Tonight the wife and I went out to a movie and dinner.  It was a celebration of 4 years of marriage, though our true anniversary isn’t until the 18th. We went to go see ‘The Social Network’ and that movie was great!  I had heard great reviews, but and it didn’t disappoint.  Though there was no real edge-of-the-seat moment in the movie, it was like an extended documentary told in a different light.  Though it is based on a true story, somethings were added in its own Hollywood-style.  It was a great movie.

So anyway, after the night out; we came back home and I fired up some poker.  I had couple beers at dinner and grabbed a few more while playing.  I don’t know if it was the beer or just the cards, but I played a ton more relaxed and controlled tonight.  More things went the way I liked to see them as the session wore on.  After about 30 minutes I was up over $1200.  Everyone left the table shortly later.

I ended up playing a couple quick HU sessions on PokerStars as well.  Both of which I won pretty swiftly.  What a great night on Stars…….finally!  Now hopefully I can keep it up.

I got no action on Fulltilt tonight.  But since I had a good night on PokerStars, I am not too worried.

Amount to 60k: $34,904.93

I am calling it an early night tonight since it still isn’t midnight.  But I need the rest as work pretty much kicked my butt this week.

More of the same.  I lost $102.50 on Stars, yet won $979.50 on Fulltilt.

To be fair to myself though, I lost nearly $1,200 to start the night out on PokerStars.  I had a wildly aggressive player to my left who was hitting every single hand and outplaying me to death.  It was a brutal stretch where nothing went right for me.  I should have just simply changed seats or at the least gotten up.  I was pretty card dead through this session and was trying to stay active but was getting relentless reraises from my left.  When I did have a big hand, it didn’t matter, because they showed up with better.  Just one of those sessions.  But these sessions are popping up just way too frequently.

I did make a great comeback to only be down $102.50 for the night on PokerStars though.  So I am happy about that.  About $200 of that comeback though was from an incredibly lucky run of cards in a quick HU session.

The $979.50 from Fulltilt all came from HU draw.  Nothing too out of the ordinary there.

Amount to 60k: $33,389.46

I have said before that I am not a fan of Mondays right?

Today is no different.

I just feel like I need some sleep.  Sitting at my office all day at work, and doing NOTHING MEANINGFUL gets pretty boring and though I don’t do any kind of physical activity, it makes you feel tired.  I know its weird, and its hard to explain, but this is what I was talking about before how work can get in the way of poker.  I know that line makes me sound like such a degenerate, but it is what it is.  Oh, and having a toddler waking up well before you are ready is never a good thing.  Poker + Work + Dad duties = Tired.

Anyway, I played a quick session on Stars where I won a little more than $300 playing mostly 3 handed.  Then I got hit-n-run on FullTilt for $65.  So a small profit for the day in about 25 minutes of play.

I just need to get some rest, it is going to be a long week of work since I actually have to go the office everyday this week.  Grrrr…..I hate work.  But if you look at my goals page, you can see that I plan on doing something about that in the near future.

Amount to 60k: $32,512.46

EDIT:  lol. Someone mentioned to me on Stars today that he was hoping I could win on Stars today so that I can write something positive.  I know I come off as being a really negative person from what I write at times.  It is not the case, my words are painting a different picture than what the actual model is portraying.  I will TRY to be more positive.  My negativity leaves me feeling eager to win, but at the same time can be demoralizing when it drags on for a while.  So please understand where I am coming from through this period.

I played 2 $700 mtts (plus one yesterday) to try and win my way to the PokerStars Carribean Adventure today.  Unlike last year, when I won 2 of these tournaments, I didn’t have any step 5 tickets to use.  The fact that the steps never seem to run that often is really killing my bottom line, especially when you get cards like I did today.  In those two tournaments, I got zero cards.  I also never really had a good shot to steal any pots.  Looking at my stats from those two tournaments, I played only 5% of all hands dealt to me.  It was that bad!  The good hands I did play, didn’t go so well either.  Its kind of hard to do anything when you ohhhhh say… run KK into AA, AK into KK, and run AK into AA.  So basically half the hands I played was just a set up cooler!  Yeah, real normal!  So -$1,400 there.

I also played the Sunday Million today.  I decided to play uber-loose from the get-go.  It worked to, because before I knew it I had complete control of my table.  People were scared to play any pots with me since I tried to show an image of someone not willing to fold.  So when I got played back at, I pretty much knew what they had.  It was beautiful.  Then as we were approaching the bubble with about 50% more in chips than the average stack, I get QQ and get in a clash with another pretty big stack in which he decided to shove AK.  Of course I can’t win flips on Stars, so busto there before the money.  I almost feel like I should just fold when it is a suspected coinflip (though I was ahead and was getting laid the odds) and just keep abusing the table with a ton of non-showdown wins.  Sigh.

PLUS, I am not running normal in 5 card draw on Stars.  I haven’t been running normal since the end of July.  Though I did post Friday night that I was running good, and I didn’t want to go to sleep…..well, I wish I hadn’t gone to sleep because boy had the cards changed!  I am down $398 since Friday.  I know, I know….it doesn’t sound like much.  But I did just have a heads-up session where I won almost 1k to make it back to that number.  Before that, I was down almost $1,400 basically just getting outdrawn left and right.  I had a few hours there where all of the trips that were dealt to me couldn’t hold up to win.  It was demoralizing.

BUT, at least now I have Full Tilt to lean back on.  Because I have been winning there.  In fact, I am now up well over 3k there since Thursday, the day they introduced draw.  I am up $517.50 there today alone.  So, at least something is going right for me.

Whats the difference?  Mostly the players on PokerStars are better.  But that is not it, I am just not on the right side of variance right now at PokerStars.  Hopefully things will change soon though.  Also, I wish there was more options to win a seat to the PCA, because those $700 mtt’s get expensive!  Those $75 rebuys ($82 buyin) that start in the early afternoon are more down my alley, I just wish they offered those sometime when I could play more of them.  The 33r’s are a luckfest, and those too can get extremely expensive as seen by my run for the 2010 WSOP.

Oh well…..

Amount to 60k: $32,231.96

So, not a good weekend.

Because I am hoping that someone else will sit down to play me.  I am running pretty good right now on both sites.  But of course I like to think that it is because I have been really working on my game.  Plugged some leaks and this is the pay off.  But that is how poker goes I guess.  When you are losing, it is the bad luck.  When you are winning it is because of the hard work. 

But I made $528 on Stars, and $1202.50 at FTP.  Both, I just played 15/30 draw.  HU at FTP and HU to 3 handed at Stars.

Amount to 60k: $33,557.96

But alas, I need sleep.  Long day of poker tomorrow…..and the next day, and the next……

No, I am not on tilt.  I am talking about Fulltilt Poker.  They FINALLY added draw games today.  It has been a long time coming too.

I was like a kid on Christmas morning when I found out that the latest update was THE UPDATE that added draw games.  I came home early from work and the first thing I did was modify the way my tables look on Fulltilt.  Now they look almost identical to my PokerStars custom tables.  I did this to make it easier to play both sites at once.

My thoughts on the first day of draw on Fulltilt:  There seems to be a few random players willing to play 15/30 and higher.  Unless of course these are already regulars and I just don’t know it yet due to the new screen names.  My name is NoMeNot on both sites which is probably putting me at a disadvantage against someone that already has an idea of how I play.  The software is OK, but it could use some improvement in my opinion.  For one, the cards are smaller than that on PokerStars, and it can be hard to click each card to discard at times.  This inherently makes the game slower.  It is a small issue, that I am sure they will fix in the future.  Another thing I noticed is that when you draw, you don’t actually see what you have drawn to until the last player drawing has taken cards.  This also, will slow the game down.  But both of these are just minor issues.

However, I must say that PokerStars is still my top choice at this time.

I just wish PokerStars would add higher limits and add HU tables.  Both of these things, Fulltilt added.  However, one thing Fulltilt did not add was limit 5 card draw HU SNGs.  Oh well, maybe eventually.

So how did I do today?  I won 640 on Fulltilt and about 800 on Stars.  Since now I have multiple totals to keep up with, it will be harder to keep tally of where I am on my goal.  But as it stands……..

Amount to 60k: $31,797.46

Looking forward to an action-packed weekend of cards!

Oh…and sorry for the lack of updates recently.  I have been working on my game or playing pretty much every chance I get, so the blog was taking a back seat.  I can also probably expect it to take a back seat as I really buckle down here for the last two months of my goal.