Sorry about the delay, work has gotten busy and it is harder to take some time and give updates about my bankroll building process.

I have been having a dilemma with Full Tilt about the size of their rake at $10/NL. Two times the other night I had a split pot that ended up costing me money. The rake of 10% for $10/NL with a $2 max is absurd. Deciding whether or not to move up to $25/NL, which has a rake of only 5%, has really had me perplexed. I had my mind made up until a fellow 2+2er made a comment that really hit home when he said something about playing with “scared money.” Playing with scared money means that you don’t take a lot of chances and that you play so defensively that you almost cannot make money. That really got me thinking about how I play and when I feel the most comfortable in my game.

Take my current bankroll on Full Tilt, for $25/NL it represents less than 3 buyins. Not that the dab of money I have on Full Tilt would cripple me if I lost it, but this just isn’t a good scenario. The last time that I played on FT I did move up to $25NL and I noticed that I played a much tighter game and really didn’t want to get my money in with close races. My stats were around 20/8/2, not too tight, but tighter than my optimal game. I did show a profit, but how can you not show a profit when you flop top boat and only play 60 something hands? My profit for this session was $8.75, which offset the loss that I had a $10/NL the session before of ($3.90).

Let’s look at Bodog, where I play with about 17 buyins. I noticed last night that I ran about 28/9/3, which is a very aggressive stat line. I’m not a maniac by any means, but that is still very aggressive. Playing in this manner is where I feel that I play my best game, I feel aggressive, and that I win the most money while playing this way. I'm also able to comfortably play 3 tables when I have this many buyins, whereas I am relegated to playing only 1 @ 25NL and 2 or maybe 3 at 10NL on Full Tilt.

I also went to the casino this weekend and found that I am still very protective of the money that is in front of me. I play with just over 7 buyins live, and could feel the difference in my demeanor. It might have had something to do with the style of play that goes on in a low-limit casino game, but this has been on my mind, so I noticed the difference in my style. I’ll post more about my live session in another thread, but I felt that it was worth noticing and mentioning.

What I have noticed from all of this is that besides protecting us from downswings, playing within our bankroll really helps in the confidence we have at the table and keeps us from making scared decisions.

Anyway, my Full Tilt roll that started from the $12 that Tworags.com gave me a month ago stands at $72.55.

I broke another of my disciplines Friday night, I have figured this one out with trial and error and I know I should abide by it. I had a date night with my wife on Friday, and we skipped the movie after dinner to have a night alone at the house. After being dazed for about 30 minutes I woke back up and was bored out of my mind. The wife was out cold and wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon. So, despite knowing that I play passively after intercourse, I jumped on the Internet to do the next best thing behind intercourse. I only allowed myself to play one table of $10/NL, and I jumped on a $0.50 big bet Stud 8 table because I really enjoy that game. It didn’t take me more than 30 min to lose my buyin on the NL table. I got reraised by a very loose player from the big blind, I was in a steal position w/ 10-10 and thought that he was doing some defending. The flop was a low one and I raised his bet all in. He beat me to the middle w/ QQ. I also lost $4.40 on the stud 8 table. This quickly brought me back down to reality and I refused to rebuy. (Some people say they play better after sex, but not me, I check out for the rest of the day when I’m done!)

I’ve mentioned before in my blogs that I have some very tough home games that I play in on a weekly basis. About the time that I was just about to donk my chips off with pocket 10s my phone rings. It’s 11pm and I’m wondering who on earth is calling me at this hour of the night! The ringer identifies it as one of my poker buddies and when I pick it up my friend Michael tells me that he just made the final table of a local charity tournament right down the road. The kicker is that another player who plays with us has also made the final table. So, in a tournament of 100+ people and 160+ buyins, two people from my games have made the final table. I get off the stud 8 table and get dressed again and drive up to sweat my two friends.

As in any charity event, the blinds are completely ridiculous at this point. It’s a sick all in festival and to the lucky goes the spoils. Getting to the final table is quite a feat, but luck or no luck, one of my friends finished 4th and the other took down the whole tournament! It was a sick affair that I won’t relate hand wise, but when lady luck is on your side, you can’t help but win. For our group, that win represented the biggest take down to date, so the bar has now been set for everyone else. The bad part is that the winner isn’t even the best player in our game; the best player doesn’t even play these events because of the sick blind structure. (BTW, the best player had an awesome weekend online and at a local game. He made more playing this weekend than he does all week at his day job, and this is very achievable on a regular basis for him. If he would quit spending his winnings and start building a roll, he would be pro in no time.)

Any way, back to the bankroll building, I made a pretty good recovery on Full Tilt through the rest of the weekend. I cut my $10/NL losses to ($1.80) for the entire weekend, and combined with the ($4.40) that I took from Stud 8 my Full Tilt roll now stands at $68.60.

I also jumped on the Dog for a very brief session while I was listening to a time management audio book. I played some $25/NL because I have a decent roll on that site and ended up flopping a set and taking some idiot w/ TPWK for a ride. If a flush draw wouldn’t have completed on the river I would have really cleaned him out. But I played for 9 min and won $9.25. I got up because the decent player to my left ended up gathering a big stack and I didn’t want to run into him OOP. I love the Dog; it’s so super soft!!

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.