I probably should have written about the $500+35 FTOPS Main Event experience days ago, but I've been busy.. so here goes:
The FTOPS Main Event began with a total of 5,216 players on Sunday. It was a super-stack tournement, which means we all started with a cool 5000 chips at 15/30 blinds. The blind levels lasted 15 minutes each, with breaks every hour as usual. It was a great structure. 15 minute blinds online is a nice amount, and because of that.. we wouldn't reach the antes until after the second break.
So when we started, my strategy was simple: Observe my table for the first couple of levels, play tight and smart poker.. waiting for good spots to get my money in.
My plan worked like a charm for the first four levels. I played good cards in good position, winning all my pots without a showdown. I had steadily grown my stack to 8500 by the first break.
After that, my cards went very very cold. Couldn't even get a suited connector to play.. because the game had become almost passive at my table. Lots of limping.. which I took advantage of with timely steals and re-steals to keep my chips where they were. But I ran into a slight hiccup after the break. I got AK two of out three hands and lost both times, costing me about 3500. I think I played them correctly.. but you tell me:
Hand 1: Blinds 50/100
I'm in the Cutoff. UTG raises to 300, folds around to me.. I call. BTN folds, both blinds call. Pot is 1200.
Four players to the flop of: J 10 4 (two clubs)
- Both blinds check to UTG, who leads out for 600. I raise to 1500 total, both blinds fold, UTG calls (and he called instantly). Turn is a 6, not a club. Pot is 4200.
- UTG leads out for 3000. I only raised on the flop to see if I could get a free turn card, which didn't work. My thinking is, he has a hand... possible a set of Jacks or Tens (if he played the hand REALLY well) but QQ, KK, AA, AJ make sense. He bet the right amount so I mucked my AK.
Hand 2: Blinds 50/100
I'm on the Button. UTG limps, two folds, MP limp, two folds. On the BTN, I raise to 450. SB folds. BB quickly re-raises to 1200. Everyone folds back around to me. I think and decide to call. (I don't want to overplay AK here. There's no reason to. I still had about 6500 when this hand began). Pot is 2750.
We go Heads Up to the flop of: 7 4 2 rainbow.
- BB bets 2500. I curse the sky and fold. Obviously, I put him on a pocket pair.. kind of standard.. but what can I really do here?
(NOTE: In both of these situations, the villian in the hand had me out-chipped. I could have gone bust against them)
So.. at the blinds of 60/120.. the final hand comes for me. I'm down to about 4800 now and on the Button.
Final Hand: Blinds 60/120
Amazingly, everyone folds around to me on the button. Because I have played so tight, I figured a big raise on the Button will look like a steal. I have QQ. So pop it up to 420. SB insta-calls me and the BB folds. Pot is 960.
Flop comes out: 9 7 2 (two diamonds)
- SB instantly bets 960 (the pot). I think about it and realize, he is the kind of player that doesn't think about his actions. All game long, he was seated to my left and was making snap decisions. So I figured, with his insta-call preflop.. I have his range on A7-A10, KQ-K10... possible suited. With this flop, he's got one of two things if he bets the flop like this: A9 or a flush draw.
Looking at the chip situation (I have about 4300 and he has 5000), if I raise the 960 bet in any way, i'm going to be pot committed. Here's where I made a small mistake.
I re-raised to 2000 even. It was dumb, because the moron I was playing against is going to push here with either of the hands I put him on. He did, he insta-pushed. So, now I have to call.
Looking back on it, If I push.. he still insta-calls. That's why it was a "small" mistake.
He tables A 10 of diamonds to my QQ. Turn comes another diamond... and I'm drawing dead. I went out with about 3500 people left.. 768 would cash.
Now.. George and I talked out this hand after the fact and came up with several theories on how I could have played it differently:
- When the villian bets the pot, 960, I could have just called. Going by the way I wanted to play this tournament.. it's the less violatile thing to do. If I think he may have a flush draw, I could just call the flop, and see if the turn comes out with a diamond.
- Here's the problem I see with this -
Whether he has A9 or the hand he actually had (A 10 of diamonds).. He may bet out the turn either way, putting me in a situation where I have no idea what to do.
- However -
- If he has the diamonds and the diamond hits the turn.. he may check and I could bet small to find out what he has or check behind him.
- If I check behind him, he will bet the river.. and if it's a value bet and the river is not an over card or a diamond.. it's really tough to get away from QQ there, seeing as I can't go broke. (And, correct me if I'm wrong, It could be a nitty fold). In this situation, I could be left wth about 2000 chips and I'm entering push/fold mode.
- Now, if I bet small on the turn instead of checking.. and he re-raises, that could be a way to get away from the hand cheaply.. but again.. I'm sitting with maybe 2500 chips and not much is different.
- HOWEVER... what If I bet the turn small and he check-raises all-in? In my experience, bad players do that with A9 in that spot, thinking they can bluff the flush... posing a problem for me if he actually has it (which he did). I think he's a novice player, judging by his instant-decision making and willingness to call me out of position with A 10 when I have raised maybe three times all tournament. Because of this, I may put him on A 9 and call with QQ and STILL be out of the tournament. And on top of all this: The novice will play a made flush and the A9 almost the same.. making this a tough call.
SO, all that said.. and I hope it makes sense when you read it.. my feeling is that the easiest decision for me to give myself is to stick it all-in on the flop with QQ in that spot. I know If I'm up against a flush draw, I'm at best a 64/36 favorite.. and if he has an over to my QQ, it's more of a race than anything. But my feeling on the issue is simple:
- No one can win a 5000+ player tournament without surviving races such as these along the way to the final table. It's very very rare that throughout the tournament I'm going to be able to take down ALL of my pots without a showdown. It's just not going to happen. I'm going to have to gamble... I'm going to have to get lucky.. all I can hope, is that I get my money in with the best hand or an absolutely SICK draw that I have the odds to chase.
Overall.. It was a fun experience. I'm not disappointed with how I played at all.. it just didn't happen for me this time. I placed in the top 72 out of 3500 to get here.. but it's hard to do that twice in a row.... really hard.
There's always next time.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
FTOPS Main Event
I'm writing this entry because, quite frankly... I'm really damn excited. I just won a seat to the Full Tilt Poker $500+35 Sunday February 17th's FTOPS Main Event, the 2 Million Dollar Guarantee hosted by Allen Cunningham.
For any of you who would care to know, here's how I got in:
On Thursday, I played a 300 FTP sit n go and took it down, rather easily. People threw their chips around carelessly in the early stages and I was able to get heads up with some guy when I had about 9500 to his 4000 at the blind levels of 30/60. After an hour-long bout (mainly because he played WAY too tight for heads up play), I won, gaining entry into the next level of qualifier.
The next tournament took place Saturday night at 8:30pm. It was a 2500 FTP buy-in, which I didn't have, and it would allow a maximum of 3600 players. The top 72 finishers would win seats into the $500+35 Main Event. We had a total of 3577 players at the start and I did pretty well. The first 2000 players busted within the first hour, and I just kept trying to get my money in good or with huge draws+great odds... and it seemed to work. I played pretty loose early on, looking to gamble with odds or hit big hands. The biggest reason I stayed alive is that I won most of my races (ie- I hit my flush draws and my two-pair would hold up against villain draws).
The hand of the tournament had to be this one: I have about 40,000 chips with around 350 players left and the blinds are 600/1200 with antes.
Everyone folds to me in the SB and I make it 4000 with 10, 10. The Big Blind has about 28,000 and calls. Flop comes 2 3 4 with two hearts.
I hate this flop.
But I have to bet, because odds are I have the best hand unless he either a) flopped a set or b) somehow has A5 or 65.
I bet out 7200 into a pot of about 9500 and the villain instantly pushes all-in for his remaining 24,000. Now I'm being laid great odds (14,500 into a pot of 38,400) but calling and losing WILL cripple me to about 12,000. I thought about it for a minute and decided, well I know he has a flush draw, and with this low of a board... he's also got overs.. meaning I'm actually an underdog. But I had to call and did. He shows QJ of hearts and misses twice. I bust him and then let out a tribal yell here in front of my computer.. After that, I just kept going with sound play and a little luck (or a little lack of bad luck, I should say).
The tournament starts to get really interesting when we get down to the last 200 players. At this point, I've been through countless big confrontations and had a top 10 stack of around 94,000. Blinds were 1200/2400 with antes and I was simply looking to stay alive and pick off easy pots to maintain my chips.
I had just gotten moved away from Scott Fischman's table and still had it up when I saw what they were talking about. They said, "check out table 56". So I did, and table 56 had 9 players all of whom were in the chip range of 17,000 to 5,000... so I thought, wow.. how'd all these low chip players get together.... well it took about five seconds to figure out how.
They did it by making an agreement to pass their blinds around to each other, taking the maximum 20 seconds per decision to fold. All nine of them were doing it and the entire tournament went berserk.
They were obviously colluding so I called George to talk about it. He said it's only collusion if they verbally agree to do it in the chat box on Full Tilt Poker. And the way they were talking about it suggested to me that they had already done it and were trying to be careful with their speech at this point... saying things like "wow, I've been getting 7 2 for the past two hours... this is amazing."
Then, out of nowhere, Scott Fischman comes in and types "what you are doing is cheating and you are all being reported. it's called collusion".
It was hilarious, everyone went nuts... but all of the people on table 56 continued to do it. Eventually the blinds reached the ridiculous stages of 2000/4000, 3000/6000 and 4000/8000. They finally started busting and some other players from other tables were joining them. And by this point, everyone had known exactly what was going on. As soon as this guy named "Drews Game" got to their table with about 60,000, he started raising every hand... totally screwing up their plan. It worked too, all but two of them busted before we got down to 72 players.
Long story short, I'm really glad I hadn't been bubble boy because of that. I may have lost my mind. But either way, I'm in. Ended up placing 8th (Fischman 9th if it matters)... but as soon as we got to 72 players, everyone just went all-in every hand. Was a long grind, took about 6 hours.. but I pulled it off. I'm competing for the top cash prize of $354,100 for the whopping price of 300 FTPs.
Finally... my rake did something GOOD for a change.
For any of you who would care to know, here's how I got in:
On Thursday, I played a 300 FTP sit n go and took it down, rather easily. People threw their chips around carelessly in the early stages and I was able to get heads up with some guy when I had about 9500 to his 4000 at the blind levels of 30/60. After an hour-long bout (mainly because he played WAY too tight for heads up play), I won, gaining entry into the next level of qualifier.
The next tournament took place Saturday night at 8:30pm. It was a 2500 FTP buy-in, which I didn't have, and it would allow a maximum of 3600 players. The top 72 finishers would win seats into the $500+35 Main Event. We had a total of 3577 players at the start and I did pretty well. The first 2000 players busted within the first hour, and I just kept trying to get my money in good or with huge draws+great odds... and it seemed to work. I played pretty loose early on, looking to gamble with odds or hit big hands. The biggest reason I stayed alive is that I won most of my races (ie- I hit my flush draws and my two-pair would hold up against villain draws).
The hand of the tournament had to be this one: I have about 40,000 chips with around 350 players left and the blinds are 600/1200 with antes.
Everyone folds to me in the SB and I make it 4000 with 10, 10. The Big Blind has about 28,000 and calls. Flop comes 2 3 4 with two hearts.
I hate this flop.
But I have to bet, because odds are I have the best hand unless he either a) flopped a set or b) somehow has A5 or 65.
I bet out 7200 into a pot of about 9500 and the villain instantly pushes all-in for his remaining 24,000. Now I'm being laid great odds (14,500 into a pot of 38,400) but calling and losing WILL cripple me to about 12,000. I thought about it for a minute and decided, well I know he has a flush draw, and with this low of a board... he's also got overs.. meaning I'm actually an underdog. But I had to call and did. He shows QJ of hearts and misses twice. I bust him and then let out a tribal yell here in front of my computer.. After that, I just kept going with sound play and a little luck (or a little lack of bad luck, I should say).
The tournament starts to get really interesting when we get down to the last 200 players. At this point, I've been through countless big confrontations and had a top 10 stack of around 94,000. Blinds were 1200/2400 with antes and I was simply looking to stay alive and pick off easy pots to maintain my chips.
I had just gotten moved away from Scott Fischman's table and still had it up when I saw what they were talking about. They said, "check out table 56". So I did, and table 56 had 9 players all of whom were in the chip range of 17,000 to 5,000... so I thought, wow.. how'd all these low chip players get together.... well it took about five seconds to figure out how.
They did it by making an agreement to pass their blinds around to each other, taking the maximum 20 seconds per decision to fold. All nine of them were doing it and the entire tournament went berserk.
They were obviously colluding so I called George to talk about it. He said it's only collusion if they verbally agree to do it in the chat box on Full Tilt Poker. And the way they were talking about it suggested to me that they had already done it and were trying to be careful with their speech at this point... saying things like "wow, I've been getting 7 2 for the past two hours... this is amazing."
Then, out of nowhere, Scott Fischman comes in and types "what you are doing is cheating and you are all being reported. it's called collusion".
It was hilarious, everyone went nuts... but all of the people on table 56 continued to do it. Eventually the blinds reached the ridiculous stages of 2000/4000, 3000/6000 and 4000/8000. They finally started busting and some other players from other tables were joining them. And by this point, everyone had known exactly what was going on. As soon as this guy named "Drews Game" got to their table with about 60,000, he started raising every hand... totally screwing up their plan. It worked too, all but two of them busted before we got down to 72 players.
Long story short, I'm really glad I hadn't been bubble boy because of that. I may have lost my mind. But either way, I'm in. Ended up placing 8th (Fischman 9th if it matters)... but as soon as we got to 72 players, everyone just went all-in every hand. Was a long grind, took about 6 hours.. but I pulled it off. I'm competing for the top cash prize of $354,100 for the whopping price of 300 FTPs.
Finally... my rake did something GOOD for a change.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Goals for 2008
Just as I finished writing my last post I remembered, I wanted to put together my goals for the year. Now, I'm not going to lie.. AltronIV and thebmorekid's blogs have inspired me to do this. So here's my 10 Poker Goals for 2008, in no particular order:
1. Finish the year with over $2000 in profits from Live games.
In 2007, I was able to come away $1,044 in profits. I played a total of 101 games (cash/tourney) and 36 of my 72cash games were $40 or $50 buy-in .25/.50 games. I believe this is a very attainable goal, now that I've found some biggest cash games like Kori's. (Check the bottom of this post for my full 2007 stats).
2. Finish the year with over $1000 in profits from Online play.
I should be able to do this as well, but it will be a grind considering 90% of games are Limit. I made the agreement with Josh and George to start with $300 on Jan 1 and see how far we go by the end of the year. $1000 really isn't a tough goal to achieve, but I want to stay there once I get there. Now, my bankroll stands at $310 right now, but it's actually $210 in profit. Before we officially began the Limit challenge, I put $100 on Full Tilt to mess around with, to get back in the flow of online play (I was away for about a year). Well, one good run transformed that hundred into my $300 bankroll by Jan 1.
3. Join the Card Player Database
There's nothing I want more than to cash in a WSOP or WPT event. I plan on playing more WPT events though, since I much prefer the structures. Problem is, I need to save some money and paid off all of my bills before I start throwing around a lot of $300 buyins to these events. Fact is, I can't afford to play all of them. So, I'll play as many as is affordable.
4. Make a Big Cash
This goal kind of goes hand-in-hand with number 3 but not really. Frankly, If I cash for $2,000 in a MTT at the Taj, it's not going to count toward Card Player. I really felt that I should have cashed in the Showboat tourney back in December, but it's hard to do that when everyone hits the river card against you. Honestly, I have yet to make a big cash. My two biggest cashes of my life are only $200. Kinda sad, I know... but I've only played maybe five or six tournaments in AC and online I play for much smaller stakes.
5. Develop better Discipline and Patience
This goal is going to be hard to really quantify, but it's something I really want to do. Coming into year three of my poker development, it's time for me to really begin to refine the weak spots in my game, as I've already found my confidence and style. I need to be content with waiting for good spots and pouncing when I find them. The more I've tried to make my own action, the more violent swings my game takes. I win some and loss more. It's just not worth it.
6. Win the Online Challenge with Josh and George
Now, understand this... this one is just for me. Josh and George don't really know about it yet. We never meant for it to be a competition, but hell.. it's just the way I am. I want to be the best, who doesn't? And if you don't, you shouldn't be on the felt.
7. Finish in the Top Five of the Bmore Brawl Events
OK... I flat out stole this from thebmorekid, but why shouldn't I? I want to finish top five in knockouts and cashes, pure and simple. I agree with bmore, it will be tough due to the competition.. but it's something to strive for.
8. Keep up with this Poker Blog
I have a tendency to start these things but not keep up with them as much as I intended to. I want to continue to share my thoughts and experiences with other online players and try to learn as much as possible from them.
9. Log 2,000 posts on 2+2 Forums
This goal is kind of pointless, but the reason for it is to make sure I'm interacting with other online grinders like myself and hopefully be able to plug my leaks quicker. The number of posts is really irrelevant, but I think logging two thousand would certainly drive home the point.
10. Learn to Control my Ego
This is again, something that's hard to quantify.. but I feel like it's more essential to my long-term success than anything else on here. I tend to grow frustrated at bad players (internally) and it makes me go after them at times when I shouldn't. If I can learn to drop my ego out of the way and instead focus on playing sound poker.. I will make more money.
Well that's that. So for any of you who are interested, here's my live poker stats from 2007.
Total Cash/Tourney Count: 101
Won/Lost: $1,044
Wins: 57
Losses: 44
Cash Game Count: 72
Won/Lost: $1,039
Total Hours: 270, 40 minutes
Average/Hr: $3.84
Wins: 43
Losses: 29
.25/.50 NL: 36 games (21-15)
Hours: 133
Avg/Hr: $2.45
1/2 NL: 16 games (10-6)
Hours: 67
Avg/Hr: $6.24
Tourney Game Count: 29
Total Buyins: $1,150
Total Payouts: $1,155
Largest Buyin: $300+40 Dec 8, WSOP Circuit Event 1 at Harrahs AC.
Largest Cash: $200 (twice)
- Aug 5, Stars n Bars Regional, First Place/ 71 players
- Dec 22, Mike Yassa's Farewell Game, First Place/ 8 players
1. Finish the year with over $2000 in profits from Live games.
In 2007, I was able to come away $1,044 in profits. I played a total of 101 games (cash/tourney) and 36 of my 72cash games were $40 or $50 buy-in .25/.50 games. I believe this is a very attainable goal, now that I've found some biggest cash games like Kori's. (Check the bottom of this post for my full 2007 stats).
2. Finish the year with over $1000 in profits from Online play.
I should be able to do this as well, but it will be a grind considering 90% of games are Limit. I made the agreement with Josh and George to start with $300 on Jan 1 and see how far we go by the end of the year. $1000 really isn't a tough goal to achieve, but I want to stay there once I get there. Now, my bankroll stands at $310 right now, but it's actually $210 in profit. Before we officially began the Limit challenge, I put $100 on Full Tilt to mess around with, to get back in the flow of online play (I was away for about a year). Well, one good run transformed that hundred into my $300 bankroll by Jan 1.
3. Join the Card Player Database
There's nothing I want more than to cash in a WSOP or WPT event. I plan on playing more WPT events though, since I much prefer the structures. Problem is, I need to save some money and paid off all of my bills before I start throwing around a lot of $300 buyins to these events. Fact is, I can't afford to play all of them. So, I'll play as many as is affordable.
4. Make a Big Cash
This goal kind of goes hand-in-hand with number 3 but not really. Frankly, If I cash for $2,000 in a MTT at the Taj, it's not going to count toward Card Player. I really felt that I should have cashed in the Showboat tourney back in December, but it's hard to do that when everyone hits the river card against you. Honestly, I have yet to make a big cash. My two biggest cashes of my life are only $200. Kinda sad, I know... but I've only played maybe five or six tournaments in AC and online I play for much smaller stakes.
5. Develop better Discipline and Patience
This goal is going to be hard to really quantify, but it's something I really want to do. Coming into year three of my poker development, it's time for me to really begin to refine the weak spots in my game, as I've already found my confidence and style. I need to be content with waiting for good spots and pouncing when I find them. The more I've tried to make my own action, the more violent swings my game takes. I win some and loss more. It's just not worth it.
6. Win the Online Challenge with Josh and George
Now, understand this... this one is just for me. Josh and George don't really know about it yet. We never meant for it to be a competition, but hell.. it's just the way I am. I want to be the best, who doesn't? And if you don't, you shouldn't be on the felt.
7. Finish in the Top Five of the Bmore Brawl Events
OK... I flat out stole this from thebmorekid, but why shouldn't I? I want to finish top five in knockouts and cashes, pure and simple. I agree with bmore, it will be tough due to the competition.. but it's something to strive for.
8. Keep up with this Poker Blog
I have a tendency to start these things but not keep up with them as much as I intended to. I want to continue to share my thoughts and experiences with other online players and try to learn as much as possible from them.
9. Log 2,000 posts on 2+2 Forums
This goal is kind of pointless, but the reason for it is to make sure I'm interacting with other online grinders like myself and hopefully be able to plug my leaks quicker. The number of posts is really irrelevant, but I think logging two thousand would certainly drive home the point.
10. Learn to Control my Ego
This is again, something that's hard to quantify.. but I feel like it's more essential to my long-term success than anything else on here. I tend to grow frustrated at bad players (internally) and it makes me go after them at times when I shouldn't. If I can learn to drop my ego out of the way and instead focus on playing sound poker.. I will make more money.
Well that's that. So for any of you who are interested, here's my live poker stats from 2007.
Total Cash/Tourney Count: 101
Won/Lost: $1,044
Wins: 57
Losses: 44
Cash Game Count: 72
Won/Lost: $1,039
Total Hours: 270, 40 minutes
Average/Hr: $3.84
Wins: 43
Losses: 29
.25/.50 NL: 36 games (21-15)
Hours: 133
Avg/Hr: $2.45
1/2 NL: 16 games (10-6)
Hours: 67
Avg/Hr: $6.24
Tourney Game Count: 29
Total Buyins: $1,150
Total Payouts: $1,155
Largest Buyin: $300+40 Dec 8, WSOP Circuit Event 1 at Harrahs AC.
Largest Cash: $200 (twice)
- Aug 5, Stars n Bars Regional, First Place/ 71 players
- Dec 22, Mike Yassa's Farewell Game, First Place/ 8 players
Goin' On a Run...
It's early Sunday morning, and it's been three days since my last poker confession. For some reason I'll never understand, I woke up at 6:00am today after going to bed at 2. And I'm wide awake.
Played a lot of online poker over the last few days and finally went on a good run. Before that tournament on Wednesday (see thebmorekid's website for the info), I had about $165 in my Full Tilt bankroll. After paying $11 and winning $96 ($80 for 1st + $16 in knockouts) I was back around $250. Since then, my limit holdem cash games have been positive as well. I decided to try something different. I bought in to two .50/$1 six-handed tables for 25 big bets each and decided to play very aggressive, even more so than I had been. I feel that one of my leaks as a limit player is not forcing the action enough... and playing shorthanded requires you to do so if you expect to win, especially in limit. Man, it worked like a charm.
I turned that $50 into $100 in about 90 minutes. I was getting pretty average cards, running pretty well in the sense that I was able to avoid most horrifying bad beats, save one. I did raise with KQ, get called.. flop comes K Q 4 rainbow and, long story short, the villian had KK. Luckily the turn was a Jack and it slowed my action on the river from putting in too many bets. But overall, I played aggressive and smart. I paid more attention to the players on my immediate left and right, aiming to steal or re-steal whenever it felt right. These numbers are exact but my numbers were somewhere around the 29.5/15.5/3.50 range.
So, after beginning on January 1st with $300 and being down most of the month, I'm at $310 now. Can't complain much now. The reality is, I've lost a lot of money online due to lack of patience. I play my absolute A-game when I stay patient, as most of us do. And my impatience went further than just my play at the tables. I was playing A LOT of tournaments and non-holdem games. I just can't help myself. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't just want to be good at holdem, I want to be just as crafty at all the games. So I tend to have days where I'm bored and I bounce from game to game. If I'm smart, I think those are the days I should just stop playing and take the day off.
Just thinking out loud...
Played a lot of online poker over the last few days and finally went on a good run. Before that tournament on Wednesday (see thebmorekid's website for the info), I had about $165 in my Full Tilt bankroll. After paying $11 and winning $96 ($80 for 1st + $16 in knockouts) I was back around $250. Since then, my limit holdem cash games have been positive as well. I decided to try something different. I bought in to two .50/$1 six-handed tables for 25 big bets each and decided to play very aggressive, even more so than I had been. I feel that one of my leaks as a limit player is not forcing the action enough... and playing shorthanded requires you to do so if you expect to win, especially in limit. Man, it worked like a charm.
I turned that $50 into $100 in about 90 minutes. I was getting pretty average cards, running pretty well in the sense that I was able to avoid most horrifying bad beats, save one. I did raise with KQ, get called.. flop comes K Q 4 rainbow and, long story short, the villian had KK. Luckily the turn was a Jack and it slowed my action on the river from putting in too many bets. But overall, I played aggressive and smart. I paid more attention to the players on my immediate left and right, aiming to steal or re-steal whenever it felt right. These numbers are exact but my numbers were somewhere around the 29.5/15.5/3.50 range.
So, after beginning on January 1st with $300 and being down most of the month, I'm at $310 now. Can't complain much now. The reality is, I've lost a lot of money online due to lack of patience. I play my absolute A-game when I stay patient, as most of us do. And my impatience went further than just my play at the tables. I was playing A LOT of tournaments and non-holdem games. I just can't help myself. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't just want to be good at holdem, I want to be just as crafty at all the games. So I tend to have days where I'm bored and I bounce from game to game. If I'm smart, I think those are the days I should just stop playing and take the day off.
Just thinking out loud...
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