very, very quickly - then another $250 4 tabling 2/4 on tilt. Then I moved up to 10/20 for 3 hands and survived it, winning 2 of the 3 for $200. Then I lost more at 3/6 and much more at 4/8 and got some back at 8/16 and finally started to rebuild my roll at 2/4. I bounced from $1360 in my account to a low of $370 and then was back in the high 800s playing 2/4 and 1/2 when I accidentally entered a $15.50 satellite to a $109 MTT using my rake back points. I won the 9 person satellite and decided to enter the $10,000 guaranteed 6 max LIMIT event last Wednesday. There were 143 entrants and at least 100 didn't know what the hell they were doing. I had a nice chip stack for most of the night and when we got into the money with 27 left I was in the top 3. Going into the final table I had the chip lead and then my turned flush lost to flopped quads and I threw away more chips to the point that I had to double up twice to keep from going out in 5th. I recovered to get 3rd and $1787.50!!! I literally went from less than $400 in my account and feeling depressed about making the same old mistakes over and over again to over $2600 in a matter of 7 days. I finished the month at 2/4 and played/ran well to the point that I was able to cash out a little over $1,000 yesterday to leave me at $2,000 for more 2/4 in April. I plan to play 5,000-8,000 hands of 2/4 in April and hopefully make somewhere between $400 and $1,000. For the month I made $2,169.53 which barely beat April of 2009 for my best month ever! Through 4500 hands in 2014 I'm running at 3.6 BB/100 at 2/4 which is pretty insane but not as insane as 8.76 BB/100 through 4,000 hands at 1/2! Tiny sample size but these are the worst players I've ever seen. The only players that compare are probably the 2005 Party Poker days. Good times. Here's the particulars of March including some ugly tilt #s in 3/6 and 4/8:

The Year So Far