I don't even know what to say right now.

The doom and gloom have continued for me. The bad beats and cold cards were bad enough, but I just can't get my mind in the right place to play well right now. I'm officially done until after Christmas. I just need a break.

After getting killed at 1/2, then .5/1, both full ring and 6-max, I needed to shift gears. I sat at some 10NL 6-max tables for a few thousand hands and found the same trend. The bankroll has been decimated to about $120, so 10NL is about all I can play with reasonable bankroll management. So far that hasn't stopped my KK from getting all in preflop against AJ and having a JJ4 flop (literally), so we'll see what the new year brings. Happy holidays to all. Safe travels and good tidings and all that.

gogogogogo please please please

Despite burning through 65% of my bankroll this month I found out I qualified for a $20k freeroll through my rakeback provider. I guess it's worth the $300 if I end up winning $1k or something silly. At the very least I'd like to win back the $300 I lost and chalk this week up to the poker gods just testing my will to live before unleashing me on a massive heater.

But more realistically I fully expect to bust out on the bubble while holding AA vs AK. No doubt the guy who busts me will write in the chat box "lol, tough one" just as I send my new LCD monitors flying through the room like frisbees.

I never thought I'd qualify for these tourneys at such low stakes, but I guess I was pounding out a ton of hands last week. Anyone know how many entrants I can expect to be facing off against here? As far as I know it could be anywhere from 500 to 5,000. Anyway, wish me luck. As far as I know this doesn't intrude on my schedule this weekend, so feel free to sweat me to the final table.

Worst week ever. Seriously, wtf???

This is about 2/3 full ring and 1/3 6-max.

I'm not normally one to complain about running bad, but seriously, wtf is this crap?

I don't know how many times I've had people crushed only to have it go runner-runner to chop, or how many times my steals were 3-bet, or how many times I can miss draws. Wow.

Alright, I'll stop complaining. For now.

Literally the only thing I've got going for me this week is that I'm on track for Full Tilt's Gold status for the end of year bonus ($75) and with that volume of play I will also get about $75 in rakeback as well. So if I can avoid going totally broke I'll still get at least $150 in bonuses.

I think it's about time for good things to happen to me. I'll try to think of something happy to share with my readers for my next post, even if it's not poker related...

I fought the law and the law won...

I took my shot at 1/2 over the last couple days. It did not go well. Overall I lost about $125 on the little adventure. So as of this morning I’m sitting at $316 with probably $20 in rakeback on the way. So really I’m up from my initial investment, this is just a significant setback.

That said, I’m going to take a couple steps back to re-evaluate things. I’ve spent over 6,000 hands playing 6-max tables of various levels with pretty awful results overall. That’s really not that many hands, but at the rate I’ve lost money I need to step back down to .50/1.00 and go back to full ring tables. This will do several things for me:

i) full ring allows one to avoid marginal decisions, and wait for easier decisions, thus reducing expected variance

ii) full ring allows one to play against fewer aggressive opponents, on average, thus reducing expected variance

iii) an equally skilled player will generally make less money at full ring, but if it’s the difference between me being a winner at full ring and a loser at 6-max I’ll take the former.

iv) Rakeback will be less. I will play fewer hands per hour AND the rake is divided amongst more players, so I would expect rakeback to be cut roughly in half for a given table’s hour of play.

So what does this all mean for me? Really nothing. Moving up and down and back again is all part of the game. One of the differences between people who can put in the long haul and those that burn out is the capacity to adjust to changes, especially when it comes to bankroll management. One of the hallmark principles of bankroll management is moving down when things go bad, before they get so bad that it’s all gone.

The good news in all of this is that I’ve been meeting (this week exceeding) my goals for hours played. This was always the hardest part for me given my schedule, so at least I have that to stand on. I still believe I’m a winning player at these limits, so all it takes now is letting the long run kick in. To do that, I need to keep plodding on, making the best decisions I can at the tables, and not letting myself drift away during these downturns.

Based on my web traffic data, it appears that I’ve developed a (very) small following of regular visitors. Feel free to make yourself known by commenting. I’d love to respond to what the readers want to hear. So fire off any questions you may have, and let me know your situation. Are you working your way though the micro limits? Are you thinking of learning poker and want to know what it takes? Are you just some random long-lost friend of mine who stumbled upon the blog? Let me know. For the meantime, I’ve got some more hands to play.

Determined to be an Ironman

With my lack of momentum over Thanksgiving I was feeling a little down about my progress. Today I found out Full Tilt is giving an end of year bonus for Ironman qualifiers. If I get "Silver" for the month I get an extra $50 ($25 for bronze). That seems like incentive enough for me to grind out the month. I'll need to play about 1.5 hours for each of at least 20 days this month for silver.

That $50 will be in addition to my normal rakeback and winnings. So just from rakeback/bonus I should expect at least $150, or roughly $5 per hour. Let's just hope I can win a little on top of that too. To better facilitate this effort I will be playing four tables at a time, three $.50/$1.00 and one $1/$2. This is aggressive and risky, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Also, my wife thinks it's very funny that the "Ironman" requires one to sit in front of their computer clicking a mouse for hours on end.