I havent posted in several weeks due to a few reasons, but mainly just a lack of motivation to write...However i am begining to get back into the swing of things and thought it would be helpful to get back to writing out my results and other non poker related activities...

To start off with September turned out to be one of my most successful months to date with my 2nd largest win coming 2 weeks ago taking down the $3r on stars...I also won a $1050 seat in a WCOOP event for just 1000fpps and finished the month winning my home game 3 consecutive weeks in a row...No other live play this month...

My stats for online play for the month of September were...

Total Winnings = $5848
Total Profit = $4154
ROI = 245%
In The Money = 14/46...30%

Adding in my live winnings at my home games i estimate a total profit of about $5000 for the month...

I felt as if i really made a significant change to my game during the middle of the month to open my my game alot more and really play the aggressive/semi-reckless style which alot of the successful players seem to do and it really seems to have helped my especially in the early to mid stages by mixing up in more pots and taking advantage of the bubble and tighter players by opening up alot more and stealing blinds/antes and also making my opponents put me on a wider range of hands so my monsters are better disquised than before when i had a much smaller opening range...

I have know got a much better sample size of tournys online that i have a pretty good feel of where im at in terms of level of play vs other players...I feel as if the unl. rebuy/add on tournys fit my style the best and feel the small to medium rebuy events are filled with so many poor players that i have such a +ev on 95% of the field that it would be silly of myself to try and move up to larger single buy-in events where the level of play is much better and my ROI is much smaller...I have been regularly playing the 2, $3r $5r and $11r on stars for the past couple weeks and have been itm almost 40% with the win in the $3r...I have made a couple dissapointing plays deep in a couple of the others that i feel have cost me a great chance of going to the ft or winning it and settling for only 8-10 buy-in payday...

For the month of October i am looking to play just those 4 tournys 5 days a week and am interested to see my end result #'s as i feel they will be very good...Also on the live side, The Heartland Poker Tour is coming back to Turning Stone the 3rd week of October and i look to be playing in a few of the events there...Also the 3rd Saturday of the month i have already satalited into a $250 local tourny which should be quite soft as i play against the majority of the players on a weekly basis...Im still playing my home game every Tuesday and ill be going for win #4 in a row this week!...

Off of poker for a bit, the day after my $3r win, whcih ended at 4:30AM, i traveled out to visit my sister at Cortland where she is attending college there and then when to visit a couple of my good friends at Suny Oswego and had a fun time there, however making the 5+ hour drive after zero sleep and still the high of winning the tourney the night before was a bit of a challenge and wish i did it on another night :-)...Also last weekend my cousin was married out in Rochester NY so we all had a great time out there for the weekend...

Vegas in 4 weeks!!!!!!!!

Another week of grinding out the cash tables seems to have paid off agian...I profited another $1221 4 tabling 1/2nl for 20 hours this week after $1276 profit last week...So thats $2500 in 2 weeks at 40 hours putting my hourly in the $60/hr range...I actually started the week pretty slow only up about $300 after 9 hours of play but then really turned it on Thursday-Saturday with Saturday being my best day profiting nearly $450 in just 3.25 hours...I really feel like im understanding and adjusting to cash more so the last few days and really feel confident on the cash tables even more so than the tournys now, which is real funny to me because ive proabably only spent 1% of my time there with the other 99% at the tourny tables...I think next week can be my most profitable week yet!!

Not quite sure what i am doing Sunday...Only tried a couple saty's for the Majors and was not successful in either so not sure if ill play and of the majors or just keep grinding the cash...

On a side note i bought a new car on Thursday...I had owned a 2002 Pontiac Grand Am GT and traded that in and bought a 2006 Honda Accord EX...Only 18k miles...Fully loaded from leather interior to heated seats and 6 disc changer to voice navigation and a shit load of other features...I pick it up Monday and i cant wait!!!

So after a interesting week of switching from a all-tourny player to a majority-cash table player, i have mixed feeling about my week, but mostly positive...

Monday-Thursday i was running over the 1/2 cash tables at an incredible clip...At the end of Thursday i had logged 14 hrs at a total profit of nearly $1600...All 6 sessions were winning sessions and even ran pretty bad on Thursday but was up $250 in 4 hrs play...Then came Friday...and man it came hard...My afternoon session was downright miserable...in 15 mins i was in the hole almost $200 after missing some draws and just hitting nothing post flop...I managed to get back within about 100 of the red side in the next hour and called it quits before anymore damage could take place...So i took a few hours off then jumped back on at night to try and get back in the right direction as i thought i could eclipse $2000 profit for the week quite easily...Well that didnt happen...Friday night i ran the worst i may ever have X10...In a 5 minute stretch i lost over $550 in equity pots with AA and AA and the one was absoluty atrocious...Im in mp with a bet to 7 from utg...i reraise to $20 and folds back to the original raiser...he re raises to $55 and i go all in for around $120...he insta calls...i have him on KK...flop is Q710r turn is Q river is 4...he flips over AQ...sigh...$240 there...oh well...not a couple minutes pass when on a different table again i hold AA this time on the BB...2 limpers to me i raise to $10...both limpers call sb folds...flop is 10d7d3x...i raise to $25 1 folds other limper calls...next card is 4x...i raise to $50 about 2/3 pot hoping to get rid of the draws but guy goes all in for about 50 more...i insta call river is Qd...he flips over K3dd...sigh...at this point i am irate and start playing loose and long story short go down about $350 in 2 hrs before i drag myself off the tables before killing something...

So Saturday i take it easy and just jump on 4 tables for 1:45 mins to complete my 20 hr trial for the week and get a little back aboout $125 which put my final weekly total at $1280 in profit in 20hrs a little over $60/hr which is good but alot lower than i hoped for after my great first 4 days where i was pulling around $140/hr...

I also won my Tuesday night league for $400 but did terrible in my saty's going about $150 down and only cashing in 2/14 with no tickets to show for...

So for my first week which i felt was really a feeler week went pretty well...i definitly learned several things and think i have some tools now that will help me in the future as well as a better game plan on how to attack a good weekly scheduale...I think Sunday's will still be my Tourny days...Tomorrow ill play the Warm-up/daily 30k/sunday 200k/sunday mil while Monday-Friday i can grind out 20hrs of cash and saturday try my hand at some saty's for the upcoming sunday and play some VIP weekly/monthly freerols...Im pleased to say that i am now a Silver Star and by the middle of next week will easily eclips Gold star status...I also think i have an outside shot at reaching Platinum star by the end of the month...depending on the volume i put in, should atleast give me extra icentive to play...

Hopin for a successful Sunday and another profitable week ahead!!!

Welcome to my new blog where in the coming months and years i look forward to keeping everyone informed and updated on my poker results and my run ins with the law......Ok so my poker results...Actually i dont want this to just be a rundown of all the poker tournys i was in and how i did but a mixture of a bit of that as well as a variety of other interesting and hopefully appealing posts for you...

I started playing poker about 6 years ago during high school BEFORE MONEYMAKER!!!! with my friends after school, and during school for that matter, when i didnt even know that a flush was better than a straight and the games were $5 6 man tournys when we thought winning $25 was high stakes...Since then i began playing online poker in a few years back first on Party Poker, where i was a donater, and now since the begining of 2007 on Poker Stars...I also am a semi-frequent player at Turning Stone Casino and play in a local Tuesday Night League...

Like 95% of other players i was generally a break-even to losing contributer for the first few years until the middle of last year when i started turning my game around with alot of long hours and dedication to the game...I have never read a poker book or watched any training video, rather have just watched alot on TV and played a ton of hands thanks mostly to playing online, where i can play on the order of 1000-2000 hands a day depending on how long i play for...I am generally a tourny player after a couple brutal cash game results including droping over a G in 4 hours one night playing 4 tables of 2/4 nl and vowed to stay off the cash games for a while...

Begining the summer of 07 through the end of last year i had cashed a couple decent amounts most notably live play during my Tuesday Night League or at a daily tourny at TS most notably last summer me and my friend heading up for a day trip and chopping 2nd/3rd for about $700 a piece,but nothing too big...It wasnt until this past January when i hit my 1st 4 digit score of $3000 after taking 1st in an online tourny on Stars...In February i finished 2nd for $1800 on stars and then in April had my first 4-figure live Score makin a final table of a prelim event for the East Coast Poker Championships at TS for just over $1200...During May and June i came close several times bubbling a couple final tables but nothing over a few hundred dollars unitl the end of June when i finished 5th in a 3r on Stars for $1400...Finally a week ago i hit my first $5k+ score when i took down the $27.50 40k guarantee on Stars for $6,000 which resulted from a 3 way chop i made where we each got $5250 and left $750 for the winner which just happend to be yours truly...A goal of mine for the month of August is to have my first $10k+ 5 figure score without directly buying into stakes any higher than $50 online or $500 live so i will frequently be trying to satalite into the majors online and live...

I would love to keep this blog updated as much as possible with tourny resluts and updates of how my online sessions went as well as live tourny reports, but also want to include random posts such as entries regarding visits to my favorite place in the world Saratoga Race Track or something as small as my song of the moment that i would like to share...

If you have any comments or suggestions on what u would like to see more of whether it be more poker stories/strategy questions and answers or if you would prefer more random life story posts like what ridiculous 100-1 odds bet i made with someone which i frequently do just let me know by either leaving a comment on here or by im, my sn is mjbern23 or you can feel free to rail me online my name is mjbern23 as well on stars...