Online 8/1

This was one of those days, where nothing could go wrong for me. I started playing around 7 at night and played until around 1130 or 12. I started with $50 in my ftp account and got it up to $230, even though I lost about 50 on my pstars account, still an overall great day.

On pstars, I had a $25 window open, a $12.50 table open, and then I always had a 1.15, 10 person double or nothing tourney open. I played 4 of those tourneys and won( top 5 double there money) 3 of them so I ended up only netting 2 dollar profit. they have the same double or nothing tourneys for way more money, but I need to get more of these under my belt before I start playing these for serious money. The cash games, I got absolutely crushed in. I can only recall one hand that I played very, very, badly, the other ones were just missed flops, etc and next thing I knew, I was out, and then I decided not to rebuy at all.

FTP was a different story, I won $180 on FTP and I was playing a table that had a $25 max buy in. The huge hand was later on in the night, I had about $40 in front of me and most people at the table had between $35-50. I am 2 seats from the BB. The guy UTB makes it $3, I have A10 spades, and I call. 4 more people call and we see a flop( $15 in pot so far). Flop comes out KKJ, 2 spades. Original raiser makes it $6, I insta call( thinking if anyone raises after, I will come back over the top since I have the nut flush draw, the straight draw, and I am hoping someone has ak, someone else has open ended, and maybe aj or smaller flush draw, but I just hope no one has kj. 2 guys call after me, one guys folds, it is now close to $40 in the pot. Turn is 10 of diamonds. Orig better goes all in for his final $11, at this point I assume he has kj, but I can still take down a huge side pot from the other 2 after me, so I call and not raise. The two guys after me call instantly. About $85 in the pot now, river is 4 spades. I hit the nut flush, and I know a boat beats me, but I still shove my remaining $17 or so, I get called by both. I win, take down the pot. It was about a $130ish pot, I have never seen a pot that big. Orig raiser had ak, so he was good the whole way until the rive. guy after me a10, to run gave him gut shot and pair, I am not sure why he stayed in. guy on button had 89 spades and hit his flush on the river. It was a crazy hand. After that I played a little more, but overall it was a great night online.
Total winnings: +130

online 7/31

I am not sure why I was even playing today. Terry and I had gone to Delaware Park and played live from about 9pm-630am, and then we got back to his house, I couldn't sleep and next thing I knew it was 1030am and I was playing cash games. I wish I could tell you exactly how I did or what I played exactly, but I was not only tired there and felt like a zombie, we left his house at 530 that day and went and played up in towson from about 6pm-2am, so the whole weekend is sort of a non-sleep dream, but I know by looking back at my accounts and some hand history's, I ended up playing for about 3 hours total throughout the day and I won $16. It was all on pstars, i didn't even touch my FTP account.
Total winnings for the day $16

Towson Tourney/cash games 7/31

This is a tourney we do one Saturday a month and then we play cash games after. The tourney is $100 and I lost that, and then I sat down for cash games. I bought in for $100, after some hands( I will get into later) I bought in for another 140, and then another 100 again, so I was into the game for $340. We played all night, I ended up walking out with $830 which puts me up $530 for the night in cash.. The game there is always 1/2, but it is a way more social game, I know everyone playing, and some of the pots just get out of control. There is always a raise and at least 2 calls pre-flop. The game is made up of about half people that know how to play poker and the other half that just sort of know or think they know. I just played my game the whole time. I had 7 pots I was involved in that were between 160-250, and I won 5 of them and lost 2 of them. At the beginning I was losing a lot of pots on the flop. I would have 55, flop would be akq, i would have ak, flop would 789 suited. I was just card dead for a while, but was getting good enough hands to call pre-flop.
Total winnings- $430

Del. Park 7/30

Terry and I got up there at around 840 at night and by the time we both got to a table it was around 9:00. We decided we were going to play all night.
I started at 1/2 and bought in for $300. I played until 6am. I had my ups and my downs. Within the first hour, i was up $100 and things were looking good. No huge hands, just me raising and taking down pots at the right time and using my aggression to help me with cbet on flops and turns, I would take down the pot. I lost a pretty big hand about 2 hours into it, and that knocked me down to about 195, I hovered around the 175-240 mark for the next 4 or 5 hours, then when I had around 245, I woke up with KK UTG. I made it $10( at my table, I expected 2 callers with that). I got called by button and small blind. flop is AK10, I shove all in and I am called by a10, it holds up, he had less then me, but that hand still put me up to about $440. I then just grinded and played my game and got it to where I was up $290 for the night, and then on the last hand of the night( literally, I had my chips in a rack, terry was standing behind me getting ready to leave and they were breaking our table up, and I shipped about 240ish away on kings to a flush. At the end of the night, I ended up about $150 for the night, forgetting that when they switched tables on us, I had won a $100 black chip and had that in my pocked and forgot about it. It was great to find. Luckily for me, the next night would be way more winnings.
Total winnings: $150

online play starts 7/30

The way I am going to approach my online game is more of a slow grind approach. I will only be playing .1/.25 limit and .25/.5 NL. The max buy in's for those table are 12.50 and 25.00 respectively. I will always have 2-3 windows open at all times, and my goal is to make 10-15 bucks an hour every time I play and look to have around 150 or so a week in profit. Once I grind that up to about 1500 or so, I will move up and play .5/1 nl and then grind that out until I can get up to about 5k. Every once in a while, I will take a stab at some tournaments, both low and high stakes and see where that gets me, but for the most part, I am sticking to cash games.

Playing these lower limit cash games is a change from what I play normally in live games, but online is a very different game with very different strategies and very different players. I want to start at these low limits and get a feel for the online game. I want to be able to grind it out and build up a bankroll and get a full feel for the game.

My online run started last Friday, 7/30. I put $50 in pokerstars and $25 in full tilt. I had to .25/.5 windows open in pstars and one in ftp. I played these from about 2-5. I ended up making $18 on pstars and $30 on FTP so it was a good session. Total winnings for session, $48.

Tracking winnings/losings

One of the key things in playing poker( or any sort of gambling for that matter) is managing your bank roll and playing with in limits. You also need to be able to see where you have success and where you fail and then either alter the game you play or maybe change the limit. Now that I am starting this year long run to try to make as much as I can etc, I need to really focus on this. From now on, I will be tracking everytime I play and then evaluating how I do in that session. since my online financial goals are way different then my life game goals, they will be viewed very differently.