July Review

This month I focused more on cash games than ever before. I played about 7,000 hands at 2/4 and 3/6 give or take. I managed to maintain my SilverStar status at PokerStars. It wasn’t the most successful month at the tables though. At the cash tables I was up but only slightly early in the month with a solid finish to the month to show a profit. The real profits came in the MTT’s. Even after blowing $1,000 on my WSOP buyin I still managed to turn a nice profit. Winning the Second Chance tournament at The Orleans is the highlight of my poker career to date along with being my biggest single cash to date. We in essence chopped it with 10 left and I was able to get between 2nd and 3rd place money. I can’t see how that wasn’t great for me. Anyways, I had been playing good heading out to Vegas so it wasn’t such a big surprise to me that I was able to take it down. I had been getting my money in ahead prior to heading out there and this time came out with the top prize. There really wasn’t much in terms of other nice tournament cashes this month. I really played very few. I think August I am really going to turn my attention to MTT’s. Well at least in the first part. If I am playing them well then I may stick to that. I am also going to try and see how playing 1 MTT while playing 2 or 3 cash tables goes. I really want to optimize my time playing and this, if it works, may be the way to go. The beauty of limit cash games is that no matter how much of a grind it is I am pretty much always grinding upward. This is nice for the fact that if I go on an extended MTT funk the cash games are always there to cover the losses. I really look forward to the coming month and firmly believe August will be a major break out month for me. Last but not least the money. For the month I had a nice amount hit my bank account but still below the needed pace. I would like to say I only played poker in Vegas and so my $2,857 was the profit. I do go by one standard and one standard only when talking Vegas. How much did I leave the house with and how much did I return with. I dropped about $150 playing craps. I won about $350 at the blackjack table the night before I blew off $600 playing on tilt after busting from my WSOP event so the damage there was only about $250. I ate really good and took cabs most everywhere. Those numbers are just an estimate. The total I brought home was $2,403 more than I left my house with. Add my live play at Tunica and I was up $2,644. I didn’t cash out from Neteller all month so this is the number I cleared for the month. That leaves me at $6,844 on the year. No where near the pace I needed but hopefully the beginning of a nice end of the year rally. Good luck in the coming month

7/22 to 7/31

The last 10 days of the month are going to be a little light on poker. I am going to spend a week in Arkansas with my family and want be playing any poker unless I head over to Tunica to play some. That is a very real possibility so hopefully I get to write up a nice trip report. I PM’d razorbacker3 and he gave me the line on some of the daily tournaments there and so I am hoping to get into one of those with a buddy of mine. Anyways, on to the play for the weekend. Other than the heads up action which I absolutely killed the last couple of days I haven’t won anything. I did play the Sunday 1M on Stars and was involved in a last longer with 4 others from PokerAnalysis. I managed to outlast them and take down the $100 side bet but finished 2100th or so out of 5800 or so and so no cash. I played well but was getting a little short, 4k chips with an M of about 7, and picked up AK in the SB. There was an early raise and I reraised. He put me allin and I was hoping for QQ and it was KK. No help and I was done. With the bonus Stars was offering and the Last Longer bet I did come out only down $15 for playing it. It is hard to complain about that. Anyways, I was up and down all weekend at the cash tables and failed in two sats I played for the 1M and busted out without cashing in a couple of other tournaments. Overall I was an even to slightly down weekend but thanks to some very good heads up play wasn’t too bad. What a rough night Monday was. I played a ton of hands and dropped a total of $115 on the night. I took 2 absolutely sick beats in massive posts. One was a $95 pot in a 2/4 game. The other was a $70 pot. Both times I had top set on a board with practically no draws out there but one really absurd draw. Both times they had them and both were capped preflop. One was 76os the other was 85os. I managed to play an astounding, for me anyways, 1100 hands. It was only about 2.5 hours of play but I 6 tabled for the first real lengthy time. I was knocking out over 400 hands per hour. With PokerStars new resizable tables this was not a problem at all. I never timed out and only found myself rushed once. At the exact same time I had KK, KK, AK, AQ and 1010. Luckily in limit it is just ram and jam until reraised so even that was not too hairy. I was sad about the two bad beats but overall happy with my play. I did take a few other ones but nothing compared to those. Playing 1100 hands you’re going to get bad beat quite a few times. I am pretty close to finishing off my bonus on Stars and should achieve GoldStar status there easily this month for the first time. The amazing thing about that is that I missed 5 days playing while in Vegas and recovering from Vegas and will miss the last 5 days of the month. It looks like playing 4-6 tables at a time will easily get me to Gold each month. Hopefully they have some nice VPP freerolls for the WCOOP coming up like they did for the WSOP. It sure would be nice to freeroll the WCOOP Main Event from VPP’s. Hopefully Tuesday the cards will fall even. Cash games are still going pretty bad. I dropped about $60 in about 200 hands. Nothing horrible just a bunch of JJ vs. QQ on a 8 high flop. And ran KK into AA two times. Tournaments were where the bad beats came. I played 3 and busted out of the first two vs. 2 outers. The last of the night was the $11R 55K on Stars. I played very well and was able to cash but went so card dead after the 3rd break it wasn’t even funny. I raised 3 of 4 hands coming out of the break and picked up the blinds to get me slightly above average but don’t believe I won a hand over the next 30 minutes and was gone. I did cash for $64 which was a $13 profit but would have loved to had a rush of cards to take me real deep. One more night of online poker for the month and then off to Arkansas. Tunica awaits me on Saturday and I am going to play a tournament and maybe some 10/20. It would be nice to play well there. Man the rake in Tunica is horrible. I played at the Grand in a $130 buyin. $100 prizepool, $30 fee. That is almost as bad as my play. Seemed like a decent structure but I wouldn’t really know. 15 minutes is until my KK ran into 33. A set of 3's later and I am on my way. The worst part was the biggest Limit game they had was 4/8. I sat in on that while waiting on my buddy to finish. He played very good but ran his AQ allin preflop into A10. 1010x flop and he was out 1 table shy of the money. I did win at the 4/8 game and at blackjack. Overall I left up $241 after the entry and absurd fee and quite a bit in tips. Not a good end of the month but they can’t all be great.

7/15 to 7/21

This was a roller coaster of a weekend. Seemed like as soon as I got something going I would give it all back. Throw in the fact that I played a few hundred hands of .50/1 NL and got stacked once and you can see it wasn’t successful. I managed to only end up down a slight amount over $100 for Saturday and Sunday. I was very close to a nice score on Saturday when I got deep in the $5 rebuy on Stars with a decent stack only to run my AK s into AQ os with 45 left. The flop came Q J x with 2 of my suit. I missed all 14 of my outs and I was done in 45th. I was happy to get that deep with a shot at some cash but hated to go out that way. Sunday I had about the same luck. I played the afternoon $3 rebuy on Stars and fell victim to the same luck. I had a slightly above average stack and ran my AQ into AJ in a big pot that caught their J for 2 pair and then ran my AJ short stacked into A10 which made a straight vs. my 2 pair. Bad luck, but I played great to get there. I will never be upset too bad when I am getting my money in ahead and getting out drawn as I know for a fact it want happen every time and a nice payday is just around the corner. I am definitely primed for one. Monday was a cash game night and not even a ton of those. I only played about 200 hands and only turned a very slight profit on the night. It was less that $10. Tuesday night I took the family to the amusement park here in Amarillo and we had a great time. More water rides and a bunch of spinning rides, Tilt-o-Whirl and Scrambler, than I care to think about sent me home soaking wet and dizzy. I did play 3 tables of 2/4 for about 45 minutes and knocked out a couple of hundred hands and saw a slight profit of about $40. One thing of note for the day though was I played 3 Heads Up SNG’s before we left and went 1-2. Luckily one of the losses was a $10 one so it hurt a little less. But my ego took a hit after losing 2. I did play for a few minutes at 1 3/6 table and managed to cover my losses from that in about 45 hands before I left. Overall I did finish up $40 or so on the night but most importantly had a great night with the family. Wednesday night was about as ugly as it gets. I was either bad beat or had second best all night. Playing 2/4 and dropping about $125 just not a day you like to remember. I had sets beaten at least 3 times and kept running JJ on a 10 high board and similar spots. The simple fact is that you are going to have days like that you just have to hope that you have the ability to limit the losses on those as much as possible and that you are able to keep them few and far between. Thursday night was a much better night. I played 2 MTT’s and played pretty good in both. I got deep in both just missing the money but couldn’t complain about my play. The worst part about it was going out on the bubble with AQ vs AJ on Stars and AK vs AQ on FullTilt. Again, I can’t complain too bad when I get my money in ahead and take a beat. 75% of the time those will hold and I will be all set for the FT. After busting out in those I then won 3 of 4 $22+1 Heads up SNG’s on FullTilt and 3 of 3 $20+1 Heads up SNG’s on Stars. That left me with a profit of $64 for the night. There was potential with the good showings in the MTT’s but it wasn’t meant to be. Closing out the night winning 6 of 7 heads up battles is always nice. The lone loss was result of a horrible beat when I have top 2 on the turn and bet out and get reraised. I call with only about 300 behind and then put it all in on the river. The river filled his gutshot straight draw and he scooped a 2600 pot for the win. I’m not sure what he was doing but he was a bad player. I asked for a rematch n chat and we both signed up for the next one. This was the first match of the night so it definitely must have lit a fire under me. I beat him in about 5 minutes and asked for another but never got an answer. Oh well. Luckily I found a few others willing to donate. Friday started well when I went home for lunch and the family was at the pool so after eating I knocked won my 7th straight Heads up SNG. The trend continued as I won 2 more for a total of 9 straight. After losing one I then ran off 6 straight. Overall the week had to be slightly down. I’m guessing about $150. My accounts look about the same but all seem slightly lower. I can’t complain too bad though as every week can’t be a 2k+ week. Hopefully next week is an improvement. I plan on playing the Sunday 1M on Stars so a good showing there would definitely be nice. Good luck.

7/8 to 7/14

First off let me say this one is pretty long and I am sorry about that. It could have been a lot longer but I just referenced part of it to keep it as short as possible. Well this is Vegas week so hopefully it is a profitable one. Saturday I played sparingly since I am leaving for Vegas tomorrow and wanted to spend time with the family since I am hoping to be gone a few days. I did play about 150 hands at 2/4 and 2 free tournaments on Stars. I went out early in both but did get my money in ahead. Seems like I am doing that a lot lately but getting a bad result. That will turn though. At right about this time last year I was running about the same. Getting money in with AK vs. AQ or JJ vs. 1010 and getting outdrawn. Don’t even bring up any pair vs. AK. That did turn and I went on a major heater for the rest of the year. Hopefully that will be the case again this year. Sunday was a travel day. Luckily, from the time I leave my house in Amarillo to the time I walk into my hotel is only about 3 hours since we have a great direct flight from here. The first place I headed was over to the Rio to try 1 satellite and then buyin if I didn’t make it. I was chipping up decent when we were 5 handed and I was in the SB with K7os. I completed it and the flop came AA7. Good flop for me but I check and it gets 2 more checks. Turn is a 4. I bet out 250 into a 300 pot. BB fold and the other guy thinks a bit then minimum raises. I was fairly certain from his play he didn’t have an A so after about a minute I moved in for 600 more which would have put him very short. He didn’t insta call so I knew I had him beat and then started hoping for a call. I finally got my wish and he did call with K10os. I was very happy only needing to dodge a 10 before doubling up into the chip lead until that cruel 10 nailed the river. I didn’t hit the poker room to play the cash tables until about 10:00 Sunday night as I wanted to let the game loosen up a bit before I started. My original plan was to hit the Mirage but I saw they had 2 10/20 games going at The Orleans so I decided to stay there and play as long as I could since I didn’t have to worry about getting back to my hotel. I drank more cups of coffee than I care to think about trying to liven up but the time difference got me and I could only make 1:30. I ran into the horrible play that I had expected and was able to walk out with a nice profit of $302. One very big hand occurred when we were on a Kill pot and I was in mid position with KK. The kill was only a ½ kill so we were playing 15/30 this round. There were 2 limpers and then I reraise to 30. BB and both limpers call so we went 4 to the flop. The flop was Q high and an early limper bet and was called and then I raised. The turn was meaningless and it went check/check and then I bet out. 1 caller and the other folded so 2 went to the river. The river was another meaningless card and I bet and was called. I’m sure he had a Q but no idea what the other card was. The pot was well over $300 so that got me off to a decent start to the night. I didn’t get to play as long as I wanted but did win at a nice rate. Monday was the day. I had a great time at breakfast. I sat next to Carol (dci), Dean, Deans Dad, and Mike (A buddy of sickcoyotes). I really enjoyed the conversation and of course meeting the rest of the folks. I head in and get seated at my table and knew noone so that was good. I had talked to Brad (sickcoyote) a bit before the tournament and thought early I didn’t want to splash around and was pretty much only going to play AA, KK, QQ and AK. Boy this would come back to haunt me. I caught AK about 25 hands in and popped it up from mid position. Flop is all rags so I bet out. Button calls so I am a little concerned now. The turn brings a very nice K so I check hoping for a check raise. He checked and the river brought another K. I bet out 400 into a 500 pot and he folded. I caught 77 in the big blind and checked my option on a 4 way flop that checked down the whole way and my 77 held up surprisingly. I had managed to move up a bit from our starting stack to about 1875 in chips and I didn’t see another hand until QQ from mid/late position. I raised to 150 and the button reraised to 500. First big decision of the day. I thought for about 1 minute before finally deciding to make the call. I truly almost folded but the button had reraise early raisers at least 6-8 times so I couldn’t give him a ton of credit. I was tempted to reraise allin but wanted to see no big cards on the flop first so I went with the call. Now the other times he reraised when the flop came all rags he had checked and then folded if they bet out. Now after blinding down a bit from my high in chips I was about 1600 exactly before this hand began. Now with the blinds and an early limper the pot was 1125 total and I had 1100 left. I thought a bet of 500 would show weakness so I moved in and he called instantly. As we were counting out the chips I asked if he finally had gotten AA and he said yes. Surprisingly we had the exact same number of chips and I got no help and was sent packing. And that is my first experience in the WSOP. It was a couple of minutes before the first break and I had played 3 hands. Won 2 of them and went home on the 3rd. I was definitely disappointed but was still very excited to have gotten the experience. But the rollercoaster of a day on Monday was getting ready to kick into high gear. After calling my wife and dad to let them know I was no longer around in the tournament I felt exhausted. I went back to my room and crashed for about an hour and a half. I decided I needed a good dinner so I went down to The Orleans seafood buffet and ate a ton of shrimp and crab legs and was ready to win it all back. I finished dinner about 6:45 and took a casual walk over to the poker room to see if they still had their nightly tournament. As it turns out they were having their Poker Open going on and were running second chance tournaments every night at 7:00. I ran up to the room quickly and got paid about 2 minutes before it started. It was $120 buyin with a $100 rebuy that almost everyone uses immediately. I want go into a long narrative on the event but you can check the Boasts and Brags section on www.pokeranalysis.com and check out the post titled “Razrback Gets A Second Chance” and read about. Obviously 7.5 hours after it started I was the winner. I collected $4,000 and after tipping the dealers $100 I showed a profit of $3,680. I was very excited and tired. I called my wife, 5:00am in Amarillo, and told her and got a very very groggy “good job” as she was hanging up and going back to sleep. I then headed straight to bed for a very short night of sleep. Tuesday morning I was heading back to Amarillo so not much playing then. I went downstairs and had about an hour to kill so I jumped in on a 4/8 limit game and broke exactly even for the hour and was then off to the airport to get home. Overall I had a great time and did better poker wise than I had hoped. I spent $125 on my 1 satellite, $1,000 on the WSOP and $220 on the Second Chance tournament. After all tips and entry fees I walked away ahead $2,857 on the trip. I would definitely call that a success. 3 days still to go in the week so maybe this was the week to get me back on track. Wednesday night I was tired and played 0 hands of poker. We’ll call it a break even day. Thursday night was a very nice night. Not a lot of playing but all went to plan. I played a little NL .5/1 blinds and won almost $60 over just a few hands. I then proceeded to win 4 of 5 $20 heads up matches. Ironically the only match I lost the guy had to sit out about 5 minutes for something so I figured in the interest of good sportsmanship I would sit out until he got back or 10 minutes. I had him down pretty low but he doubled up and the busted me a little later. Oh well. The 2/4 tables treated me good also. I only got in about 200 hands and left up right at $100 for the night. It looks like my heater in Vegas continued a little longer. Overall on the night I was up a little over $200 so definitely can’t complain. Hopefully this is just the start of things to come. There isn’t a lot to Friday. I mostly played cash games and ended the night on a down note but slightly up. When I sat down I started off real well but gradually over the next 400 hands I bled off most of the profits when I had a couple of beats and a couple of second best hands. It was a great week overall. I managed to play in the WSOP and win my first live tournament for my largest cash. I was able to clear $2,400 in profits on the week but if I was able to stay away from the BlackJack tables the profits would have been a lot nicer since all gambling gets counted together. Good luck.

7/1 to 7/7

This weekend was the 4th of July weekend so I am a little late typing this up. I did play a lot of poker over the holiday weekend and managed to earn my 1500 VPP’s on Stars by the 5th in order to maintain my SilverStar status until the end of August. This allows me to earn points 50% faster while playing and also gets me into some nice freeroll tournaments for WSOP seats and cash. I continued playing 4 tables of 2/4 and probably played 3,000 to 3,500 hands over the weekend. That sounds like a ton of playing but at 360 hands per hour that was actually less than 10 hours of play. I did play a few tournaments with no success and had a horrible day on Saturday so through Wednesday I have only turned a small profit. I think Saturday I played with horrible drunk players all day and had more bad beats than I care to think about. Hopefully the last 2 days of the week will be positive ones and I can leave for Vegas on a nice up note. I do have high hopes while there as I generally have great luck playing live. Hopefully I am able to either satellite into my event or win enough playing cash games to cover the cost. That way if I am fortunate enough to cash it will be all profit. Thursday and Friday I was able to end slightly ahead. For the first week of July I was really about as blah as it gets. I did manage to play quite a few hands so that is good and I am playing really good heading out to Vegas so hopefully I am saving up for the big one.

6/22 to 6/30

It was a good start to the week. Thursday night I knocked out almost 300 hands again and saw a profit of just over $90. I then saw a post on pokeranalysis.com that __O__ and Deviljoe were playing some low limit NL and I decided to join. Zfoley was there also so we had 4 total from PA. I think all turned a profit with __O__ raking in the most. It was a good time also. I did manage 1 $20 Heads Up SNG and took that one down easily so a nice profit of about $115 on Stars helped offset a loss of about $40 on FullTilt. Hopefully this is a good start to a good week. After a successful Thursday 4 tabling I thought I would spend at least an hour per day doing this on Stars. I have a decent monitor and can play all 4 with only a little overlap. I can’t wait till the have resizable tables like Party Poker. I did do about 400 hands playing 5 tables for a bit and did win but didn’t like the overlap that was there. It seems like I saw you could get 9 tables on a 19" monitor without any or only minimal overlap so I am thinking 6 will be a good number when they get those out of beta. That would allow me to play well over 400 hands per hour which at 4 BB per 100 at 2/4 would be over $60 per hour and at 3/6 would be almost $100. I may have to invest in PokerTracker to keep up with that for me. I’m scared as to what it would say about my play. It’s liable to tell me I’m way too aggressive and I should quit. Anyone that would ever like to see what a few hundred hands of limit poker look like PM me on PokerAnalyis and I will see if I can round up some HH’s. I like to think I am a successful limit cash game player and it is really a very nice way to see your bankroll increasing at a nice steady rate without some of the swings on NL cash games. Anyways, enough of the cash game rambling. I spent time every day this weekend playing multiple 2/4 tables. I decided that while doing this I would stick to the 2/4 that way if I notice a drop off it wouldn’t be as costly as 3/6. I knocked out about 5 hours of play over Friday, Saturday and Sunday and managed to play close to 1500 hands. Add in Thursday and I managed about 1800 hands total so far this week. I turned a decent profit but nothing to write home about probably in the neighborhood of $250. That would be a little over $40 per hour or about 3.5 BB per 100 hands. I know it is a small sample size but I don’t see that as being on the high side for me at all if anything I felt like I took more than my share of bad beats. I really didn’t play much as far as tournaments go this weekend. I had good luck in the heads up matches I played only losing 1 out of 10 or more so those add up pretty fast at $20 a pop. No cashes in any MTT’s but overall it was a good weekend. So much for good playing. Monday I had every type of cooler and bad beat possible. I got set over setted more times than I care to think about. I ran KK into AA and QQ into KK probably 4 times. Somehow I managed to only lose about $25 on the night. I was a bit tilted and jumped into a 2/4 NL game. I told myself to sit tight as a rock and hope to get paid off. It wasn’t looking good as I had KK in the BB and it folded around to me. Then next blind I had AK suited and it folded around to me again. I did call a raise from the button with 1010 and hit top set and won a decent pot there so I played out the round and did a quick hit-n-run for about $75 to get me to only $25 down. Tuesday night was even worse. A good example was a hand I held JJ from the SB. It is raised when it gets to me and I make it 3 bets. The original raiser caps it and we see a 10 high flop. I bet he raises I call. The turn in a low card I bet he calls. The river is a K. I check he bets I call and he turns over KQ os. No hand no draw capping with KQ. That was my night. I dropped a little over $100 and was done. Just 3 days left in the month to turn it into a good month. July is going to be an amazing month. I have a good feeling about it. A trip to Vegas to play in the biggest buyin I have played to date. Previous high was the $530 1M on Stars. If I can make it to day two that should give me my largest cash ever also. I could easily be wrong but I am starting to feel it. Wednesday night was a very good night at the cash tables. I ended up about $60 in only 120 hands of 2/4. I did however play 2 tournaments and got nowhere. I got it allin on a flop of 245 with JJ and 22 took me out. And then 2/3 of the way through one on FullTilt I ran AQ into AK. I still ended up slightly on the day, about $35, but the cash tables turned so that was great. My game is going good overall so I just need to fine tune my tourney play. Two more days to go in the month. Thursday night was a horrible night I got killed playing some 3/6 and dropped $95 playing that before I started my MTT’s for the night. I hate to give up on the cash games but need to get back into the feel for the MTT’s. I played 3 on the night not even sniffing the money in any but getting into the top 3rd in all. Add the $95 in buyins to the $95 I dropped and it was turning ugly fast. I then decided to try my hand at the NL tables again and sat in on a 2/4 table. I played about 150 hands and turned a profit of about $165. I wish I could save my stats as I only had 1 showdown that I won which was a nice pot of about $ 300 when I cracked AA with my 85os. The guy thought limping in with AA was the way to go when I was in the BB. It had to be a nightmare when 5 of us saw the flop. A nine high straight later I am definitely sure he wished he had raised preflop. As far as the rest I pretty much played ABC poker raising my strong hands and not getting too tricky postflop. Overall on the night I dropped $25. I feel very fortunate that was all I lost. Friday night involved a couple of tournaments and quite a few hands at the cash tables. On the night I ended up $30. It sure wasn’t much profit for the hands I played. That ends the month. I’ll have the monthly review up shortly. Good luck next week.

6/15 to 6/21

Poker for the week has been pretty slow. I stayed away from tournaments for the most part the first few days of the week. I have had a bit of success playing at the cash tables so it is hard to venture too far from those. Throw in the fact that I just don’t have a ton of time to commit 5 hours to a tournament and the Heads Up SNG’s and some 2/4 and 3/6 is hard to tear myself away from. So far this week I have shown a slight profit of about $150 from Thursday till Monday. I know that is nothing to write home about but I haven’t played a lot. Last night was the most I have played and I think I put in about 150 hands at a couple of 2/4 tables and absolutely cleaned up. I had a profit of slightly over $80. When I first sat down I got rolled with 3 horrible beats and was down about $40 in the first 30 hands. Then everything started holding up. I flopped quad 6's when I called a raise from early position with 66. It was a 4 way pot so there was quite a bit of money in there. Then a few hands later at the same table I called an early raise with TT from the BB and flopped top set on a rainbow non connecting board. When the SB check raised I was pretty happy when 4 of us saw the turn. I then was able to check raise the turn and took down another nice pot. Overall I had AAx2, KKx1, and QQx1. Those were the only big hands I had and one AA and the KK both were bad beat but overall I just hit flops with pretty good hands and got paid. Two more days to go in the week. Tuesday night I played 2 tournaments and got fairly deep in one but ran my AQ into AK and didn’t improve and out I went. I pretty much washed out between the two and really didn’t play much as far as cash games go so I think I finished the night up something in the neighborhood of $9 or $10. But I was pretty happy with how I played the tournament so that is a good sign of things to come. Wednesday was mostly a cash game night. I spent a little over an hour playing almost 300 hands of 2/4. I won about $75 so all was good. I really have found myself enjoying the cash tables a little more than tournaments lately. It was a decent week as I did get to play a couple of hours most nights and saw a profit of over $200. Good luck in the coming week.

6/8 to 6/14

My parents and sister were in town for the weekend so that put a kink into my playing. We had our office summer picnic on Thursday night also so there was no playing. Friday I played a Tournament on FullTilt and ended up at the Final Table out of 234 I think. I managed 7th but took a very bad beat that left me crippled when my AQ was no match for Q10s. I hung on for one more to bust but was looking for the 1st place payout instead of 7th. On Saturday night I only played the BetFred Forum freeroll. There were over 300 in this one and I managed to make the Final Table of this one also and hung on nicely until there were 5 left and then I was booted out. When I logged back in I got stuck in an update which took 10 minutes on my DSL and I got back in just in time to see the last of my chips blinded off. Sunday I played a little 2/4 and dropped a few bucks and then won most back winning 4 of 5 heads up SNG’s. I am sure glad those are back running good for me as there is some nice money to be made playing those. I am right about even so far on the week so it is time to kick it into high gear for the last 3 days. Monday was an okay night. The cash tables were just average for me. I dropped a bit on Stars and FullTilt but won it all back plus some on Playtech. I also had a decent night playing Heads Up. I won both of the heads up matches I played on Stars so was pretty much a wash there. Overall I ended up probably close to $50 on the night in maybe 1 to 1.5 hours of play. Tuesday and Wednesday pretty much canceled each other out. I won about $60 on Tuesday playing some 3/6. on FullTilt and then dropped about $60 on Wednesday playing the same. I haven’t been playing many tournaments still but I will start in about a week to week and a half playing 1 or 2 per night in order to get into tournament shape for Event #17. I am not making much headway collecting W$ on Stars as every time I get up a few W$ I try a larger entry for a W$650 seat trying to get a big score to put me over the top and get into in on the cheap. I am only in for $22 so far but am about to give up and just take enough to buyin when in Vegas. I’ll probably try 1 satellite if they have them when I get there and if I have no luck just bite the bullet. I am hoping not to have to play one but The Orleans, where I’ll probably stay, has a nightly tournament with a nice starting stack that I will play if I happen to get sent home early from the WSOP event. I hope this is a good week coming. Good luck to everyone.

6/1 to 6/7

The first part of the month I was desperately sick. I had a virus that was going around Amarillo so I played no poker Thursday or Friday. Saturday and Sunday I played a little bit and have determined the cash tables is what I am playing best right now so I stuck mostly with those on Stars and FullTilt. I was able to turn a decent profit playing multiple 2/4 tables and managed to end the weekend up about $100 over about 500 hands. I seem to be pretty tired of tournament play these days and that is showing in my results. I played a couple of small buyins and failed to cash in any tournament that I played. My head just isn’t right to get stuck playing for 5 hours and that is costing me. I really like getting set up on 3 or 4 cash tables and playing for an hour and then quitting. Hopefully the rest of the week keeps heading up. Monday was a down day. I had an amazing run of cards but absolutely none held up. I had AAx2, KKx3 and QQx3. Only one of the AA’s held and that is it. Luckily I was able to get away from a couple of those with little loss and somehow only dropped about $75 total. Tuesday is a new day. Nothing to talk about the last couple of days for the week. I’m still not playing many tournaments just mainly cash games and some heads up SNG’s. I did turn a slight profit on the week but couldn’t have been more than $50.

May Review

Well I know I said I would do better posting and I was just wrong. It sure seems like my blog is starting to fall apart. It is hard for me to imagine how busy two little girls can actually be. For the last few of weeks I have been on the go from 6:45 am until after 8:00 pm constant. The only night I have had off was Wednesday night. I am beat at the end of the night and poker just hasn’t been a priority. School is out now so my day want get started until about 7:45 am so I should be able to spend a little more time in the evenings playing. I keep thinking this but it just hasn’t been meant to be. I have been playing pretty good for the little I have been able to play. I have been staying away from the heads up until the very end of the month as I was in a pretty big funk there. I seem to have that worked out now. My cash game play has been very strong for the few hands I did get in. I think for the month of May I only earned about 500 FPP’s on Stars so that should give you an idea of how little I have been able to play. I am ready to hit the grind in June and really start focusing on winning some cash and hitting the goals that I have set for the year. If this year is anything like last year then June is the month that my playing really started to take off. I feel I am a much improved player over last year so I am a little excited about what the last 7 months of the years has in store for me. As far as money goes I didn’t cash any money out of Neteller for the month. That leaves me still at $4,200 on the year and $40,800 under my goal. That means I need to start having some good months and finish off the year at a pace of about $5,800 per month. That means I need one very nice cash each month and some solid cash game play. This may seem a little excessive but I do feel I am set to start the final push. Good luck to every one in June.

April Review

Just to warn you this has very little poker content. Well this month I have had practically no time at all to play. Sports with my daughters are in full swing and with my wife not able to help much I have been Dad, Mom, Chauffeur, Business Owner, Chef, Maid all rolled into one. Normally I am all set to play after the girls are in bed but lately I have been hitting the sack very early. I don’t remember much from the month as far as poker goes since it is the middle of May when I am finally getting around to writing anything. I did check my Neteller and somehow I managed to only cash out $100. Not sure how I got to that amount but none the less we will call it a positive month. That puts me way behind on the year as I have only shown a profit of $4,200 on the year. I am beginning to think that my original goal is really gonna need a big cash in order to get there. I am planning on heading out to Vegas in July to play in one of the early WSOP events so a big cash there would definitely get me there. The biggest problem I see is that I am not getting to play enough in order to have my game as sharp as I will need it to be. I am truly hopeful that I will be able to start playing regular again soon. Every time I think it is almost that time then something new pops up with my wife. What I thought was going to be a fairly routine procedure turned out to be the most difficult to date. An unexpected complication in Kelly’s surgery caused us to spend two extra nights in the hospital. It also threw her recovery for a loop and caused at least 2 additional doctors visits. With any luck she will be up and around close to full speed by the end of May and I will be back to playing after 7:30-8:00 my time. I can already tell you May will be more of the same as far as poker goes as halfway through I have barely gotten any in. I do keep up with everyone on PokerAnalysis but may not always post much but I am watching. Good luck to everyone in May.