Operation L2play

[Liam^]

I've found the posts i've made so far, and the replies I've recieved to be extremely helpful, if not with tactics, simply by reinforcing my belief in the theory of poker, etc when I hit a downswing.

The story so far

I made my first cash deposit of $30 (woo, big money) at pkr.com. I've always been interested in poker, but other sites always made me feel a bit out of my depth. Played there for about two weeks before the lack of poker tracker started to make me worry. The fact I kept getting bad beat after bad beat didn't help. So I moved to party, another $30. My bankroll was $20 at pkr when I left, I decided to leave that as some experimenting monies.

A long story short, I experimented with different stakes, starting at $5NL, moving up to $10NL and a brief stint at $25NL, although that was too high for me. I won one of the $200 freerolls on party, netting myself a delightful $20, and finished 10th in another for $11. At one point my bankroll was a healthy $72, but the delightful mixture of bad beats and tilt have reduced this to a less healthy $36.

My money on PKR has increased to $51, I've taken to playing $5 SNGs in which I've found some nice success.

So now I'm multitabling at party at $5NL, I think my play is starting to get some semblance of solidity, but I'm still experiencing the occassional loss.

Any comments, suggestions, etc are welcome. Words of encouragement are also appreciated.

[Liam^]

Graphs and stats are to follow, for those of you actually interested in such things.

[Da GOAT]

so whats your bankroll?? dfoesnt sound like you should be playing 10NL with $87

[Liam^]

No, I shouldn't. Currently it's $50, which I think is enough for the 0.04 stakes. My goal is $100, so I can move back upto the 10NL more comfortably, although I'm sure some might say I'd need a bit more.

[PapalRage]

Good luck building your roll Liam. the biggest thing that i learned when building my roll from the micro stakes is that you cant let bad beats affect you, at all. Bad beats will happen much more often because the players are so bad. From your PT stats it looks to me like your PFR% is a little low. Good luck building your roll/ playing ability and reading FTR articles definitely helped me do both...

[Liam^]

First: Thanks for the comments Yeah my PFR is pretty low, a raise preflop in some games at microstakes will just make everyone fold to you, theres nothing more annoying than winning 15 cents with your AA.

Second: An update for today. Awesome day today. won back everything I lost yesterday on bad beats, my flushes all drew, and the poor people i was against hit sets. Delicious all-ins. Still $13 down on my ring games, but my tourney successes made up for it.

PKR is my tournement venue of choice. nice and fishy. Entered a $5 buyin $600 guarenteed 6 seater tournement. Prize pool ended at $1000 or so. Doubled up early on, but then managed to get short stacked to around 700, kept doubling up but remaining short stacked for most of the tournement, until we hit the bubble of 30 or so remaining. Got a little ahead of the pack but dropped back to my short stack by about 20th. Remained there for a while, staying disciplined to the point that frankly even I was amazed with myself. At about 11th the prizes started going up, $11, $15, etc. This is when the cards finally dropped for me, a QAs tripled me up, and from then it was fairly easy sailing onto the final table. Doubled again after someone went all in with KJo to my AA, and then again when my A9s hit the flush, to their two pair. Eventually I was chip leader and it was heads up. I was surprisingly relaxed and frankly, I think I played brilliantly. I got very lucky with the final hand, betting when the odds told me I shouldn't to finish my flush on the river. Villain pushed all in with his three 4's and I finished him off. $300 was mine!

I'm wondering if maybe I'm not a tourney player, I seem to do quite well in them! I must admit I did get quite lucky a few times, but that only balances out with the times I was unlucky. All in all a very pleasing day I'm looking forward to telling this story to all the people who told me that gambling was dangerous and that I might get addicted. Ten times my seed money isn't too bad!

[Liam^]

Got back into ring games on party, working on my goal of $100. Had a little downswing recently, so gave myself a little time to cool off. Turns out I have two types of tilt, the short term and long term. The long term is a little more dangerous it seems, where I just feel unlucky, or desperate to win money back. Had more than a few hands I was pleased with, played by the book and it paid off nicely.

I think my reading skills have improved quite a bit, I managed to lay down AA, but really I think my turn bet was the problem here. Oddly enough Villain turned over 67o though...what some people will play.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $0.04 BB (9 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: FlopTurnRiver)

CO (Villain)/ ($6.48)
Button ($7.72)
SB ($4.48)
BB ($6.40)
Hero ($5.24)
UTG+1 ($1.60)
MP1 ($2.21)
MP2 ($5)
MP3 ($4.78)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with A, A.
Hero raises to $0.16, 4 folds, CO (Villain)/ calls $0.16, 3 folds.

Flop: ($0.38) 6, 9, K (2 players)
Hero bets $0.4, Villain calls $0.40.

Turn: ($1.18) 5 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.5, Villain calls $0.50.

River: ($2.18) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $1, Villain raises to $3.16, Hero folds.

Final Pot: $6.34

I'm playing about 500 hands a night, and I've moved back into profit again, the green always nice to see. I've also been playing quite a few $3 SnGs at PKR, only 11 played, but an ROI of 90% doesn't seem too bad so far. I've been reading Harrington on Holdem and this has helped a lot with both my ring games and tournements so far. I've started on the Theory of Poker too, so hopefully soon I'll have my math down a little bit as well!