Poker after six months (part 3)

This really inspired me to keep going with SNG's, so I joined Full Tilt (FT) with money I'd made on UB, where I'd get rakeback for playing SNG's. I started playing a lot of SNG's and studying up on them, and sometimes played some NL10 on FT too. Because my bankroll was so good on UB, I also played some NL25 on UB, but without much luck (got two absolute shocking bad beats with flopped full houses, where they improved to a better full house after the money went in) which cost me $50. SNG's started off well on FT, but soon turned sour, running into loss after loss in 50/50 situations. NL10 on FT wasn't much better, getting rivered/outplayed to the tune of $50. So, not a great few weeks late October/November after the huge freeroll result.

During this time, I'd been posting a lot of hands to PokerForums.org (PFO), which helped a lot. My game was definitely strengthening, and I bought pokertracker and used GameTime+ to help with my NL game. I decided to stick to cash games for learning better poker, and play SNG's as a bit of fun on the side. A couple of PFO members (professional poker players) decided to take on a few "students", who would be able to watch them play in exchange to playing on RedKings (PokerRoom skin). I happily became on of the students and deposited another $50 from UB to play some NL10. I had more to put on there, but they gave only one month to clear the deposit bonus, so I thought I'll put another $50 on if that $50 clears up.

So we watched a few sessions from the PFO pros, and I gained a huge insight into winning poker techniques. My RedKings account went from $50 to $250 in no time at all. At that point I decided it was time to take a shot at NL25. Again boom, up to $550 in 2 weeks. Every session went like silk, stacking people pre-flop, on the flop or anywhere else, I couldn't go wrong. Until...

I started making plans to play more than 2 tables at once. So I added a 3rd table one night, and it couldn't have gone worse, down $100 for the night. I decided it's still a good idea, so dropped down to NL10 to try 3 tables, down another $40. Another night, it was even, the next night another $40 down. OK, time to give up 3 tables. I think it would have been alright to persevere, but the RedKings software isn't really great for multitabling on my computer compared to say FT.

So I went back to 2 tables, but suddenly started getting my money in with the worst hands. It was a horrible feeling to always be one step behind when calling big bets, and while I'm sure some of them were good calls (even though I was behind, like KK preflop losing to AK etc), I had my fair share of bad calls. It's funny because only a couple of months ago I'd be unlucky to lose an entire stack over a full night, but now I can lose 4 without feeling I've done much wrong. I'm still ahead on RedKings, but it would be marginal if I hadn't cleared $110 worth of bonus.

I joined CardRunners just last week and have been watching their videos, playing a little bit of NL10 to regain confidence. I think I've learned a lot this last week, and will be sharing a lot of theories in this blog very soon. My poker earnings have been on a treadmill since the big drop down, and I think since making a lot less big calls, my earnings may stop swinging so badly either way for a while. It's now time to work hard at a lot of small areas of my game, and try to come out the other side alive. I'm really looking forward to what the next couple of months brings.

To date my overall poker winnings are $810. Which when I think about it is the $600 from UB freeroll and pretty much all the bonus $ I've cleared. Still I can't complain, as it hasn't cost me money to get here so far, and I'm aiming at making sure I make all the right decisions from here on out to give myself a better chance at making more money in the future.