Saturday, July 28, 2007

$1,210.00

The $8.00 mentioned at the end of the previous post turned into $22, which I used to enter a $10.00 MTT tournamanent. After 5 long hours I came out 2nd for $1,210.

Since then I've found that I can steadily make money 3 Tabling $16.60 SNGs. I think if I I can build my multi-tabling skills, I can steadily increase my bank roll while absorbing as much information as possible. This method has quite a few benefits:

1. Low risk with decent odds.
2. The plethora of donks makes SNGs marginally profitable even for the average player.
3. The consistency will allow me to easily measure my progress
4. More hands, more situations, more knowledge
5. Builds dicipline (very important)

Will update later, gotta play poker.

- Mori

Sunday, July 1, 2007

$2.20

The amount of money I left in my bodog account after cashing out today. Why $2.20?

FYI: I just put the $2.20 into a $2.00 + .20 SNG and will play as I write.

I started playing poker (bodog and fulltilt) a few months ago and one of the things I learned fairly quickly was that depositing can become a very bad habit, fast. In the beginning I payed my learning tax by way of and .10/.25 ring games and $2-$10 SNGs, I would deposit on average $75 and it would either be gone that same weekend or if I got lucky it would put me through another week or two (you know how it goes). And of course, the moment I went broke I would reload.

This went on for about 2 months, along with reading the limit and no-limit section of Doyle Brunson's Super System every night before sleeping. Then about 3 weeks after the usual ups and downs of online cash games I was down to a measly $3. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I was low on cash that week because of some car repairs and wouldn't be able to reload until next pay day. Then it hit me, if I lose this $3 I won't be able to play poker for another 10 days!

So I stuck that $3 into a $2.00 + .20 SNG table and shut off the tv (I've always played on my laptop while watching TV). I hit 1st place and it paid me out $10. Played another SNG for $4 and hit 1st place again. I played another 4 or 5 SNGs that saturday and at the end of the night my $3 had turned into $65! I thought about it that night and realized there were three major factors to my success that day:

1. No TV - I picked up on players betting habits and hole cards. I knew the guy raising on the button wasn't just trying to steal the blinds because he hadn't played a hand in 20 minutes.
2. My attitude went from "I know I'm beat but it's ok if I hero call this guy's all-in on the river because I can just reload if he's got the nuts" to "I know I'm beat and I will not throw away my money."
3. No Cash Games - While I feel 1 and 2 can work for everyone; this one is moreso for me. I'm quitting NL cash games for good. I've found that while I'm a decent tournement player, I can't play cash games for shit. Maybe when I hit a big payout I'll consider playing live limit cash games (I'm only an hour from AC) , but for now cash games and I are going our seperate ways.

And by following the above 3 rules, my $3 blossomed into over $200 and T$110 (bodog tournment $) in only 2 weeks.

That was about a week ago. As of this morning I was left with $100 (Played a few large buy in MTTs, no luck) and I decided to withdraw all but $2.20. Just enough for the SNG mentioned in the FYI above. I am very proud to say in the past three weeks I've had a of ton fun, learned a lot and have not deposited even once. I 'm going to try to do it all over again, this time I want to win the large buy-in tourney's once I build back up.

Oh yeah btw, that $2.20 is now $8 =D