It's been a while...

 So we haven't spoken in a while. How are you doing? That's nice. Anyhooo...
The last time we spoke, I was on my way to Las Vegas and in the midst of some run bad (a.k.a. play bad, downswing, crap burgers). Right before I went to Vegas, my laptop decided to put a stop to my poker playing and overall Internet usage by having an aneurysm. I have been without Internet access (on my laptop) or over a month, 6 weeks to be precise and to be honest I haven't gone through the DTs. I think the time off from poker was good and gave me time to do other things, like reading, exercising, laundry...

  I will hold off from getting everyone caught up to date on my life.

  So a few days ago I received a new laptop and put Cake poker (juicy stakes) on so that I will be up and ready to roll in to the run good. My family and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of food and alcohol. Today I was given a day off and decided to make a trek out to the local casino for some hot 1-2 live NLHE action. The first 2 hours were quite stale and pretty soon I was down $180. I didn't lose any huge pots, just constantly missing flops and having other players call my c-bets. Finally I was dealt AQ suited in LP and raised 3 limpers to $12. I flopped top 2 pair and had the UTG limper donk in to me for about 1/2 the pot. I min raised and he called only to donk the turn which was a low brick card. the pot had grown and I just raised all in. He thought for a moment and called with his worse 2 pair. The river was kind and I got back to even. That's why you don't limp call a raise preflop with A5o out of position. An orbit later I pick up JJ in MP and raise to open to $10. I get one CCer on the button and the SB, a bad LPP 3 bets to $30. I have the 2 villains covered (SB just by a little) and decide to call and see the flop. The button obliges and WHAMO- Jc 6c 3s. The SB C-bets $50 and I am in no mood to call with a flush draw out there. I raise to $100 and the SB calls with a confused look on his face. I am now putting him on pocket 10s, or Queens through Aces. There's a chance he could have AcKc here because he's a passive player without the present nuts, but that doesn't matter because I flopped a monster.
  The pot now has $290 in the middle and there's no way I am doing anything, but shoving just about any turn if given the chance. The turn is the 5c and SB checks. I go all-in and he is dumbfounded. I can only put him on an overpair and more likely than not, he has a big club in his hand which must be the only reason he's even considering this call. By the way I have played this hand, I have a set or a King high flush at least. How can he consider this call with a non-club overpair? Well, he takes 5 minutes and even asks if I will show after folding. I don't respond and he unhappily folds. I give him a little consolation by saying that I had him beat. He tells me that he had pocket Queens with no club.

Anyways, I end my 4 hour session soon after and leave up $170 which is nice.

Hopefully this will be signs of good poker things to come because October sucked some major donkey balls for my NLHE game. The good news is that I am still learning and have been getting much better at not tilting. Just let the game come to you, don't force it.
Have fun and I will talk to you soon.

What's the Buzz...?

  So it's been quite a while since I have posted anything, but I have reasons. I haven't felt like writing. Well, thanks for stopping in, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Y'all come back now ya hear?!

  To be more specific, I was 85% finished with the 1st half of my magnum opus revolving around the hypocrisy of the government's policy towards online poker, but I became a bit worn out on the subject, so I am letting it sit on the shelf for a little while to see if I don't become more excited about it. So, even though I hadn't posted much in the last 2 months, I had been doing quite a bit of writing.

  Another reason is the fact that I haven't been playing much poker as of late, whether that be online or at a card room. The last live session I played was back in early January, if I recall, and I stunk up the joint as I was down $300 due to being on my D+ game. been getting in some hands on Cake Poker (NLHE & LHE), but nothing too serious. I had built my bankroll up to $72 once again only to see it take a quick nosedive back down to $48. I am now hovering in the middle $60s hoping to breakthrough the glass ceiling.

  I have also begun to (again) to practice singing on a semi-regular basis given the fact that my 3 sons are on a, more or less, regular schedule. I hope to have even more uninterrupted time in the fall when they will all have school in the afternoons. As I wrote before, I had been practicing singing a little over a year ago, but different interruptions caused me to suspend that hobby until now. I am looking forward to the fall not only because my kids will all be in school, which will be great for their social life and learning, but my wife and I have season tickets to the Opera which will be a nice treat each month of the year. I've been listening to a good idea of opera, not only for enjoyment, but to critique the singers I hear and pick out, from a technical standpoint, what I like and don't like. I hope it will help me in strengthening my abilities as well.

Poker Update

It's been a while since I have given any strong update on how my poker playing is going. The reason for that is because I haven't been playing much poker lately which is disappointing to me and at the same time, fuel for my writing. I've taken to Twitter in order to voice small sound bite opinions or pass on articles and opinions of others that I'm following. (I hate using slang and meme)
 First off, my dual poker challenge has basically taken an indefinite leave of absence. In case you haven't read my earliest entries which began right after Black Friday (that's poker related Black Friday, not the one right after Thanksgiving). The first challenge was to get experience playing NLHE live at my local casino. It started off well and then saw some bumps in the road. It then got harder and harder to find time to drive all the way to the Casino, especially being a Stay at home Dad. I played very little poker in Las Vegas a few month back and have yet to play live poker since then.
 My online challenge hit some rough waters as I had a major downswing/runbad/playbad  October. Finding the time to devote to playing A-game poker online has also become much more difficult. I've been using free time to either run or research my epic multi-post blog entry relating to online poker and Wall Street. I hope to have it done before Christmas and more importantly, before legislation is passed which would make my writing a bit moot.
Well, I will let you all go and hope that some of you who visit stay a while and read some past blog entries. Have fun!

So, how is the poker game going?

I haven't given an update on much of my poker playing for a good reason...

My poker challenge of zero to hero was going well up until the month of September when I focused primarily on NLHE. The easiest way to describe it would be...

...which was followed by  an uptick to breakeven over the course of another 3,000 hands followed by..

Much like the offensive line of the Chicago Bears this season, my poker game basically...

So this should give you somewhat of an idea of how my poker playing has been going for the past 45 days. There aren't many games online for the bankroll that I have and my NLHE attempt hasn't been an epic failure, but it is headed in that direction. I stopped playing NL4 on Cake poker just to let the wounds heal and get an idea if I have reverted to a complete fish. Some of it has been terrible run bad results, some has been calling down too much, some has been crazy cold deck, and some has been me just not being as serious as I should be when it comes to playing my A game. I haven't had much time to play live either, even though I went to Las Vegas (see prior posts). I was going to play more poker out there, but decided that I would just hang out with friends, which was a bit of a wash in terms of overall enjoyment. I should have just gone to the hotel pool each day and gotten girl drink drunk on Pina Coladas.
I am still technically a winner in both my online poker challenge (see first posts) as well as my transition to playing NLHE live. I was $78 in my one NLHE session at the Bellagio that lasted perhaps 3 hours.
I had one hand in which I picked up AhKh in EP and raised to $10 and got 2 callers, one OTB and the other in the BB.
The flop came--Kd Ks 9d. check, I bet $28, one fold, SB calls.
Turn brings--6s
Check, I bet $80, SB calls.
River is a low brick card and SB checks, I had a little over the pot left and bet 3/4 in the middle. The SB hemmed and hawed about me having a missed flush draw vs his mid pocket pair, but he folded. That was my poker highlight for the weekend.
Well, we'll see what the rest of 2011 brings. I don't expect alot in the way of action, but there's always hope...
I plan on finishing the 3rd installment of my poker history-2009 within the next week. Thank you for tuning in.

My poker history 2009 Part 2

If I was playing like a lion in March, then I was definitely being showered in April as my rungood continued. I started off the month playing .50-1 and dabbled a little bit in NL10. How hard could NLHE be? After a few days of breakeven no-limit, I pushed the idea to the side and finally started to add some
1-2 FR LHE tables in to the mix with some nice success. My plan was to play my regular preflop game, but to be ultra aggressive postflop so the LAG/TAG and MMTers knew not to push me around. Since I was knew to the stakes, many of the regular players respected my raises and the fish did what they normally do, regardless of how much the bet is. I didn't play many SNGs as I wanted to give most all of my attention to moving up and playing cash games. My wife was entering the last trimester of her pregnancy and I knew that there would be little time for poker when the twins were born.
 I started to get a bit cocky with the quick success at 1-2 and tried some HU LHE as well (there is a side note story to this which I plan on devoting one entire blog entry to as it is an interesting memory for me.), with a tough introduction as I lost a little over 60 BBs in 20 minutes. Nevertheless in, my graph was steadily climbing as I won over $400 running at a touch below 3BB/100. I had visions of 2/4 and possible 3/6 tables dancing in my head for May as poker was an EZ game.

May was a little bit of a different story and a sign of times to come. My poker graph looked like a mountain range that fortunately contained one extra peak than valley to keep me in the black $110 with a winrate of a disappointing .58BB/100 over the course of 9,000ish hands. The players at 1-2 were catching on to me. June was basically the same as May except that my poker playing basically stopped after the first calendar week. My wife was scheduled for a C-section and there was a lot to do to make sure that everything was ready.
 We had a night nurse hired to help 3-4 nights a week for the first month which was going to cost a pretty penny and the little time I would have when all of the kids were sleeping could not be for poker. I wish that I had decided to completely take time off from poker even when things calmed a little because I came back to early in July. I only played a little over 2,500ish hands and lost over $200 at a clip of  -5.61BB/100/.
Another unfortunate experience away from poker was that I had shingles. I was obviously stressed with the expectations of twins, while being with my then 2 year old son and getting the house ready for the change. My wife was working up to the week before her delivery and if you put that all together with a sprinkle of insane family members, you get a rundown immune system which opens you up to shingles. I took some time off and moved back down in stakes just until I felt my head was more clear and I knew that I could be focused.

Coming to you live in God's Country.

So I decided to learn how to play Backgammon a few days ago. I saw a Hoyle's rules book in the beach house where I am staying and took a break from kid duty to read the rules. There was a backgammon set, but I didn't have anyone to play with, so I downloaded a droid application and went on to play over 200 games at different skill levels. This may be the next thing I become hooked on, unless I try Baccarat, which I could possibly try out in Vegas next month. I have a pretty basic idea of Backgammon strategy and I am torn between going online and looking up advanced strategies or just taking this game as a chance to learn something without any external help, beyond the basic things I have read.
I haven't had much time for live poker for the past 3 weeks which is a bit dis concerning given that my last 2 sessions were terrible as far as results go. I am itching to have another live session before I go to Vegas next month, partially so I don't get too rusty with respect to live play as well as the fact that I don't plan on playing poker 24/7 for the few days I am there. This trip to Vegas is going to be with 5 other guys and will pretty much be a "bachelor party" of sorts in their minds, while I will be hopefully relaxing a majority of the time whilst always with drink hand. I'd like to play some NLHE as I have only played LHE in Vegas the 5 times I've been there. My friends are looking forward to "Sin City", if you get my meaning, and I have a different mind set at the moment. Being a stay at home dad, I want to time to myself to wake up whenever I like and do whatever it is I want while on vacation. I am not looking to get a happy ending or put $1 bills in G-strings so when the group goes off to those activities, that will be my best chance to go and play poker. I am also looking forward to having a nice cigar and some scotch at Casa Fuente.

The online poker front has been going rather well in August. I have mostly been playing NLHE .02-.04, albeit at the shallow tables, which means a maximum buy-in of 50 BBs. I plan on playing the 100 BB max tables as soon as my online BR gets to $80 which will be 20 buyins. my current online BR is at a little over $71, which $32 of that has been winnings in August, not including rake back. I haven't been posting much strategy in the 2+2 forums, but I have a goal of starting to frequent the micro full ring forums as of September 1st if my BR is at $80. I know, I know. This is all very exciting. Perhaps that is why I have so many followers so far. It is rather interesting to think that I started my online bankroll, post Black Friday, with only .39 that I got on Cake Poker from trading in Gold cards from 2008. I've won a total of $55 since BF and the rake back helped me early on.

It strange to think of how much money I put into online poker, or should I say lost, back in 2005 before I ran good. It's also strange to think how I have built a uber-nano stakes BR with nothing in the past 4 months. When I get back home, my first blog goal is to begin the 2nd part of my poker journey which starts up in 2008. Regardless of what happened before, I look at that year as when I truly began to learn about playing LHE. I like to glorify the pre-UIGEA online poker times of 2004-2006, but I really enjoyed 2008-2010 when it comes to my own development and results. I am no where near being a finished product when it comes to poker and probably never will, but it seemed like the golden years to me. Kind of like Baseball in the 50's and 60's while the pre UIGEA days were like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.
Well, I will leave you with that for now and hope to hear from someone soon, especially with any suggestions on any of the subjects in my posts. Have fun, the summer is almost coming to an end.

short update

I have many different posts in the works, but they require more attention, research, and time which is why I haven't posted anything lately. A few very quick updates.

1) My online poker challenge has been a bit static this month, but is now moving once again in the right direction. Up. My BR on cake poker is not at $27 and hopefully in by the beginning of September, I will be able to focus on NLHE rather than LHE.

2) I had another disastrous live session of NLHE. Down $300 again, which I will go in to, just not right now as the wounds are still a bit fresh.

3) I am guessing that Amy Winehouse, died as a result of her addiction, meaning that she ODed. If she truly needed to be weened off of alcohol, then she would have been in an in patient type of care, or at least have a nurse coming in on a regular basis to make sure she was OK. I don't believe most all of what I am reading.

4) Debt ceiling is a bunch of horse shit to shit blame for the 2011 campaign cycle, but more importantly for the 2012 campaign cycle. The rich will not be effected while the middle class will be dismantled even more so.

Talk to you, who ever you may be soon. Have fun.

From the bottom up.

Since I have decided to run this blog concurrently on Blogger as well as Deuces cracked for the time being, I thought that it would be a good idea to re-post my background entries as well. Thanks for reading and please feel welcome to make any and all comments.

I am starting this blog as a result of the Black Friday shutdown of the Big 3 poker sites. Like all US players, I am not able to transfer funds or withdrawl my BR from online, so I basically have 2 major options.
1) Drive to a Brick & Mortar Casino on a regular basis
or...
2) Try to deposit $$ online on another US friendly site.
Neither one of these options seem all that good to me as I am a stay at home father of 3 boys all under the age of 4 and I no longer want to jump through hoops to get $$ online which I may not be able to get back if the DOJ keeps pushing the issue of online poker being illegal (which it's not). So therefore, I plan on doing 2 things, which are...
1) Drive to a Brick & Mortar Casino that has poker whenever I get the chance
and...
2) Sell some tickets on Cake poker and begin my own BR challenge similar to the famous 0 to $10,000 by Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. The only difference, is that I do not plan on having specific rules to play by, other than sticking to LHE at the moment so as to limit the degree of variance, or what I should say, losing a large % of my online BR in one hand. Bellatrix would rightfully argue the difference in variance between LHE and NLHE and how LHE, depending on what you're looking at, has more variance than NLHE. Anyways...I sold my 16 cake golden cards for .59 and then started playing FR LHE (under rolled, not only from the reccommended BBs to play at that stake, but for the table as well). In about 30 min I more than doubled my BR to $1.24. I plan on continuing to build up on FR LHE and may venture into some 6-max when and if I hit 300 BBs or close to that at my current stake of .02-.04.
Now going back to my B&M plan. A few days before "Black Friday", I planned on entering the Sunday Million tourney online for the sake of having the experience of playing in it. Most of the tourneys that I have played online, even deepstack ones, have been low/micro-stakes buy-ins and have not had the seriousness that I assumed would be in the Sunday Million (I could be way off on that as the nosebleed players who enter this look at $200 the way I look at a $2 180-man multi table SNG. Obviously by Friday, I was no longer able to enter the Sunday Million, so I went to my local casino and entered a $210 tournament. Each player received 6,000 chips with blinds @ 25-50 with 30 min levels. I was holding steady at 6,000ish chips, give or take for about 4 hours and began to fall closer to 4,000. Needless to say, I tripled up when I needed to and was able to finish in 4th place for a $1,500 profit. I plan on using that along with my frozen online BR (when and if I get back) to focus on 1-2 NLHE cash games at the casino whenever I get the chance. I am one session in for 3 hrs and I am up $75, or 37.5 BBs.
We'll see where I go from here, but I hope it's an interesting ride.

My poker history, January-June 2008

Although this is my first blog entry here, this is also posted on another poker blog of mine on Deuces Cracked under the name Figaro3000. Enjoy 

Not much is happening in the way of poker the past 2 weeks. I’ve been posting quite a bit in the LLSNL forums and to no surprise there are the same type of characters including the know-it-all, abusive, sarcastic, jackwagon. Oh well. My online challenge is moving along as I am up to $10.45 playing .02-.04 FRLHE mostly. Some of that is rakeback on Cake, but since Black Friday, I am up +$8.12 over 2,000ish hands running at 9.93 BBs/100. Now 2,000 hands is obviously a helluva small sample size and I could easily be running super hot even at these low stakes. It would normally take atleast another 8,000 hands to find out how reliable my winrate is, but I will be moving up as soon as possible. I have just about 100 BBs for .05-.10 so it looks like my uber-nano stakes will be behindme unless there’s some real bad run bad in my future.

Just as reminder, the other aspect of my poker game which has had a major shift since Black Friday was transitioning from live LHE to NLHE at my local casino. I’ve found, which is not that hard to conclude, that live $1-$2 tourists come to play hands. They don’t come to play hands well. They fully expect to lose and want to have some fun playing no limit and live the excitement of big all-in pots. Now, that’s not all $1-$2 tourists, but it’s a good amount to send their money my way if given the chance. I haven’t had a chance to make it to the Casino in the past 2 weeks as things have been busy with the family. So far 2011 has been the most profitable as far as dollars go. Obviously finishing 4^th in a $200 buy-in tournament and running good at $1-$2 NLHE has been the reason, but it’s nice to see that I have been able to transfer what I’ve learned so far online, in to the live arena. Here’s to more success if I haven’t tempted poker fate enough already.

I took a little bit if a break from talking about my poker past, which mostly consists of online LHE play. I wanted to pick up where I had left off a few entries ago. My initial online experience could be described as tumultuous and ignorant. Tumultuous in that my results were erratic and any success I had, however, exciting, was brief. It was ignorant because I was very inexperienced and I wasn’t keeping any detailed records of my results. At the end of 2007, I was quite disappointed in my poker playing up to that point. I was arrogant for no reason, I tilted a lot, could not see the forest from the trees, and I wasted the valuable tool of the online forums that were free and interactive. This last statement I plan on delving in to further down the line, but not right now I would like to start at the beginning of 2008 which I would consider to be the 2^nd part of my poker experience.

From what I remember, the beginning of 2008 was raher frustrating for me. I started to get back into posting on 2+2 forums, but as I have stated before, I hadn’t much of a clue beyond the basics in strategy. I began by depositing $400 back in the late fall of 2007 right when my wife and I decided that I was going to be a stay at home Dad. I started using PT2 in Feb 2008 even though I had purchased it a year before. You see, when it comes to using computer programs, I’m not that good. January started off a bit rough, but then took a nice turn in February in cash games, but also a surprise in a fixed limit holdem tourney. I somehow managed to win a $1 LHE tournament with over 750 entries which took a little over 6 hours to play. I pocketed $240 and was actually trying to get knocked out first when I made it to the final table. It didn’t work out so well which made this my first tourney win. Most of the tournaments I played were NLHE in the $2 buyin neighborhood. I usually played rather tight while most of the players LAGged it up. There were usually 2,500+ entries and I would finish close to the bubble quite often. The cash games were still a bit rough as my results were erratic and even though I was focusing on .25-.50, I would jump a level or two (.50-1, 1-2). Sometimes it worked, but most of the time it didn’t. When I focused on .25-.50 and .50-1 playing 2-3 tables max, then I would be able to focus on stay on my game. Through the first half of the year I played 27,000 hands and was winning at a 1.7 BB/100 pace which is decent considering that I was just getting back into poker in a serious manner, using poker software and working on my game. The problem was in my head. I felt that anything less than 2 BB/100 was unacceptable and I wasn’t going to give myself any slack for learning. Another mental roadblock that I put on myself was the fact that I didn’t understand sample sizes. I wanted to look at 5,000-10,000 hands and take that as a barometer of how I was doing. 10,000 hands online is nothing and there are so many factors that can go into the results. These were some of the many reasons why I would tilt so bad and focus in too much on each hand or session. When playing poker, one needs to have a good perspective of how to read the stats. On a sidenote, there’s a post on PT stats that was incredibly helpful to me and although it is from 2008, I still think much of it will be relevant even if some of the examples are possibly dated. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/35/micro-stakes-limit/request-poker-tracker-stats-165898/

In June of 2008, I was facing some rollercoaster sessions over the period of 5,000 hands. Now any one who has played a lot online or plays live on a regular basis knows that 5,000 hands is quite a small sample size. I was going through a breakeven stretch and because I had never really looked at my results this closely before, I was rather upset that my WR was looking stagnant. In hindsight this was not that big of a deal and could have been a learning opportunity. Instead I went monkey tilt and decided that I was going to quit poker. The reason for my decision was out of frustration and poker immaturity at the time, but it was the best decision given how I was reacting. Now, obviously I didn’t quit poker for long, but it was good for me to take a break and come back a little rested.