4-27-06 I got home yesterday to an empty house so I sat down to play some cards. I only played one table since I was very tired from staying up to win my home game the night before. My cards ran very good and since I was only playing one table I found every opportunity to take advantage of my opponents weaknesses.
1st session: 1 hr 45 min and won $8.80 over 99 hands 25.38 BB/100 Hands.

I got off right after my wife came home and watched a movie with her. When she fell asleep on the couch I decided to play some more despite telling myself that I wouldn't play any that night due to only having gotten less than 4 hours of sleep. Note: Discipline broken!

I immediately ran up to a profit of $8 or so playing very squeaky tight as I had done earlier in the day. Then I had some luck box sit down and suck out against me w/ his short stack 2x with all the money going in pf. He only had $2 or so when we started so I was happy to call his all in reraises w/ my AKs and AKo. He had 10-8s in the same suit as my AKs one time and flopped trip 10s and the other I had him dominated and he hit the miracle on me. This sent me into monkey tilt and I lost my whole profit along w/ $19 more and a ton of sleep because I kept refusing to get up and take my losing pill.
2nd session: 4 hr 45 min for a loss of ($19.25)

I finally went to bed around 2 am again and was up bright and early with my son at 7am.

4-28-07 The wife had a class today so I got the yard mowed and my hair cut, then sat down to make some of my money back. My friend called/pulled up right as I was getting loaded up and we 2 tabled at $10/NL. I got hit in the face w/ the deck and quickly jumped up $15. I held onto this over the hour or so that I played.
Morning session: 1 hr for a win of +$13.80 and 66 BB/100 Hands over 104 hands.

Oh yeah, I played 4 $2+.25 SNGs this morning and won one and finished OOTM on the other 3 for an absolute zero on profit/loss.

And just for kicks and because my buddy was here we decided to try our hand at HORSE and HA. I bought in for the minimums and good thing that I did. I immediately lost my $4 buyin at $10/HA, I mean within 10 min. it was gone. I did get all my money in pf against a maniac in a dominating position and he of course hit his worse kicker to suck out on me.

HORSE went slightly better, I played at least an hour on it and only lost $3 over both the tables that I was playing. This game seemed very beatable and looked to have a few sharks on it who were preying on the weak fishes. I played so tight that they would have a hard time getting my money, but a lot of folks were missing what game we were playing at the time. One guy blew up a RAZZ pot w/ 2 pair on 4th street and took it all the way down to the river. One of my goals when I get this bankroll built will be to learn all of those games well enough to be competitive at them and play HORSE more often.

Mixed game session: 1 hr 30 min, loss of ($7)

With a deposit bonus from FTP my bankroll stands at $57 even.

PT stats on $10NL are 23.74/9.44/3.81 My W$SD% is 52.34% and I'm +$8.85 over 2700 hands. 1.64 BB/100 Hands. Not what I was hoping to have at this point, but at least I'm in the positive. I'm gonna try to remain more disciplined and force myself to get up sooner when I am losing.

We had our bi-weekly home game last night and I was fortunate enough to win it. Actually, I split the 1st and 2nd place money w/ a visitor and took the 1st place tournament of champion’s points. We split due to the late hour of the night. (I have a very slow structure, which allows the better players to utilize their skills more.) We have a point scale based on where you finish in a given week and we add these up over 10 games and drop your lowest score. A player is allocated chips in the TOC based on how many points he has accumulated versus the rest of the field. We pull $5 per head out every week and put this into a TOC fund that basically creates a freeroll that we play at the end of our 10 game session. This really works well for rewarding consistency and creates a new dynamic in the game.

With the win I was able to leap frog 2 players ahead of me and move into 5th place. You may think that 5th place isn’t all that great, but considering that I had a horrible start on the opening two games and the overall strength of the field at my game, moving into 5th is a great place to be. This was game 5 of 10. Two weeks ago I placed 2nd to move into 7th place and this week I really closed the gap on the top of the board as the points leader went out in 6th place out of the 10 we had playing.

I didn’t get very many great starting hands last night, but I was able to hit some flops and keep my stack to the north side of where I started. I only want to post one hand that I think will be a great hand for anyone trying to learn the little things that help to put a poor player around the corner to becoming a good player.

We are 4 handed and I’m in the BB
Blinds 600-1200 w/ a 200 ante

UTG limps (40k in chips)
Button limps (20k in chips)
SB completes (25k in chips) Qd-9d
Hero checks (15k in chips) Qh-3h

Flop comes 10h-9h-3s
SB leads for 2k
Hero pushes all in for 13.5k total
UTG folds
Button folds

This is the learning part that I would like to point out: With a pair and a flush draw against one pair higher than my bottom pair I’m usually >52% favored to win this hand. With the SB having me dominated with his middle pair and equal Queen kicker I am only now around 44% to win this hand. If the opponent’s high card were any card other than a queen I would once again become the favorite in this hand. This includes changing the Queen to an Ace or King. So, late in a tournament with a short stack such as I had, this one pair plus a flush draw situation presents a great opportunity to double up or pick up some chips as the favorite.

I obviously caught the heart on the river to double up and eventually win the tournament.

Hopefully, next week, I’ll be able to give you another good report on the home game that I play on my game’s off-week. It’s a tough one too.

I should be back online most of Saturday getting my FTP bankroll built from the $12 gift that tworags.com gave me for reviewing some local cardrooms. This is a great site and those guys are doing a great job!

I didn’t have very much time to play last night and wanted to be in bed early to get ready for my home game on Thursday night. I pulled up 3 $2+.25 Turbo SNGs and took a run at it. Last week I had done very well in these and thought that I could make a quick score again and be in bed by 10:00. I started out super-tight and waited for the idiots to knock themselves out, and eventually they did. The pace on these is so hecktick tough and the blinds were all over me before I knew it. On two tables I was above my starting stack and the other I was running low. I messed up on one of the tables I was doing well on and reraised a guy who doubled my big blind from M.P.; he called w/ A-Jo which completely dominated my A-8o. I was leading on the flop of K,Q,8, but the 10 on the turn gave him broadway. I blew that one up on the bubble. I don’t think that was a good play on my part at this level.

Memory fails me on how I lost the other table, but the last table I went bust on the bubble as well. Since it was my last table I was paying very close attention and had a pretty good read on my opponents and also knew the guy on my immediate right was a good player from the cash games. His full ring $10NL stats are that of a Rock, so that gave me some insight into knowing that I could steal from him pretty liberally. I had watched him steal from the CO here four handed for the previous two rounds and took a mental note that that BB would fold his hand pretty often. This round the Rock folded and I bailed off with my average stack of 4 big blinds and put it all in w/ 8-7o hoping that he would once again fold his BB. Well, he didn’t and I was dominated once again by an A-7s. He turned an A and I went 0 for 3 on the turbo SNGs.

The roll stands just over $50.

Please see my home page for the full story on this bankroll building process that I started last week from $12.

http://www.tworags.com/home/Landlord79

I don’t know how much longer Tworags.com is going to run their $2/cardroom review bonus, but I posted several reviews and got them to send $12 to my Full Tilt Poker account.

That account was empty for over a year and just by coincidence Full Tilt sent me a $50 bonus offer around the same time. Well, without any money in my account, earning that bonus would be impossible.

So, THANK YOU TWORAGS.COM.

I have set myself a goal. I want to turn this $12 of gift from Tworags.com and $50 of possible bonus money from Full Tilt into a working bankroll. Making it to $100 is my immediate goal, then, we’ll figure it out from there, as I will have many more options. I also promised Tworags.com that I would keep them posted on their investment as a way to give back to their awesome site.

I sought some advice from the 2+2 forum on what my best course of action would be and it was unanimous that playing the micro-SNGs was the safest way to build a bankroll with the least amount of variance.

On April the 19th, my regular home game was cancelled and I signed onto Full Tilt to start this journey.

My cards ran very, very goot. I won some spots I shouldn't have and places that I should have won actually held up. When I lost, I had the chips to sustain through it. There is very little real poker played here, mostly, I am just playing my cards and pushing with any 2 decent cards when I get to 10 big blinds or less. These players are so easily trapped that it is ridiculous. Check-raising doesn’t get much accomplished as they are so loose-passive at this level, but suckers-must-call bets are the genuine article.

My first night of roll building was in the books:

1 @ $1.25 Turbo SNG -$1.25
9 @ $2.25 Turbo SNG +$21.15

Net +$19.90 for the night 92.55% ROI

Once again, special thanks to Tworags.com, your money has made a good start.

Day 2 will either be tonight or during the day tomorrow, I’ll post as soon as I can.

After catching 3 hours of sleep in order to rest up for the supposed 3am weakening of the tables at the $1-2 cash game this weekend in Tunica, I sat back down at the Horseshoe to see 2 Asian guys that were there when I had left at 9pm. The rest of the table was new and a few were drinking. I sat about an hour and was up only a little when the table slowly started to dispurse and the money started to come off the table. I decided to walk over to the Goldstrike’s cardroom to find a better table.

I walked up to the hostess and ask for a $1-2 NL table and she pointed me to the table in the middle of the card room. There was a little bit of money on the table and I felt that this would be a good seat. I walked to the counter to buy my chips and a crazy looking fellow with wild eyes walked over to me and ask me to come play at his game back in the corner. He said that there were 3 live ones sitting over there and that I needed to come cash in. This sounded like an even better seat.

I sit down UTG and immediately straddle. Someone raises and is called and I have to dump my worthless hand when it gets back around to me. The next hand is forgotten, but the third hand will be etched in my mind for eternity.

I’m in the small blind and the action limps around to the wild-eyed man in late-middle who bumps it to $10. I fold along with all but an early and middle position limper. The flop comes down Jd,4c,10d and the limpers each check to the raiser who bets out $20. The early position player folds and the middle player moves all in for $50 more (one of the obvious live ones as he was almost falling asleep at the table and very short-stacked.) The pf-raiser grudgingly calls. Mr. Sleepy turns over 8d-7d for a flush draw and a gutshot str8 draw and Mr. Crazy eyes turns over Kd-Qd for the Royal flush draw. (do you call this an open-ended Royal flush draw?) The table points out that Sleepy is drawing dead to a 7 or 8. The 7c falls on the turn bringing Sleepy into the lead.

Then the most surreal thing that I have seen in all my life happens. The most beautiful card in the whole deck falls off, the 9d!!! No one even realized it for a second. Then, simultaneously, people start to realize what’s on the board. “He’s got a straight flush! And look, he’s got a straight flush too!! Holy *&$%^!!! That’s a bad beat! You guys just hit the bad beat jackpot!!!” The table erupts and jumps to their feet. High fives go around the table and people start to hug like we had just won the Sugar Bowl! The room takes notice and soon the place erupts. The dealer asks everyone to please step back from the table. Play in the entire room completely stopped for 15 minutes solid as everyone walked by the table to check it out. The cards and chips on that table didn’t move for 45 minutes as everything was verified as legit. It took almost 7 hours for the Goldstrike to iron out all the legal stuff, which meant that I played longer than I should have to burn the time away, but it was worth it. The only down side was that there wasn’t a table share. The rest left over after the winner and loser got paid was spread equally throughout the room to anyone playing holdem. Luckily it was 5am in the morning and there were less people than usual. It was one of the most amazing poker moments of my life and I just thought that I would share it with you guys.