Book Smart

"The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness." - Annie Savoy - Bull Durham

So, as some of you know, I work in the public sector now. Since crime never sleeps, neither do we. For this month and the next two I get to do the midnight shift. Undeniably the hours suck hard, and sleeping until 4 in the afternoon is something I haven't done since college! The nice thing about this shift though is, generally, things are slower, so I get time to work on other things.

I've decided to dedicate some of this time to trying to study some more about my poker game. I'm beyond the training wheels at this point, and it's time to start polishing my game. Yes, I'm still in the mini-limits, but that is more a function of bankroll then skill, I believe. Besides, low limit poker isn't an excuse to play sub-par poker. Anyway, I dove into Brunson's tome last week and have been studying diligently. I'm still just scratching the surface, but there are many things in there already I hadn't considered, and have striven to apply these new found nuggest of wisdom into my game.

Perhaps the most profound, and really one I pretty much knew but never really paid attention to, is patience. I'll dive more into this in later posts...

The Sit and Go Challenge is now 53 hands into the $5-$1 level. Today was a good day, booking two wins to really bolster the roll.

Edging Back In... The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing

"...I wish I could unscrew my head and kick it out the door..." -- Joe Satriani

Party Poker Rule #7: If you have a pocket pair, so does someone else.


Ah yes... The subtleties of Party Poker. Of all the interesting...quirks...of Party, this one stands out as most obvious. Note to all mathmeticians out there... What are the odds, given a 10 person table, of two people having pocket pairs? Three? Let's take it a step further... How about the odds of the inferior pocket pair hitting the set on any street?

Okay, I'll leave that for now. I have managed to meet the $50 minimum for my rakeback, and will be taking my leave of Eurobet, now that their subscibership has been reduced by 90%... So I'm looking for a new home for my ring game play. I don't really want to put it into Party just yet, seeing as how I'm still farting around with the Sit and Go Challange (46 rounds done at $5+$1).

I'm also trying to catch back up on my fellow bloggers....blogs. Hopefully you all haven't forsaken me as I have neglected to post since...forever.

So, who still out there that reads my drivel?

For the moment, I'm going to hold off on my ring games until I can extract the cash out of Eurobet and move it elsewhere and concentrate on the S&G challange. It will be slow going, intentionally. I've resolved to only play at most three sit and goes a day. Beyond that, either I'm on a good run and don't want to ruin it, or I'm dying and don't want to lose my temper!

Okay... off to the showers. 12 hour day ahead of me at work. Happy...joy...

Do You Believe In Miracles!

'Nuff said.

Fossilman, Dammit!

"How about a nice game of chess?" -- WOPR - Wargames

I've had a cold the last couple of days. Not one of those wimpy sniffly colds either... We're talking agnus of God kind of headcold. I woke up the other day so congested I literally could not swallow. Thankfully, that only lasted for about an hour, but I was still in pretty bad shape... Since I've been in nasty shape, I've had time to cruise the daytime television fare. Bottom line, I found the coverage of the WSOP 2005. The words "sea of humanity" doesn't seem to fully describe the field at the event. These days to make it to the final table you need to be good AND extremely lucky.

I want a piece of that action!

Unfortunately, I'm about $9700 short of the buyin at this point... Oh well..It's a goal.

The grind continues. It appears that Party has taken their ball and gone home in terms of the skins. I was on a rakeback deal with Coral. Trouble is they don't pay the rakeback until you have $50 totalled up. I'm about 30 cents short of that, but playing $.50/$1 limit, that goes pretty slow. When you're playing that level and they're only a dozen tables around, well you get the picture... I'm going to finish out the $50 and then move that cash over the where the party really is...Party.

Speaking of Party, the Sit and Go challenge is still plodding along. Managed a 5th place finish and a 1st place finish yesterday. Wins are a little harder to come by, these days. The day of the über-fish seems to have come and gone, at least in the sit and goes. There's plenty of fish left in the pond, but I haven't seen one of those games where three people are gone within the first 5 hands anymore. Luckily, there seems to be a lot of weak-tight people to take their place. In many ways I much prefer those types.. At least they're predicatable.

Anyway, here's the graph of my progress so far... With 35 rounds played in $5+$1 NL Hold-Em, and a starting bank of $50, I'm now at $125, or +$1.43 per tournement.



Okay, off to do battle with number 36...

Time....

It's been an enjoyable and productive summer, and now that the leaves are starting to turn it's time to get back into the grind.

Over the summer I've sort of take small stabs at my poker game. all in all, I can't complain. progress has been slow, but when you only play maybe 200 hands a week, it'll happen that way.

Since Party has put in .50/1 6 max tables, I've been playing those almost primarily for my ring games, and have worked steadily forward. I've resolved to try to be more patient and hold off moving up in limits until I have a true 300BB bankroll for it. That means $600 in the bank before I move onto the $1/$2 tables. I'm a little under half way there.

I managed to get a buddy of mine to sign up to Party and scored a free $50, so I started another Sit and Go Challange. For those not familiar, the idea of the challange is to play 100 sit and goes at each level. Right now I'm 31 games into the $5+$1 and am at $115, for a profit of around $2 a game, or translated loosely a 2BB/hr rate if I were to play comparable to 50/1 limit...

Hopefully I still have some readers out there. Sorry about the gap. I really needed to just take this summer and unwind. What with the new job and all that had been going on, it was something I just needed to do.

Good luck, welcome back, and thanks for reading!