But They're Suited!

I had a bit of a bad run this last weekend. Variance bit be in the behind. Friday night, playing at the .25/.50 NLHE table, I lost 52.xx on one hand alone. I thought my pocket KK overpair had the other guy beat. He had pocket 77 with a 7 on the board. Oh well. Saturday was a little more of the same, but at lower limit tables so it was less painful.

So tonight I get back on the horse with some .15/.25 NLHE. First hand at the table I get JJ in MP. Guy just before me raises it to 2.00. After thinking a bit, I called. One other player called. Flop comes 2s Jd 7s. Player before me bets 2.00. I call, third guy folds. Turn comes Qs. He checks. I bet 3.00 into him. He folds. I rake pot of 12.65, net $5.65.

At this point I actually think about quitting for the evening before I lose my profits. Geez.

Later, I get Kx. Flop comes AKx. Player before me bets 1.00. I fold. GEEZ!

Still in for now...we'll see how it goes.

Last night, playing .10/.25 NLHE at Full Contact Poker, I won a $17.80 pot. Woo-hoo! right? Yes, normally that would be correct. But on this one, I actually feel guilty.

I was the BB. Cards come out, I have T2o. Fine, I'm gonna fold. I am reading the chat in the main window - Daniel N. had just logged in to chat a minute - and the action comes around to me. Someone around the table had raised it 1.00 to 1.25. I was moving the pointer over to the Fold button, and clicked just a hair too soon, clicking on the Call button. OH CRAP! I just called a pot sized bet with T2o. Oh well, it's just a dollar. No big deal.

Flop comes KTT. Well, now I have a set of 10s. I check. Next guy bets 4.00 (all in). Based on my play with him at the table so far, I figured him for Kx, making a pair on the flop. He had been betting big on the flop with a high pair, trying to push people out. Next person raises it to 5.25 (also all-in). With the pot that size, I went ahead and called 5.25 with my set of 10s.

Turn is a rag, no help.

River is a 2.

Since there was no more betting (everyone else was all-in), the last 2 cards came fast. Cards get turned over. 4.00 guy had Kx. Just like I thought. 5.25 guy had ATo - set of T, A high. I turn over T2o. Full house, T full of 2. Rake in the pot of 17.80. Profit of 11.35.

ATo guy was pissed. Types in chat "Where did you learn to play poker?" and leaves the table. I reply with "I meant to fold, and clicked call by mistake on my way to the button. " Kx guy was ok with it - "Worked out well for you."

That is a hand I don't think I'd ever play. Played it by accident and it worked out well for me. And looking back over the hand history, I shouldn't have called the $5.25 bet. I think I was just so light headed from getting the set after accidentally staying in, I had set my mind to ride it out. If not for that 2 on the river, I'd lost that hand to the ATo guy and would have been feeling even worse about riding out the hand I got into accidentally. I liked the instant bump to the bankroll, but still didn't feel good about the hand. I shouldn't even have been in that hand.

Am I making too much of this?

Yesterday at PokerStars, sitting to the right of a pre-flop super-raiser, I was going through some old email in my online email account. I found an email from Full Contact Poker about their new online poker room being ready, etc. I decided to give them a try.

At FCP, I am a "Charter Member". A while back I was reading Daniel Negreanu's blog. He was talking about the all-new FCP, and how if you signed up now (no cost), then you'd get bonus stuff later. Well, ok, just an email addres - not much risk.

Well, when the poker room stuff launched, I got an email telling about it and some of my FCP Charter Member benefits. One was the initial deposit bonus - 100% up to $200.00. Regular members were just getting 50%. Plus a 10% bonus for everyone, everytime, if depositing via Neteller.

All of this decided to give FCP a try this weekend. I transferred my remaining funds out of Stars to Neteller, and then transferred it plus the $50.00 I had in Neteller in to FCP. My bonus I am clearing is now higher than my initial deposit (110%).

FCP Pros:
1) Every 24 hours, they move bonus money to your regular money account - the piece of the bonus cleared. They don't wait until you've cleared your entire bonus to transfer bonus money. They transfer it as you earn it, daily. I like this.

2) They have $5.00 + .50 heads-up SNG tourneys. These are a lot of fun. I played 4 of them yesterday. Won 2, lost 2. I should have won a third, but was distracted by some other things I was doing around here and lost it. Just more evidence to prove that I need to focus on poker when I'm playing poker.

3) The stats on FCP are much more thorough. I've only looked at stats on Stars, not Party, so this may be how they are on other sites, but I like the amount of detail they are tracking at FCP. This is my stats window from the .05/.10 NL I was playing this afternoon: [This spot should be an image of the stats window. I am having some sort of error uploading and will try again later.]


4) The interface is nice. I've only played Stars, Party, and FCP, but so far I like FCP the best.

5) It has a fullscreen mode. Your table window goes full screen, and tabs are added along the bottom for the other windows you had up - one for lobby, one each for any other table you might be playing, etc.

FCP Cons:
1) They don't *clearly* state anywhere what the exact formula is for clearing bonuses. Yesterday I played .10/.25 NL, some .15/.30 Limit, and several heads-up $5.00 + .50 tourneys. I cleared 2.60 or so. Not sure how I did that, or which type of play was better for me.

2) It's like Party with the avatars. I have played so much at Stars that I am just used to the image on the screen representing the player and not just a generic avatar for that slot at the table. So, this makes me forget when the fish in chair 3 has left, and the tight aggressive player has taken his place.

3) There is some verbage about not transferring out more than $200.00 without validating your ID, but I'm unclear on the details. That definitely sucks, though.

4) You can't choose to show cards at the end of a hand. If you lost, and don't have to show, you fold. Automatically. And, folded hands (even at showdown) don't show in the hand history.

So far, I'm sorta break-even at FCP, but having fun playing there. I'll at least work off my bonus, then evaluate it again and see if I will stay there or return to Stars.

Last night started off good, finished bad.

Did my usual ring game buy-in of $10.00. About 1/2 hour in, after winning a couple of big pots, I was at 23.00. Did I stop? Nope. Should I have? Yes. But it was WAY too early.

I made the mistake of continuing the ring game and starting a MTT. I shouldn't do both of those at the same time. Too much of my game is based on reads and "feels" I get on how the other players at the table play, and when my attention is divided, I can't do that. I did make it fairly deep into the tourney (at least for me), but not into the money.

I entered a .10 turbo later on that evening, and finished in the mid 200's out of 2100+. Cashed out for 0.24. W00T! :) Also got my first TLB points ever! All the tourneys I had been playing didn't qualify for TLB points.

I ended up dropping all my winnings AND my $10.00 buy-in, but it was due to a 3-outer suckout on the river. Had the guy beat all the way down. He tried to push me off by putting me all-in before the river. I called. That's when he caught his A to beat me with 2 pairs [AA 33] vs. my 2 pair [KK 33] that I made on the flop. Oh well, that's poker.

Heading back in to try to get it back. Bankroll down to 27.00 at Stars and 50.00 in my Neteller account.

I am having to fight off the temptation to transfer more of my own money in and go up a level. But I really want to move forward with OPM (Other People's Money). If I keep playing with OPM, the lovely and patient wife is much more "understanding" of my play.

I'll let you know how it goes.

So I decided implement my plan, with a slight modification from another commenter over at Pokerati. He suggested after reaching my goal (in this case doubling up), to not only cash out of the table, but to quit playing for the evening, or at least for a couple of hours. Still want to have fun? Do something else you enjoy.

Tonight I bought in for $10.00. Got below $5.00 a couple of times, but managed to break through the double-up to $21.75. I was the BB when it happened, so I finished the orbit to get all my "free" hands, and managed to only give back 2 more big bets (.25 each). So I left with $21.25.

My PokerStars bankroll now stands at 43.00. The $50.00 I transferred out to NetTeller last week is still there, so that makes my total poker bankroll $93.00. I'm gradually building it back up.

Now, off to (*gasp*) read a book.

I've been playing .10/.25 NLHE on PokerStars lately. Doing ok - buying in at the "recommended amount" (amount pre-filled in the dialog box) of $10.00. If I play between 1 and 2 hrs, I usually double up, or get a little bit more. The problem is, I'm having fun and have no reason to leave the table, so I keep playing. Now, since I'm playing with "found" money, I unintentionally loosen up my game. I see the flop on hands I should fold. Not to actual raises, typically, but I limp in on hands I would fold when I first sat at the table. I then tend to leak back 25%-50% of my winnings before quitting. Not good to build the bankroll and move up in limits.

I thought of a new strategy on the way to work this morning: I buy in. If I loose my buy-in, I quit - don't reload. If I double up, then I leave the table and cash out. If I still feel like playing, I go to a different table and start over with the same buy-in as before. That way it doesn't seem so much like "found money" and I'll keep my tight game.

That sounded good to me.

Then I read this post at Pokerati and now I'm not so sure. Maybe I won't actually treat it as "my" money but will continue to treat it as "found" money.

What do you think?

Iggy over at Guinness and Poker has another outstanding uberpost. All of it is worth reading, but definitely scroll down to the two-part piece by Ed Hill on being a professional gambler. Great read.

Over on Tao of Poker, Dr. Pauly has some guest writers filling in for him while he works on a poker book. There is a great post by Joe Speaker on MTT play. If you play MTT's at all, GO READ THIS NOW.

That is all.

I have decided to stop posting beginning bankroll, buy-in, ending bankroll stuff. Not because I care about keeping it private, but because it's a lot of work to do it all - log in here before playing, update here when changing tables, etc. and update here when done. When I have time to play, I'd rather just play than be distracted by updating here.

A general update since my last post - I pretty much busted out what I had left after my withdrawal. I think I developed the attitude that if I sat at the table I owned the table, and I found out rather brutally that wasn't the case. Since then I redeposited what I transferred out, and managed to build that back up to over $100.00, and transferred out $50.00 again.

After restarting my bankroll with that $50.00 I transferred out, I played some limit for awhile. I tightened up my game a little, learned to fold marginal hands instead of trying to make a hand out of them, and overall improved things. I then went back to .10/.25 no limit, and made a nice profit. After transferring out the $50.00, I still had (yes, past tense) around $75.00 in my account. This is all in the past 7 days or so.

Then last night I drained my bankroll a bit. I have found another hole in my game - a way I go on a little bit of a tilt, and it hit me for over $20.00 last night. I was playing .10/.25 no limit, and there was a player at my table that raised to $1.00 pre-flop on almost every hand. It was very frustrating. I'd have things like KQ , KJ, QJ, etc. and limp in trying to see the flop. This player would raise to $1.00. I'd fold (as would the rest of the table). I guess he was just enjoying collecting blinds. Once in a while someone would call, so he'd raise to 1.25 or 1.50 on the flop, and people would fold. Occassionally he'd lose a pot, but otherwise he was making a nice profit playing this way. I finally got fed up with it. I called down with AQ suited. The board had paired jacks and paired kings. I read him as trying to push out the others and take the pot - so after the river I went all-in for 19.xx. Well, no need to say, this was the wrong hand to fight him on. He insta-called and had a pocket king. So much for me. I left the table, went off to another, and tried to make a little bit back. Unfortunately I managed to give up about another 10.00. Not a good night. At least this time not only have I found a hole in my game, but I found it before my bankroll was in the basement. I might be able to recover from this without putting back in the 50.00 I transferred out. I'm really hoping to use that $50.00 to take my wife to dinner or something as a repayment for tolerating my poker playing. If she sees a little payback from it, then she'll be more comfortable with it.

I still haven't played live since my last report. I really need to get back there and play live again. That was a great day.

Well, back to PokerStars to try and get some of my bankroll back. I'll let you know how it goes.