Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Climbing the Mountain

Straight ownage this weekend. My last post was about a week ago, where I doubled up from 2 hundo to $400 playing stricly 10NL. Well, I got to $500 by this Friday, and after hitting $543, I decided it was time to move to 25NL. I was consistently beating the 5c/10c stakes and had enough buy ins to move up (20 buy ins minimum rule). So onward and upward I went, and I had a pretty good weekend. I had a couple sick pots to triple up, including a full house versus a Q high and A high flush, and two moster pots off of the same guy who everyone hated at the table (doubled to $50 with my 10 8 sooted trip 8s versus his 99 overpair, then stacked his remaining $43 five hands later with QUAD 10s to his QQ overpair. I did manage to take a couple bad beats, but I also got lucky myself in a couple instances (including QQ vs AA when the board went 58796 for the straight and a split pot). So I made like $200 or so playing 25NL over the weekend and my roll stands at about $750. It is progressing nicely and I am thankful for my overall good luck. It is just amazing having basically not had a losing day in over 2 weeks (cash games), and I am playing pretty well, although I am constantly learning new things about the game from playing many hands and learning from both my mistakes and successes. I am planning to reach a bankroll of 1k via 25NL by the end of this month and moving up to 50NL in the near future. I also had a lot of fun railing my buddy CavalaoMontoya (See Interview from December) during one of his deep runs (14th, 2k Guaranteed) in a tournament this weekend. Its fun having friends that you can talk poker with. On the tourney side, I've had a couple cashes but no final tables in the last week. I've sustained a couple cruddy beats, but I've mainly been focusing on the cash games as they are more convenient and higher EV+ (for me at least) when you don't have enough energy/time to play a tourney (i.e. only weekends). Good luck to all at the tables.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

10NL Grindin'

Bodog has been real good to me over the past week or so. After dabbling in 25NL and even taking a shot in 50NL (quasi-tiltage) I decided after a walk with pops 2 Sundays ago that with my $200 roll I would grind 10NL (5c/10c) until I hit about $500. So with some discipline and a refreshed outlook, I tried it out. I was getting tired of the swings that came with playing out of one's roll. Plus, if I happened to get stacked on a bad beat at 10NL, it would not nearly bother nor affect my roll as greatly as getting stack at 25NL or 50NL. So after a little more than a week, I have doubled my roll to over $400. Yesterday was really the first day that a couple of my big hands didn't hold up (i.e. my top set vs bottom set vs flush draw which won a $35 pot). I made a couple huge laydowns (QQ vs AA preflop, AA vs set of Ks [if the guy was honest]). On the AA vs set of Ks, I was pretty sure the guy had me, because I reraised his $1.35 bet preflop to $4 and he called. The flop was 22K with 2 spades, and the guy though a while, then bet out only $2.50. Having put him on KK-QQ and maaaybe AK (but likely not, I believe only a very strong hand would call my $4 reraise pf, and he wasn't a maniac, having been the same guy with the AA vs my QQ earlier). I flat called feeling something suspicious, and the Q of spades (a third spade) came off. I pretty much knew I was done, as the range I was putting him on both would have sets at this point, plus a possible flush. I laid down my AA and he told me he had KK, which although he could be lying, I felt strongly about my read. I made some tough laydowns and perhaps one bad call against a LAG (loose aggressive player), but overall I played well. Down .99c yesterday, but up $200 in 10 days in 10NL, which is a pretty awesome result in my book. GL to all.