Current bankroll (10/14/2006):
$414
Sitting on the sidelines to see how this absurd new law pans out.
Finished on a Whimper?
Results: 1 hour played; down $11; cleared $70 bonus
Yet another session where the cards just weren't falling for me. Since I knew that I had to be close to clearing the second part of the $100 bonus, I decided to play two $.25/$.50 tables. Neither one was very good to me. When I left the second table, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the $70 bonus had cleared. The first 100 hands went by pretty fast; it took forever for the second 400.
I'm playing a home game tonight with some buddies. They like to play all of the crazy poker games (the dealer picks the game). I read
an article on Badugi last night, so I think we'll give it a try. It has to be better than "Peg-Leg Pete" or the other crap they come up with. Why can't we just play hold 'em?
Loose Two Hour Session
Results: 2 hours played; up $4
Tonight I played $.25/$.50 for two hours with decent results overall. At one point I was down $14 for the session, but the table was so loose I decided to play another hour. The loose players were hitting cards on the river when I was losing; they didn't hit them when I charged back. I won $18 in the last twenty minutes.
Here's an example of the play you're liable to come across on
Sporting Bet. I watched a player UTG raise pre-flop and bet/raise every street; he had 45 off-suit, flopped low pair (4's), and drew trips on the river. The same player cold-called a preflop raise on another hand with 10 5 off-suit. Although he won big with the 4's, he lost his entire $28 afterwards and left the table.
A Little Tired
Results: 1 hour played; up $5I was a little tired tonight, so I didn't feel like playing for very long. During the session, I had a couple good hands, but the table was tighter than normal. I thought about looking for a different table but decided to call it an evening instead.
I had a nice win on pocket 9's when I flopped a set. Probably the best hand was Ah Jh one off of the button. I flopped a pair of aces, and everyone folded to the MP in front of me who raised. I re-raised and everyone else folded. Heads-up, we traded bets on the last two streets, and he showed Ac4d (why would you raise preflop with that hand?).
Five Minutes - Three Hands Won
Results: 5 minutes played (3 hands); up $4I only had a few extra minutes at lunch today, so I thought I'd play a few hands. The only limit table with an open seat was a five-handed $.25/$.50 table. In one round of the table I won 3/3 hands played for a $4 profit. Time to get back to work.
Oh, and I wanted to thank
Matt for stopping by and checking out my new blog.
Not a Good Night
Results: 2 hours played; down $11I played for almost 2 hours tonight, and the cards just wouldn't fall for me. I was playing at a full table of $.25/$50 limit hold'em at
Sporting Bet and ended the session down $11. This was my worst session since I started playing here. At one point I was down $21, so I can't complain too much.
The table was as loose as usual: 60% of the players were staying in to the flop (always a good sign). Unfortunately, you have to pick up some draws to take advantage of them. The guy sitting next to me could do no wrong; he doubled his $30 buy-in in under two hours.
Remember, poker = gambling.
Winning at Small Stakes Hold 'em
I've been playing Texas Hold 'em at
Sporting Bet for two weeks now. I started with a $100 deposit and have been playing $.25/$.50 up to $1/$2 limit poker tables. Slansky's book has really made a difference in my skill level (I'm half way through it), although as mentioned before, this is an extremely loose site overall.
Since I can't use Poker Tracker on Sporting Bet's Poker site, I'll have to approximate some of the stats. After the first 100 hands, my bankroll was up to $120. Adding the first $30 bonus that released brought it up to $150. Once I reached the $175 mark, I started playing some of the higher limit tables.
The bankroll's currently up to $233, but I don't know how many hands I've played. The 500 hand bonus is still in my account, so when it clears, I'll get an additional $70. In the next update I'll give some examples of the type of play you can expect at Sporting Bet. I love it!
My only complaint about the site is that it's sometimes hard to find a table at the limits I want with an opening. I can usually find a no-limit table, but Slansky recommends that you stick to limit tables to maximize profit. I think I'll continue to follow his recommendations.
Secrets to Building Your Poker Bankroll
While reading through the
Beginner's Forum on the Two Plus Two forums, I came across
a post that sent me in the right direction. The post explained how to build up your bankroll while getting deposit bonuses at several different poker sites. Although the main post was outdated, there were further current suggestions for sites in the comments to the post.
Since my short bankroll was one of the main reasons that I was losing at the higher limit Texas Hold 'em games (especially the no-limit games), this was exactly the help I needed. I decided to start with an account on
Sporting Bet. As of this post, they offer a $100 bonus with a $100 deposit. You have to play 100 raked hands for the first $30 and another 400 raked hands for the remaining $70. According the everything I read, the players there are very loose, so this looks to be a great place to start.
Unfortunately, none of the poker software I've been using works with this site. In the long run, this will be very good for me since I will have to learn to play without it. We'll see how it goes.
Learn to Win at Texas Hold 'em
Although I was playing pretty well, I figured that it was time to become a student of the game of Texas Hold 'em if I wanted to win regularly. At some point I found the forums at
Two Plus Two Publishing.
It only took an hour of reading to realize how bad I was playing. I could win a bit against the really low levels because they were worse than I was. When I moved up to the higher levels, I was getting beaten because I was a bad player. In addition, I also realized that I needed a much larger bankroll to play in the higher stakes games. I read through all of the beginner guides linked in the
Small-stakes Forum, and bought Ed Miller's and David Slansky's book,
Small Stakes Hold 'em. I was on my way.
Play Tracking Tool for Hold 'em Poker
While searching for answers to my Poker problems, I read a couple articles online that suggested using
Poker Tracker software to track your play style. It reads the hand histories from many of the online sites to track your play for both Texas Hold 'em and Omaha/8. Once you have a decent history, Poker tracker will help you find leaks in your game.
I quickly discovered that it would also track your opponents. You don't even have to play to build information on your opponents. On Party Poker, for example, you can watch up to ten tables at a time without playing. Over the course of a week (24 hours a day), I built up a huge history of players at my level. When playing, the Game Time window lets you see these stats real-time during the game. When you know the playing style of your opponents, you really get the edge over them.
Once I started using Poker Tracker while playing, I quickly saw the value in the program and bought it. You can get a free trial from their website, but it only tracks 1000 hands. The registered version is $55, but I think it's really worth it.
The articles I read also suggested using
PokerAce HUD along with Poker Tracker. This program will put your opponents' stats right on the tables while you play. You can try it for free and use it on one table at a time. If you play more than one table, registration costs $25. I don't have much screen real estate, so I really like using it.
I played for a week or so using these two programs with good results. I thought they would help me in the mini-tournaments as well, so I gave them another try with the same results: I didn't make the money in four attempts. It was during this stretch that I decided that it was time to learn how to play poker instead of just finding a good crutch. I withdrew my money from Party Poker up $40.
Poker Odds Calculator Helps
After the Hold 'em beating, I decided that I needed some help. I searched around on the Internet and found that there are programs that will watch the poker tables while you play and tell you what your correct play should be. These programs looked like they would make things much better for me.
I came across
Texas Calculatem's website and was intrigued by their program. It's a live poker odds calculator that works with Party Poker, Poker Stars, and a hundred other sites. You can get it for free if you make a deposit to a poker room from their links. You can adjust it to your playing style (loose/tight), and it will recommend the correct play for each betting round. If nothing else, it's a fantastic tool to help you count your outs while you play (but I'm getting ahead of myself).
Armed with a new tool, I made another deposit of $100 at Party Poker. I decided that if I couldn't win this time, I would quit for good. During the earlier attempt at Party Poker, I did pretty well at the lower limit hold'em tables and didn't do so well at no-limit hold 'em (ring games or tournaments). This time I focused on the $.50/$1 limit ring games.
Although I don't remember the numbers, I was up a bit over these play sessions.
Texas Calculatem really helped, but I found that over the course of a session at a table, the other players would outsmart me and push me off of pots. My frustration level continued to build, and between sessions, I searched the web for answers.
Prologue
I decided to take a little break from playing Texas Hold 'em to start a blog of my experiences. As the blog description says, I'm trying to build a poker bankroll of $1,000 so that I can play in the larger limit tables. Hopefully by the time my bankroll grows that large, I will be a good enough poker player to make keep the earnings up at the higher limit tables. I should have started logging my activities a few months back, so let me back up to the beginning.
A few months ago, a couple guys at work were talking about their experiences playing online poker. I had played quite a bit of the play money poker over the last year or so, but I never tried the real money games. Their stories intrigued me enough to open an account with
Party Poker.
At Party Poker, my initial $100 deposit lasted several weeks. Some days I would be up and others I would be down. My bankroll was trending up, but the swings were sometimes $20-30 each way. I didn't know what I was doing or what type of game I liked, so I played in limits from $.50/$1 to $2/$4. When I talked to my coworkers, they suggested that I try the tournaments, "That's where the money is."
My tournament experience was brutal. I played several $5 single-table tournaments at Party Poker with dismal results. Although I could regularly get to the top five finishers, I never made it to the money. I'd win a little at the ring games then lost it at the tournaments. Eventually, I withdrew my remaining balance in frustration: $70.
A few weeks later, one of my buddies suggested that I try
Poker Stars. He said that it was much looser than Party Poker, so I opened an account there with $100. Over the next few weeks, I lost my bankroll at the $5 single-table tournaments. Beaten and bruised, I gave up. Thus ended my first foray into online poker.
