It’s been an interesting 2 weeks.  First, some drunken moron sliced a power pole 3 houses down from me at 4 in the afternoon.  Had I been home, I am reasonably sure he would not have survived the aftermath of the accident.  We have a lot of kids in our neighborhood and they can be found riding bikes and whatnot most of the time.  To be driving drunk, fast enough to go through a pole at that time is just inconcievable to me.

What does this have to do with poker you ask?  Well, my internet was out as a result for over 3 days and then was spotty at best until yesterday.  I was able to log on for more than 5 mins and stay on for a while.  Bad thing though, I was able to stay on long enough to drop 4 BI last night.  I honestly didn’t feel as though I played badly, just your basic bad luck.  One memorable hand, I raised to $1.40 pre with AQh from the button after two limpers.  SB and the 2 limpers see the flop of Q48 rainbow (1 heart).  Early limper bets .50 to a pot of around $6, folds to me and I toss out about $4.75.  SB folds and early limper calls.  Turn is 3h, limper checks and I bet the pot. Of course he calls, river is 7x.  He pushes his remaining $8 or so into the pot and I have to call here.  He flips over Q7!  LOL  Much of the night went this way for me.

Don’t know if I should have played it any differently, I just felt like I had a good idea of what he had and was unlucky on the river.  Any comments?

Gonna go play some more now, good luck and hope to see you on the tables.

Once again I am back to blogging.  The focus will be a bit different from here on out, as I have been backed in order to play $25NLHE and will be spending most of my time doing that and not playing as much as I have on Stars.  I’m playing my cash games on RPM Poker, mostly 3 tabling 6 max and 1 table of full ring.  I like the 6max game as it tends to move faster and you can be somewhat more creative in that.

As I write this, I am down 5 buy ins or so over about 14K hands.  Most of the losses were in the beginning as I was getting used to the software and reaquainting myself with shorthanded cash game play.  I’ve had some solid sessions recently and should be back to even and above shortly.

If you haven’t tried out RPM I would recommend that you take a look at it.  The software is pretty easy to deal with and it’s fairly simple to multi table and keep up with everything.  The only downside is that Pokertracker doesn’t work with it.  I do wish the hand histories were written to my hard drive as well, but hopefully that will change soon.  All in all it is a pretty good site, and I see more players and tables everyday.

I plan on keeping this updated pretty regularly, and more real content.  For now I am going to sign off and go play some poker.

Hi all! Been a very busy week for me, spent hours on the phone with several prospective employers. Turns out I’m going to work for someone that I first worked for over 20 years ago!

On the poker front things have been kind of bad….to say the least. I’ve bubbled at least 5 180s this week as well as several STT. Lost a couple of buy ins a .25/.50 LHE which I pride myself on. I’d like to say that I just got donked on but I think the reality is I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to play. With all of the work stuff going on and moving my family to a new area there has been a lot going on and I don’t think I have been paying attention as well as I should have. For that reason, and the fact that I don’t know what my computer access will be like for the next two weeks or so, I am going to take a break.

Look for me on FCP and I will post back here as soon as I can. Take care and win big!

PS br — $67.42

FT br — $ 6.56

Got back from SC Friday morning, it was a long trip with lots of time in the car, but it was productive. It would appear the family and I will be moving back to the Charlotte area sometime in April. Not sure what I will be doing, but I have several opportunities, including a very attractive one that came up quite by accident. Hopefully I will be able to say more about this soon.

On the poker front, things are going pretty well. I final tabled 2 180s ($4.40 variety–in the future I will just refer to them as 180s unless I move up in stakes), finishing 6th and 3rd in them. The third place finish was truly amazing as I got to the ft with less than 10k in chips. While I was looking for a good push hand the 2nd and 4th place guys in chips decided to go up against the chipleader and the results were not to their liking. LOL. Sitting 7/7 with about 8500 in chips I pushed with K8h from utg, 2 callers including aggro-donk chipleader. He proceeds to fire a pot sized bet to a dry side on a flop of JT2 all hearts. Other guy uses most of his timebank before finally folding, he later said he had the Ah. Chipleader turns up J4 black and I tripled up to about 27k. Turn was some random heart, I forget which, but I thank my friend the CL for forcing out the one card that could beat me.

From that point I felt like I played ok, got up to about 75k in chips which put me solidly in 2nd place. Once we got to 3 handed it was pretty much push/fold as dictated by the CL. I lost about 1/2 my stack when I doubled up the 3rd place guy when ATs < 66. Busted a few hands later with AQ vs QQ I think.

Made a little more at the cash tables playing both the .25/.50 LHE and .05/.10 NLHE tables. I decided to celebrate my 1000th post at FCP with a couple of stakes to a 180 and we all had fun but none of my horses cashed. Shortly after that, SilentButDeadly was handing out stakes on FullTilt for a $5.50 tourn and providing a LL to his horses. I bubbled the tourn, but got 2nd in the LL so I now have something on Tilt as well, but if I turn that into much I will pay it back out in stakes.

This got longer than I planned, sorry for that. Have a good time at the tables and don’t tap the glass!

Anyway this is where we stand now:

Pokerstars BR: $108.41

FullTilt BR: $8.54

Didn’t realize it had been so long since I had updated, for anyone who cares I apologize.

I have had some bizarre issues for the last month that have really cut into my playing time and online time in general. Hopefully all of that will be resolved in the next week or two. I know next week will probably be hit or miss as I will be traveling to Columbia, SC for the week and don’t know if or when I will get a chance to play.

In the little time I have had to play lately I have been able to work my br up to a little over $37, not sure of the exact amount. Mostly just playing cash games, pretty straightforward really. Fold about 85% of the time preflop and just sit and wait for big hands. I’ve learned it doesn’t really pay to try to trap or bluff at the lower levels, just be patient and the good flops will get you paid generally.

I think I now have enough of a br to play what has been my personal bread and butter—the $4.40 180 SNG. I have an excellent track record in these and feel comfortable with a 10 buy in br for them.

Anyway, I’ll try to update again before I head south. Meanwhile, look for me at the tables and say hi!

Good luck!

….and some family issues have hurt me in my challenge! Managed to lose most of what I had made, mostly because of my lack of discipline.

Had 2 losing sessions in which I lost nearly half of my roll after having worked up to nearly $70. I felt like I played well in these sessions, just ran a bit unlucky for the most part. Things like KK running into AA or getting ai with the best only to have the river reward the other guy. Nothing really major, just one of those streaks we all seem to go through. With my deadline in mind, I decided to switch to single table sng’s to try and boost the roll quickly. Needless to say, that didn’t work out too well. In hindsight, I think I should have just played $4.40 180’s as I have a decent roi in them and probably could have done ok.

On top of all of that, I had some issues at home that required my full attention and so I haven’t been able to play much at all the last 8 days. My buddies were kind enough to give me a week extension on our bet, but I think I will still wind up paying them off. I’m still going to build my br this way rather than deposit, just to show it can be done.

That’s it for now, more to come soon!

current br — $10.43

The last 2 days have gone fairly well for me, I managed to final table a $4.40-180 Sng, finishing 9th for $12.40 cash. I actually was the chipleader with 16 to go but managed to spew off quite a few chips and got to the FT 5th of 9. I then lost most of my chips when I tried to steal a pot from the button and got called down by the sb who had 99. Flop was QQx and I just didn’t think he played it as if he had a Q thought I could get him to fold it up. So much for that idea, LOL.

I’ve had good success at the ring games for the most part and have moved up to the .05/.10 NLHE game. Same strategy, buy in for the minimum and leave when I double up for the most part. I did break my own rule with one table today because it was particularly good and managed to take $2 up to $15 in roughly 140 hands. After that the main to donators left so I thought it a good idea to leave as well.

I do need to discipline myself to not play too many sng’s tho. I played a couple of $5 single table ones today and couldn’t manage anything but bubble finishes. If it weren’t for that I would be over $30 already, but I really can’t complain about how things are going so far.

I’m hoping to get a lot of time in the tables this weekend as my wife has to work both Saturday and Sunday and we should get a lot of snow around here so there won’t be much to do. Other than shovel out I guess.

Anyway, good luck at the tables and if you see me say Hi!

Ending BR today: $25.62

PS–I decided to download CakePoker the other day and take a look at the software and see if it was worth playing there. I’ve just been playing the freerolls and they are pretty easy. I won an entry into this Saturday’s BR Freeroll which pays $88 to win. Software reminds me of the old FCP rooms. Not usually a lot of people on, but the play in the tourns I’ve watched is pretty bad. I would recommend it if you are looking for another site to play.

I’m well on the way now! Sold 600K in play chips on Monday for $6.60. The transaction went very smoothly and if anyone else wants to try what I am doing or has some play chips to sell feel free to use the link I have put up. I get nothing from them, I just feel like they made the process go quickly and smoothly and have no problems recommending them.

I started off Monday night playing .01/.02 NLHE and my strategy is as follows: Buy in for the minimum ($1) and leave the table when I have doubled up. I have been 2 tabling this way and have had decent results so far with only one losing session this week. That is not to imply that it has been all roses, a couple of times I got my chips in horribly behind only to suck out on the river and get me back to even.

The games I have found at this level are much like play chip games, the only difference is you don’t get as many calls if you push preflop. People have no problem calling 6 or 7x BB raises pre with almost ATC. I think the key is to play patiently, realize that elaborate plays probably won’t work and just play ABC poker and push pre with AA or KK. That might sound simplistic, but in my relatively small sample size it seems to be the way to go. Please keep in mind that I have never played ring games at these levels before other than drunken sessions to let off steam, so I am learning to play low limit for the first time.

I also played a couple of $1.20 SNGs with mixed results. I don’t think I will play much more of those just because they really do play way too much like play money SNGs. I did manage to cash in a couple and basically break even for the SNGs I played but it wasn’t even enjoyable for me, so I think I will stick to ring games until I have enough to play a few 180s.

Enough for now I think, this has gotten longer than I intended. I will try and post again later tonite after I play. I have a few gems that really need to be posted.

Later and good luck at the tables!

Today’s BR: $11.47

…..than I thought it would be. I have to remember that making any kind of play in a freeroll or play money table is just a prescription for disaster! Very few of the players have any concept of anything other than their own 2 cards. That said, I am on track to have 1 million play chips to sell by the end of the week. I also qualified for the weekly rd 2 tourn on Sat or Sun that has a prize pool of $2k, so if all continues to go well I will be playing for real money in this quest by Sunday night.

Originally, I thought I might post some hands from the freerolls or an interesting one from play money tables, but I think that would be pointless. There is just no redeeming value in playing for play money, other than I can sell the chips I am getting. The good thing is, if you sit back and wait for the nuts you will always get paid off. I’ve also had good results at the NL Omaha H/L tables by buying in short getting AIPF with any hand with a low draw. Wish it was that easy on the real cash tables!

That’s about it for now, not much more to report until I have some real money to play with. Good luck and thanks for reading!

Ok, so I was all set to deposit on Stars and Tilt today. A couple of buddies of mine came over to watch some football and at some point the conversation shifted to poker, specifically Chris Ferguson’s $0-10k challenge. They wanted to know if I had heard of this and whether I thought it was real and possible. After some discussion, these guys (none of whom is what I would consider a serious player) decided that it was impossible to freeroll your way to $10,000 or even $1000. I made the comment that not only was it possible, I thought I could do it on Stars.

To make a long story short, we came up with a challenge for me that should prove interesting. The good news is I don’t have to work it all the way up to $10k, the bad news is I have a specific time frame in which to go from $0 to $750. The rules are pretty simple: I cannot deposit to my Stars acct, nor can I have anyone transfer any money to me. I have until midnight on Feb 5 to build up $750 on Stars. I can do this through freerolls and by selling play chips (I had to lobby hard for this provision). For those of you who didn’t know, there are a number of sites where you can sell play chips. The going price seems to be $10/million chips. If I am successful, my friends will match the $750 and I will then have a $1500 bankroll. If I fail, I have to take them and their wives/girlfriends out to dinner and a night on the town at places of their choosing. This could easily cost me more than I stand to make, but I have no intention of failing this.

I think the play chip route makes this a little easier for me, as it should be fairly easy to accumulate play chips. I haven’t played for play money in a long time, but I feel like I should be able to hit 1 mil fairly quickly. Earlier today I had to donk off the couple of bucks I had in my acct and make sure I had no play chips either. At midnight the chase was on!

One good thing with this is I don’t have to follow the BR requirements that Jesus did in his challenge. I conveniently left that part out as we were talking about it, so I can do whatever I feel is necesssary in order to get to $750 in one month. All in all, I think this should be fairly doable and it should be a lot of fun. I’ll post the updates here so my buddies can follow the action and we will see what happens.