Ouch, that hurt.

I think I just experienced the worst weekend of my life... poker-wise that is (otherwise it was pretty good). Things got ugly on Friday and failed to improve and it really hurt, especially since the month was going pretty well so far. Still, I was reading a post on Pokerology and ended up replying to it with the following. I really liked what I wrote and my mindset about this subject, so I thought I'd cross-post it here:

I don't know the exact numbers, but this weekend I think I played around 60 games and was ITM just twice, and one of those was for a 0% ROI since it was a satty SNG. That other cash was only $40 or something. Considering I probably spent about $1k in buy-ins, I wasn't too happy about it all.

So what do I do? I bitched, I moaned, I complained, I yelled various curses. I considered sacrificing one of my cats to avoid any further dismay. I did these things each time my KK got run over by A3o or my set was chased down by a straight or flush. I then got over it and moved on to the next hand... what else should I do?

I reviewed my play and found nothing unusual. Maybe I could have taken a better line in this hand to save me a bet here or something, but I made no vulgar mistakes, especially at push/fold moments. I even caught a few guys restealing/bluffing on me, but unfortunately they sucked out. Poker sucks when it happens that way, huh?

Based on the decisions I made I had a pretty good weekend actually. My game selection was excellent. I felt confident in my decisions, in fact I would say most of my hands were fairly straightforward, which is always welcome when playing 4-6 tables at once. As I sit here now... I really can't complain.

Times like these are when I really appreciate the fact that I have a bankroll management and cashout plan in place. I still "made" money due to the decent amount of volume I put in, and while my bankroll took a vicious slashing I know I have enough protection in place that I don't have to worry about moving down. If I were doing this for a living, I'd be able to handle stretches like this in stride... and look forward to the next session.

Who knows... the next session I just might run like the gods. You better hope its not against you.

Whoops

Seems I forgot about my blog again. :)

Nothing exciting has really happened since I was last here on the online felts though things have been going OK. I've been playing a number of the 54-man super-turbo SNGs on FTP lately and I have to admit I really like them. They are mostly push-fold games, they don't time a lot of time and most of the players suck at them. Pretty good combination.

The only exciting news I have is that I've been persuaded to do a couple of articles for Pokerology (meaning I'll actually be paid). Tim (who runs the site) really wanted to revamp his content and wanted me to contribute. I won't be doing anything about strategy, I'll tackle stuff like bankroll management, the cashout system I use, and maybe a tutorial on how to use Pokerstove.

We have talked about doing videos both for the two articles and also of me playing. I've done a few videos now and I have to admit its fun to do. Yeah, I curse a bit and I realize I'm no pro, but I think I make enough comments and I'm not afraid to say that I might not be doing the absolute right thing every time. I think doing that is a different approach and even trying to take time to actually go back and try to find the answers to my own questions might be something nobody else really does. I don't know... we'll play with the idea I guess.

Anyway, I hope to play some this weekend and continue plugging forward with my own game. We'll see!

Labor Day Weekend

I was able to sit down for an extra-long session of poker since it was a 3-day weekend due to Labor Day. As I usually do I played all of the Sunday mini-Majors like the Double Deuce on FTP and such. Cashed a couple of those and min-cashed a number of others throughtout the day but it wasn't until Monday morning that I didn't hit anything big.

I started on Friday night by playing for a few hours like I would do on a typical Tuesday/Thursday night gig. The night was successful since I was able to win a $21 super-turbo 54-man SNG for $388. Throw in a few other cashes and the night was a good one with a profit of $366 over 21 games.

Saturday I kept fairly tame, I got some games in but nothing heavy. Had a few cashes but nothing worthy of note though I did profit for the session (about $75 over 17 games).

Sunday was when the volume was coming. I started earlier than normal, around noon, so I could get in the $11 turno on Stars and a couple other things. I played well but ran worse for the next 12 hours or so and ended up down about $500 over the 51 games that started on Sunday proper. I scared a few things and had some chances but nothing really big came out of them.

As we rolled in Monday morning I guess things started going more my way. I took third in a $12 180-man SNG on Stars that I played almost on a whim (Stu talked me into it and he wasn't even talking to me, LOL). But the big score was on Ultimate Bet, where I was able to win the nightly (morningly?) $44 turbo MTT. That score was $1335 and some change. This thing doesn't even start until 2:30am so you can imagine how I was starting to feel when I won it at about 4:40am. Nice way to start your day, so to speak! With that, after playing a little more here and there on Monday I was $1250 to the good over 21 games on Labor Day.

Add it all up and the weekend tally was pretty solid... no complaints here. Since I didn't sleep at all on Monday you can imagine that I took Tuesday night off to try and catch up. I certainly had fun, like always, but its also much more fun when you managed to win.

This weekend, well, really starting tonight, I'm going to try to play a few of the mFTOPS events starting tonight with the 5x turbo 6-max shootout. I don't think I've ever cashed in on of these mFTOPS events before but I haven't played all that many of them either. Maybe this time I take a ride in one and find something big. I'll be sure to let you know in here if I do (or don't).