Day one.

Yesterday was my first day playing fulltime. I played a total of 13 tournaments between 2:30pm and 1am. Not non-stop, of course. I took breaks for dinner and time spent with my wife.

Of those 13 games, I won one and cashed in 2 more for a total of $44.48 profit on the day. Now, I know this doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but it is upward progress, and it is $44.48 more than I would have had if I had not played. Each day is a grind and I am not expecting to make hundreds of dollars a day, especially at $2 and $3 stakes. Like I said before, I am building this up slowly but surely until I have enough in my BR to comfortably move up in stakes.

I have had a few friends say to me over the past few days; “You’re good enough to play bigger games, why are you wasting your time playing for a few dollars when you could play bigger and win a lot more.” While I am flattered, and agree that I could play higher stakes and do well, I do not want to make the mistake of playing above my monetary limit and risk going broke quickly. Most of these friends do not understand that MTT’s are high variance and just because you play well does not mean you will cash every time. I realize this, and will continue grinding slowly until I feel I can play higher without risking too much of my roll at any one time. It won’t take too long, perhaps only a month or two, before I do start playing higher. But until then, I’m going to keep doing what I do well, and that is $2-$3 MTT.

BTW, I didn’t final table that $2 1r-1a last night; I just missed the money bubble. My AK shove w/ 13BB’s was cracked by pocket 9’s.

So, today is a new day, and after my daily chore routine, a good lunch and a workout, I’ll be back at it. IF you see me at the tables on Full Tilt (I’m theKAAHK for those of you who do not know) say hi. Rail support is always welcome!

Sunday just ain't my day...

Ugh, there is  a reason I don’t play on the weekends. Call it a jinx, call it bad luck, I don’t know what it is. I have never had a cash on the weekend. Never.

The day started off with the BLT ($2, turbo, 60000+ players). Got off to a decent start, the beginning of this tournament is very similar to the Turbo SNG’s I play, so I was able to build my 1500 starting chips to around 6K. Then it all fell apart. Every raise I made was called by 3 or more players, practically making it a BINGO game postflop. Nobody let go of anything, no pair, no draw, nothing. After winding back down to 3500 I ran my KK into AA in an all in preflop confrontation and just like that it was over. Not that I was too disappointed, I satellited into this game a month ago for .75c, so I don’t consider it a loss.

Then at 3:20 I started the 22K Double Deuce. This is another tourney I won my way into by winning a satellite tourney for $2.25. I played what I felt was a solid game, but in the end I made one move too many, one bad call, and it was over. Out of 10,876 players, I ended up in 6934^th.

 I was sitting in the BB, with one limper on the button, the flop came Ac 7d Jc. I was holding Jh7s. I led out,  and was min-raised by the limper. I figured him for a weak Ace, since he didn’t raise preflop. I 4-bet him to 1200, he min-raised me again, and I shoved my remaining 5.5K. He called and showed me A7. So I was right about the weak Ace, Just wrong about the kicker not matching the board. Sigh.

I played a couple of tilt games (bad idea) to work out some aggression. All I ended up doing was working out $10 from my bankroll.

After a hearty dinner, I entered the 14K Guarantee Superstack tourney. I have had some success in the tourney in the past, and with a 5K starting stack, 12 minute blind levels and slow blind increments, I felt it would be a good way to slow down and play some solid poker. I ran well for a bit, making my way up to over 9K in the first hour. During the second hour I lost half my stack with 10 10 vs. AJ to aplayer who would not let go of his hand. A Jack on the river shipped it his way. I wasn’t too worried as he busted out three hands later chasing a flush draw against the table chip leader J. Unfortunately, I went fairly card-dead, only making the occasional steal to keep my stack healthy. Eventually the blinds got to 170/340 with a 25 ante and I was sitting on a hair over 2.5K. I woke up with AQ UTG, shipped it, got called by JJ and I was done. Out of 3321 players, I missed the money by 299 spots.

So what did I learn from today’s session? Two things. First, stop playing on the weekends. Too many weekend warriors making the fields huge, and too many weekend tourney reg’s playing out of my league (for now).  Second thing I learned is to stop playing ‘cool off tilt games’. I burnt 5 buy-ins over bullshit.

So now I’m back in my niche playing the $2 1r-1a (one rebuy, one add-on). Sitting 136 out of 226 remaining. I smell another final table. Oh, did I mention I won this tourney last Monday and final tabled it on Friday? Yeah, I like this one.

After this I am done for the night, tomorrow is going to be a long day. I have a good schedule of tourneys lined up. GL out there.

It has begun!

Last night was a great night for me in my endeavor to become a semi-professional poker player. First off, during a dinner out with my wife, we both discussed the finer points of the pro’s and con’s of me taking this seriously as a way to generate feasible, off-season income for myself.  After getting her blessing I laid out my plan to her.

I broke it down into three key areas:

1-      Time usage: Since I am a seasonal worker (April-September) I have a substantial amount of time to put towards this goal. As I play a few times a week anyways, we have decided that if I am to pursue this seriously, it is best that I take this time to put in more volume of play. This week I have played approx 21 hours worth of MTT at $2 stakes. This brings me to a total of $387.86 (cashes) – $115.20 (buy-ins)  = $271.80 profit. This works out to $12.94/hour.

So in essence, if I were to keep up my current win rate and play a minimum of 40 hours a week at my current stakes I would see a hypothetical profit margin of roughly $540 per week. Now, I know this is hypothetical, and MTT is a high variance game, but over a sample of 109 sessions logged in the past 32 days I am sustaining a 77.84% ROI. These figures were not pulled out of my ass, I use Poker Tracker 3 to log and review every session I play.

On top of adding volume, I am also devoting at least 2 hours a day studying, learning and reviewing my previous sessions. I feel this is key. I will not only be reviewing hands where I lost, but also winning hands to see if there were ways I could have played them better, and the session as a whole to establish where I had leaks and how to fix them. I am also a member of Cards Chat. This forum is has an incredible wealth on knowledge and being a member and an avid poster, my game had, and will continue to improve immensely.

2-      Money management: For the past three years I have been playing a regular weekly tourney at my local Legion. The buy-in is $25. I have realized that this weekly game is hurting my overall play as I am always playing the same players and nobody is getting any better. I feel that this $100 per month (plus drinks/snacks) would be better used for my online bankroll.  So on the 1^st of every month, from now on, I will deposit that money into my online account.

Though I am making profit as of late, I am adamant about sticking to a very strict bankroll management strategy. I am currently most profitable in $2 MTT, with the occasional $2 Turbo SNG thrown in if I have time constraints. I will NOT play anything higher unless I have 50 buy-ins minimum, or I satellite into them for the same stakes I am playing, or less. When my bankroll climbs to  suitable amount, I will move up accordingly. I will not spend any more time at low levels than necessary. If my BR drops below a minimum of 50 buy-ins, I will move down again.

I will not, for the first three months, make ANY withdrawls from my online account. I will keep a minimum of $500 in my account for play, and withdraw anything over that amount at the end of each month.

3-      The pursuit of my dream: I am not going to get all long winded about how much I love NLHE. Making a blog about it and stating my intentions should be enough to show it already.  I have never wanted a conventional job. This is not a matter of laziness; my seasonal job is very labor intensive and requires a lot of on the go thinking. This is a matter of spending my life doing what I feel passionately about doing. By no means am I fooling myself into thinking that this is going to be a walk in the park. It will take a lot of hard work, dedication and patience. But if I keep myself dedicated to improving myself as a player, I feel I can do it.

And if I can’t, at least I will never regret not trying. Wish me luck. (Not that luck has anything to do with it J )

World, meet theRooster!

Hello everybody! Welcome to my foray into the world of blogging. Since I we are both new to this, I'm going to start things off slow and easy.

For those of you who are wondering what you are going to find enclosed within this space, I will mostly focus on three main things:

-My love of no-limit Texas-holdem, which will include my views on the mental approach to the game as well as my adventures at the tables. This will be updated daily, and I hope to soon add a forum where we can discuss more specific topics in the future.

-My passion for golf. I have to admit, I am not very good at this sport (12 handicap) but during the short summer months, if I am not working, I'm golfing.

-My views on society in general. I must warn you all, this area may get a fair bit controvercial and is not for the weak of stomach or mind.

I will start filling in more soon, so keep tuned. Things are going to get very interesting!