Not much eventful to report tonight, but to go along with the post I created last week…I want to do better as far as updating this blog.

I just fired up a little 5 card draw and a 10 dollar mtt tonight in an attempt to start playing a little more regularly. I cashed in the mtt, and made about 6BBs in 5 card draw in 30 minutes time.

I also finally threw together a spreadsheet the other day to start tracking my 5 card draw cash game progress and see how much I can expect to make over a period of time. I feel like I need about 1000 hrs to have a good enough gauge of how much I should make hourly. So far, I am winning just under 3 bb/hr in 5 hrs played. But I am losing money at this point in time ($15) as I did what always comes up to bite me in the ass. I played a higher limit the other night after having a couple of beers and didn’t do so well. But I honestly don’t think the beer had any effect on my play, I ended up playing heads-up that night and was getting worked since I was getting alot of 2nd best good hands. 5 card draw has crazy high variance when playing heads-up. But I didn’t play absurdly out of my bankroll like I have in the past (thankfully). Take away that one session, and I would be winning just under 6 bb/hr.

Outside of that, work has been killing me as of late. I just really hate it too. Not because the work is hard, it just feels like I am wasting my time. More on that maybe in a later post.

I just got finished playing the $4.40 Limit Draw MTT on Stars for the second night in a row, and for the second night in a row I walk away as the winner. Tonight I bested a field of 120 for another $144.

When I got to the final table I was chipleader but I had my doubts. I really didn’t like my table position based on the stacks or the players’ styles. I slipped down to last place with four people left, only to change my strategy.

After a long fought battle at the final table I made it headsup with a 5-4 chip deficit. Then I played one of my tougher HU’s. Not only due to the opponent, but every time I seemed to put him in, he would have a slightly better hand than me. To take a quote from rounders, he truly had alligator blood. It was back and forth a ton, and at one point I had my whole stack in the middle to only get lucky to outdraw his hand. That would be the one and only time my chip stack was put all in for the whole tournament.

I am really pleased with my play, and though it is not for the amounts of money that I have played for in the past, I am excited to win two in a row!

Well, it has been nearly four weeks since my last post, and in that time I think I might have logged a total of five hours over three sessions of poker. In those sessions I left losing a little bit more of my BR.

I am over the whole bad beat stuff, and I realize it is just part of the game. Only time will tell if I have been able to truly learn from the whole mess.

I just am not accustomed to losing even though deep down I know it is not in my control. But what is in my control, I need to continue to strive to make better in my poker game. Not to name anyone, but I have recently gotten some extra motivation to hit the tables once again.

I decided to fire up the good ole’ $4.40 limit 5 card draw mtt tonight. A tourney that I consistently do well in when I play, but in the past six months, you can count the times I have played that MTT on one hand.

To make a long story short, I beat out 126 players for another first place in that tournament. The only down side is that it is not really what I consider “big money.” Though $136 is more than a 10 percent increase for my Stars BR. For that I am grateful.

Back to my motivation to play this tournament again…. Well a person that I had basically taught the basic ins-and-outs of online limit 5 card draw has recently been doing really well. So much so that she increased her Bankroll by 700 percent from just playing 5 card draw!

So to overcome “that losing feeling” that I get when not final tabling a huge field NLH tournament. I have decided that I can off set that by playing more of the 5 card draw mtt, and also fire up more SNG’s.

Speaking of SNG’s I have a ton of frequent player points on Stars, in which I plan to use to play some PCA steps. For those that have not been following my blog, I came incredibly close to winning a $12,000 package back in May by playing the WSOP steps. I feel with the amount of FPPs I have, I should expect an average of 2-3 step 6 tickets (starting at step 1). So for free money, I feel it is worth another shot.

I really felt good tonight playing poker again. I was getting the same rush tonight as though I had never won a tournament before. Something that I was starting to miss not only because I wasn’t winning but because I wasn’t motivated.

On another note……..I opened up my fulltilt account and found that I had just under 15 dollars in there. During some of my few recent sessions, I worked that up to over 80 bucks. So hopefully I can start to build some money on there as well.

I will update my total BR on the right of this website tonight to include the total from FullTilt and Pokerstars.

Until next time……

*Knock on wood* I have been absolutely killing limit 5 card draw cash games this weekend. Is it skill? Not sure, it could just be a hot run of cards. One thing is for sure, I am up. I have won about $800 in 5/10 and 10/20 Limit 5 Card Draw.

I also have been getting really deep in some of the NLH tourneys I have played as of late. I just haven’t gotten to a final table, which is where all the money is. It gets really frustrated at the levels that I am at (3-30 buyin level) because the fields are soooo large. I sit there and play for over 6 hours just to bust out in the final 3 tables on some ridiculous beat and not much of a payday.

But I know that if I can just continue to get deep in these things, I am bound to break through with a big win. It is just a matter of time.

On another note, I have played in some more WCOOP steps but not as much as I hoped. I have maybe profited $30 dollars in those in the past week. I haven’t been really good at record keeping as of late, which is probably not the best thing.

Another thing that I have been doing is trying out PL 5 card draw mtts. It is totally different from limit. I find that I am too much of a calling station in PL. Calling what looks like bluffs can be a good thing in limit, but one wrong decision in PL and I will be grasping for my tourney life. The main reason I have been doing this is due to Pokerstars offering only a PL draw mtt in the upcoming WCOOP (which I plan to play in).

Until next time………

BR Note: $4048.52

So at the beginning of my BR goal, when I was hovering around $100, one thing that catapulted me up to about 1k pretty quickly was the $4.40 limit 5 card draw MTT on Pokerstars at 9:30pm est.

My average finish in this tournament is probably in the money, or at least close to it. It is really easy to cash, the play is just poor. I have taken it down quite a few times. The money is just nothing great, and I feel like I could be spending my time doing something else for better money. For 3 hours of play, I only average around $12 profit.

The thing about this tournament is right when there are 2-3 tables left, the blinds are so high compared to the average stack that it really becomes a crap shoot especially if you are not lucky enough to be the table chipleader.

I decided to play it again tonight for the first time in about 3 months. I started off pretty bad, being used to the play in 5/10 cash, I had to get accustomed to the play. At one point I was left with 1.5 BB’s. A couple of hours later, I finished in 6th place for another final table appearance.

Not bad, but I am not really happy with the result. First, it was for only $24. Second, I was chipleader for the majority of the tournament during the middle stages (after my poor start).

Once I lost the chip lead at my table when we were about 18 players deep, I had to rely more on the cards, and they really just never came. I tried to stay active, but things just weren’t working out.

Oh well it was fun. It will probably be another 3 months until I play it again, just due to the disappointed money up for grabs. I wish Stars would offer a WCOOP 5 card draw LIMIT mtt. They offer PL, and that is a totally different game in itself, one that I don’t have much experience in.

BR note: $3229.96