Turning the corner

I finished my PSO promotion at Poker.com this past weekend. For those of you who are not aware, I strongly recommend checking out the PSO website. It's a great way to add a little more bonus money to your poker winnings.

I have to admit, I think the Poker.com promotion was perhaps my favorite of all time. The site wasn't that great, but the promotion itself required very little risk. The minimum deposit was $50 and you needed to clear 5000 comp points. This might sound like a lot of work, but you get 3 comp points per hand raked at $0.25/$0.50 limit stakes. Pretty much any hand where there is a flop is raked, so almost every hand was raked. So, I played a bunch of full-ring micro stakes and I cleared the bonus in a week or so. Cool!

The other great feature is that I think I found my poker game again. Grinding away at the micro stakes forced me to re-consider the fundamentals of poker. I was able to grind a nice profit at these stakes, although I pissed most of my profit away playing one-table tournaments. I also lost a good chunk of money playing no limit when I caught a cooler or I tried to bluff the unbluffable.

Anyway, my account had $57 in it when I cleared the promotion, so I cashed out my original $50 deposit and then decided to play a $5+0.50 SNG with my remaining cash. A strange thing, happened, then. I won. So, I played another... and I won that too. My next one, I bubbled when my AQ got outdrawn by A3 (all-in preflop). And then, I won the fourth one too. Suddenly, my account there has almost $50 in it. That's not a ton of cash, but I have played REALLY well in these SNGs and I am very confident in my game right now.

Another reason for my confidence is that I have been grinding up my bankrolls at Trident Poker and Full Tilt Poker too. Suddenly, I've remembered how to beat full-ring limit hold'em games. It's a lot of grinding, but for some reason it doesn't seem to bore me right now. Maybe this is the start of a great comeback for me!

Another PSO promotion

My poker playing has continued to be awful. After cashing out most of my bankroll, leaving me with only $600 or so... I have proceeded to lose about 2/3 of that. I now have very small bankrolls(< $50) at Full Tilt, UltimateBet, Trident Poker, and Poker.com.

The new addition to the list of poker sites is poker.com, which is a new PSO promotion. The really cool thing about this promotion is that you can clear it at ridiculously low stakes. So, I am playing full-ring $0.25/$0.50 limit hold'em, slowing clearing this thing. I'll need to accumulate 5000 comp points to clear the promotion; in a couple hours of play, I accumulated abotu 500 points. So, that's a great promotion if you find yourself playing ultra-low stakes. So far, I think that I am +$1, which is not losing, I suppose. I would be +$5 but I just lost a big pot when I flopped top two pair but lost to a one-outer.

I played a short session at Full Tilt this morning that was both fun and frustrating. For whatever reason, I feel like I am ready to play good poker again and I actually played well for this entire session. There was a complete LAG at my table who was pushing and calling with crap hands. I merely sat back, waited for a hand and then pushed hard. I won $15 ($25 NL w/ cap) in about 30 hands. The frustration was that I lost an all-in pre-flop hand when I held AA and the LAG held 68 offsuit (he flopped trip eights).

Hangin' in Indy

I am writing from my hotel room in Indianapolis. Why am I in Indy? I was asking the same question last night... and this morning...

Let me explain. Early in the summer, I was invited to attend this conference. We knew at the time that we'd be about 8.5 months pregnant, but that didn't seem like a big deal at the time. This week, however, when my wife is huge and trying to chase around our daughter (13 months), suddenly this trip seemed like a bad idea.

Anyway, a promise is a promise and so I went to the airport in Minneapolis yesterday (Monday) to take a flight to Chicago and then onto Indianapolis. And that's when the fun began!

My flight leaving Minneapolis was delayed because there was fog in Chicago. My airline assured me that all would be OK because my connecting flight was delayed also.

Unfortunately, the airline was essentially lying all along. When my flight pulled away from the gate in Minneapolis, it moved only a few hundred feet, where we sat for over an hour before we were allowed to take off. We also spent about an hour circling Chicago before we landed, so we arrived really late. The pilot assured us all, however, that all was well. An airline representative would meet us at the gate to help us make sure that we safely reached our final destination. The pilot also listed all of the various connecting flight times and gates so that we could quickly get to our next flight.

Once again, that was all a lie. There was no airline representative at the gate. And in my case, there were no connecting flights. My "correct" flight was cancelled, not delayed. The two remaining flights to Indy had 30+ people on standby. The next flight to Indianapolis was Tuesday afternoon (my presentation was scheduled for 10 am -- no good). The next flight back to Minneapolis was even later than that.

Returning to my friendly airline, I asked for directions to the nearest rental car agency. They then proceeded to give me incorrect directions. Great!

Anyway, I ended up renting a car for $250 for a one-day, one-way rental. I then drove to Indianapolis, arriving at my hotel at 2am. I then woke up at 6am to go to the conference, where I gave a horrible presentation. I bet the people who invited me are soooooo happy. But what can a guy do on 4 hours of sleep? Oh well.

Where am I going with this? Absolutely nowhere. Except that I am playing poker while writing and I have found a very soft game that I can beat. Sadly, though, my bankroll is way short so a few bad beats and I am done with online poker forever. Luckily, it's limit poker so I should be ok.

PostScript: After writing this blog, I proceeded to lose half of my bankroll playing that so-called "beatable" game. Also, I came very close to missing my return flight to Minneapolis when my taxi to the airport died. Next, the same damn airline cancelled my reservation on my return flight (pre-paid) because I didn't wait in Chicago for an extra day to take whatever flight they felt like giving me.

Enjoying my Semi-Retirement

For whatever reason these days, I am very relaxed while playing poker. It's fun; I'm not taking it too seriously. I am winning just a little, but mostly just breaking even. I'm playing tournaments (usually one table sit-n-goes), which is really unusual for me.

After this weekend's big MTT win for me (there is sarcasm in there, if you look VERY closely), I have been really confident with my tournament game. I am picking my spots carefully (well, for the most part) and I am cashing with regularity. Yesterday, I had a bad streak of second place finishes, brought about by cold cards once the game got heads-up.

In a slight deviation from tournaments, I sat down at a $2/$4 limit game tonight. I played three orbits and I won $30. Then, common sense kicked in and I dropped back to $0.50/$1.00, which is more in line with my bankroll.

MTT Win!

I am going to keep this short because I have very little to say. I haven't played much poker lately... and when I have played, I have played poorly.

Tonight, I decided to play a 45-person MTT at Full Tilt. It was small stakes ($5 + 0.50), but this represents the biggest tournament that I've ever won. Prior to this, my biggest win was a 30-person tournament at Party Poker.

The money from this quadrupled my bankroll at Full Tilt, so I have that going for me, which is nice.