decent run

sunday, monday and tuesday i played a total of 18 games. out of those 18 games, i cashed in 11. so far a decent little run and puts me up this month so far. long way still to go, but feel good. my room mate and some guys at the bar we watched the chiefs game at were watching me play during the game and were amazed at the number of cashes especially since i was pretty card dead. my roommate said that i earned every one of those cashes the hard way - by playing my ass off. felt good. i decided to play a game at the $16 level tonight to see what the competition was like at that level. i totally won it. very cool. and i was my normal card dead, so when my bank roll reaches the next level again (which should be soon) i think im ready to give the $12 games another try.

watched the wsop final table tonight. in all honesty, i was a little disappointed in espn and the lack of actual hands shown. i think in two hours there was maybe 20 - 25 hands shown. seemed to be a whole lot of fluff about the players they were able to fit in tho. congrats to the guy who won. its an amazing feat no matter how you look at it. im hoping to win a satellite into it next summer - and would love to cash. we'll see.

the company that laid me off in may went through it again. in may they let about 90 -100 people go. word on the street is that another 300 hit the bricks tuesday. its a crazy time we are living in and my timing for trying this whole thing out couldn't be better (hope you caught the sarcasm in that statement) i am actually nervous about the economy. i have finally applied for unemployment and will be looking for work while im continuing to build my poker skills. since everyone else is looking for work too, it is going to be a tough environment. from what i understand, lots of the folks that were laid off with me still haven't found work. im seriously considering taking money out of my ever shrinking 401k to pay off student loans and my one cc so that i can have more flexibility in salary while looking for a job. the best of all worlds would be that i make this poker thing happen and dont need to get a job, but realistically, i better look now while i still have some flexibility.

keep those fingers crossed.
peace and love and happiness to all
k-

been sick so havent played much this week.

i did manage to play 33 games with 10 cashes and am down $1.40 for the week. not a great start to the month, but not horrible either.

hope everyone has a good weekend. bundle up - since its supposed to get cold.

peace and love and happiness to all.
k-

october was mixed but positive

happy November everyone - holy crap! can't believe its November already. as i was so nicely informed recently, only 7 more weeks to Xmas.

October results were a mixed bag. i ended the month up after taking a decent dive into the negative category, but never really felt like i got a rhythm going.

i felt that i took a step backwards in my playing for a while since a couple of leaks that i thought i had filled came out to play (like calling a value bet a few times when the only thing my hand beats was a bluff)

on the other hand - according to sharkscope there are a lot players out there who aren't in the black and I'm one of the few in the black no matter how little it is, so believe it or not that is one of the things that has actually re instilled my confidence level. those negative variance days really mess with my mind sometimes and after looking up a few players, i see that many are way worse off than i am - and that gives me hope that there really are a lot of fish out there. one guy has played over 11,000 games and is down. ($516) which isnt that much for that many games, but at the $6.50 level, its going to take him a lot of games to make up that difference.

last night i downloaded a sng wizard to help me analyze my game and the decisions i am making. i can download a games hand history into the software and whenever i have a decision when my chips stack is around 10 big blinds or if I'm in a hand with an opponent which has 10 bb or less, it analyzes my decision making. you can assign loose, aggressive etc to you opponent and it will tell you if you made decisions based on the correct math. the theory being that a majority of the most important decisions come then and it should help me identify and plug a leak faster.

i played around with it last night after downloading it and already know one thing about my game. there is a point when theoretically you should push with literally any two cards to try and steal the blinds and Ive always decided that ill push with any two cards that have some showdown potential. but really i have seen players get caught with 23o but they've stolen a lot of pots before that with crap and may not have made it as far if they weren't.

it will be interesting to see if my cash rate goes up after using this for awhile.

oh well - time to hit the tables.
peace and love an happiness to all.
k-

bar poker

ive spent years playing bar poker and i think its a great environment to get started in. yesterday we had our quarterly tournament. i was pleased with my play overall. i was patient, thoughtful and didn't get out of line more than once during the tourney. going to the final table i was second in chips, although the chip leader had me almost doubled. the final table was pretty tight and i was able to win a few pots uncontested and going into heads up i had the chip lead by a tiny margin which changed on the first hand. i called a one bump raise to 8000 with Q9, missed the flop and had to lay down my hand when the other player went all in. i found out after the tourney that he had AA. we went back and forsth for awhile, but on the last hand he raised nd i reraised all in with A3. he called with 99 and flopped trips and ended with a boat. i felt good about adding $100 to my bankroll for coming in second. the man i lost tois a great friend of mine and a good player in his own rights as he won last quarters tourney as well.

i think it may be one of my last if not my very last bar tourney as im not making it out to play as often as i used to since i am trying to play seriously. one thing that bar poker is good for is trying out new strategies and learning to understand peoples thinking behind specific moves since there is a lot of open information being passed about the table, so i will play occasionally.

october is almost over and as of today - im up more than i was in september which is the right direction, eh?

peace and love and happiness
k-

roller coaster riding

maybe the cure for my poker blues was to just bitch about it on my blog, because as soon as i started playing today, it was off to the races.

i played 15 games today and came in first 6 times. (FINALLY!!) and cashed in 2 more at 2nd, so 8 cashes overall is good and my month has totally turned around just that quick. im almost up to my high for the beginning of the month. they are right when they say this is a hard way to make an easy living. the emotional toll it takes when you lose a few is crazy. im so glad im tracking my games - it helps me calm down when i can quantify things. my roi since moving back to this level after today is back up to 15.33% and im cashing in 42.37% of the games since moving back down. still feeling good about the move down and am going to concentrate on getting playing time in every day to maximize my edge.

i have wondered what was considered a good rate, and everything ive read says if you can cash in about 40% of the games you are playing in, then you are considered a winning player, so i feel really good about that!

ttyl
peace and love and happiness
k-

still up and down

october has been a rough month. started the month up and currently am down about $20. i have made up some of the ground i lost when i was playing the $12 games, but not much. plenty of time to turn it around and as a matter of fact, my cash rate at the 6.50 game is back to around 40%, the problem im having right now is that im not getting first very often. most of my cashes are coming at 2nd or 3rd place. that is affecting the roi and i am working hard to increase my first places. not getting that extra money for first is making a big difference in profit.

not much else going on - i had a roommate move in last week, so we've been spending time getting to know each other. he seems to be a good guy and we are both making efforts to be pretty considerate, so its going well.

talk to you soon.
peace and love and happiness to all
k-

life outside the poker table is busy

its been a crazy week. as you know i went to columbia this past weekend. then a friend and i went to see tina turner on wed night and last night a friend got tickets for her bday for the john legend concert, so we went and saw him. both concerts were fabulous. seeing an icon like tina turner was awesome and john legend has such a smooth beautiful voice and such energy on stage. it was great to see them both. tomorrow im going to be doing a pub crawl in westport and downtown kc for cancer. then things should slow down for me.

poker is going a bit better since ive moved back down to the 6.50 level. my ROI is 14% for the time ive been back down - so i feel good about it. i played two tables today at the same time and was able to make good decisions while playing two tables, so i think i will start doing that more often.

hope everyone has a good weekend
peace and love and happiness
k-