So I play some limit and despite a good start I manage to hit a loss by the end of the session, that game is really annoying me at the moment. I just cant win. I'm getting called down so thin I feel I cannot bluff and I keep getting outdrawn when I do eventually have a showdownable hand. Even if I have a good read that the opponent is floating me a lot and my ace high may be good you can bet they spike lucky on the river. I believe in my game but no good.

Having had a rant I'm winning this week.

Hit a nice little run on Bodog and PKR playing the micro NL(25nl).

I have just left a PKR table having sat down with $25 I left with $110 which is sweet. I played a bodog table at the same time and walked away with $54 from a $25 buy in although if the game hadn't become shorthanded I would not have done my stack heads up with 2 pr vs a set. Can't be helped!

I'm therefore happy with my poker although my NL seems to be propping me up.

I believe I have a slight leak PF playing hands like JJ and AQ too agressively in 6 max. You can play them for 4 bets at limit but I rekon they can be laid down at some stages. AK as well, managed to get all in pf vs KK the other day, not a good idea.

I have always believed that a solid preflop strategy is the foundation of all poker and I must not tilt off cash with non made but good hands. note to self.

I have now kicked some ass at PKR.

I was in the poo having deposited $200 I went down below $100 before my 4th place in one of their $5 MTTs which got me about $140.

I have run good at cash and am now up to $300 on PKR.

I'm coming back with avengance, I know my roll has hit $700 since my challenge started and the $550 odd that it is now is no fortune but watch this space. Once i start running good I'm in business.

My plan is to go to $1k then I can play $50NL and once I hit $3k I can play $5/10 limit and the coin will return.

Remember poker is not going anywhere and neither am I, once i have ground it out and my roll returns we'll try to mix it with the big boys!

Have just cashed the bonus, or some of it out of Tower Poker.

I played mostly limit there to get the bonus out although I ran like poo for the last 1000 hands and lost money, paid in $200 cashed out $232.

I am looking to build my $200 roll back into the 10k I had before I spent it all on my wedding.

I have done it before so i will do it again but it's a question of how long it will take me.

My belief is that I should go after the bonuses more aggressively, I know many good players multitable and whilst i am well capable I only play 3 at a time max and this bothers me at times.
I am also lazy having a table running whilst i go on ebay or some other site and this costs me.

I see other player's posts and blogs and I'm sure that whilst I'm game wise not too far behind them I just am not making the money I should.

One thing is for sure, poker isn't going anywhere any time soon. I'm in it for the longhaul. Poker has changed my life, it has paid for my wedding and in yeard to come i will make big bucks from the game.

One thing at a time.

I'm now off to play video games and drink beer at my mate's house. Myabe I can get them to play poker with me again.......

Bad beat, bad play or just bad luck.

Played at Dusk Till Dawn last night. I always enjoy playing there but have 0 cashes out of 3 buy ins there.

I played in the 50 +5 and in the early stages played quite well, I felt I had a command of the table and I had solid reads on everybody. I was close to top in chips at the table at the first break, had about 7k.

I had hit a couple of nice hands and bluffed/semibluffed the rest with c bets.

Then some dude with a massive stack comes to the table, probably had 15k.

I have k9s in the cutoff and it's folded to me I raise , he calls and the flop comes k52 rainbow, I bet out a little over half the pot and he calls the turn is a harmless looking 2 he checks and I fire out 1800, he raises me all in. I now have about 3k left, the blinds are 100/200. and there is 5.5k in the pot.

I felt sure that the 2 had hit him however with all those chips he could have been doing the same thing with a kx hand jj tt or something similar, it's my first hand with this guy. The tournament at DTD is so fast that I don't feel you can fold top pair as within 20 minutes your decent looking stack is worthless. I call and he has indeed hit his 2 having called my raise with a2 and floated the flop.

I should have known the way these people get such a big stack relatively early in the tournament is by playing like a fish and getting very lucky.

I just wasn't good enough to lay it down. I can't help feeling that I was very unlucky but I run through the hand and I can't, barring over the top agression how I can play it different. I mean you have a king on a K52 board and then the 2 comes off, you don't exactly sit there woorying. I even thought about checking the turn for pot control when the 2 came off thinking it was one of his floating hands.

I'd much rather go out firing with a junk hand pushing all in short stacked than like that.

I'll get over it but it is safe to say that I won't be going to DTD all the time, I just can't seem to get a result there.

Been playing poker today. Ran OK played OK so all is good.

I am concerned that I'm spending too much time playing poker/computer games/ drinking beer and not doing enough exercise.

I can feel a new year's resolution coming on.

I'm still fooling around with my new computer.

Won $162 playing in an MTT on PKR last night which was a buzz. I have been running like poo lately so I'm happy to get some cash into the coffers. I played well but got lucky. It was a 6 max all in fest towards the end. I won some big double ups, some from behind in the hand so ran nicely too. Made the final table out of 150 odd runners so very nice.

I have also been doing some computer gaming.

I have bought Tha Orange Box which has Two Half Life episodes on it. I am very impressed with the half life game. it runs smoothly and is genuinely challenging and entertaining. I would recommentd it to anybody.
I am also able to aquire cheap games of EBay. On XBox 360 the games are expensive but if you shop well they are very good. I play COD4, HALO anf FIFA 08 online.
I have aquired Quake4, Deus Ex, Devil May Cry 3, Lock On and Family Chess all for less than a couple of quid each.

I wanted the chess program as i enjoy a game every now and then.

I have just loaded quake 4 up. It is very hard and dosen't seem to run too well being a bit jerky on my system.

I can feel a PKR sit and go coming on!

So my new machine is now powerful enough to play on PKR. I love the games, love the graphics, but everywhere I look some lucky bastard has hit a set on me. I can't win and am down 4 buy ins in the last 24hrs.
What to do now, persevere I suppose.

Juts got one of those DELL XPS machines, some dude off ebay sold me it for 300 so am well pleased! Looks like the meanest thing ever!

Lets play!

I am playing a bit of XBox 360. I have always liked computer games. I'm playing HALO, COD 4 and FIFA '08/9.

I enjoy it but I have to say I'm crap at these games, the standard is so high on line. I'm just glad they don't play for money!

Still running pretty average, playing on ongame now.

I play the odd table of limit but i'm just getting killed. They always call my raises, bone dog any 2 2 river then outdraw me. It's impossible to work out where I am in a hand.

I'm killing the microstakes NL games but it's tedious playing for so little money. Anyway will look to clear the ongame bonus and move on.

Okay, running very bad now. I decided to play limit and have got my ass completely kicked. I know it's just a downturn but I can't hit a flop, keep getting outdrawn to 5 outers and 4 outers about once every 2 orbits. I am now $220 down on Absolute and I quit.

I will do my usual when running bad and take refuge at another site. Absolute can keep their bonus and Gold VIP status!

I am aware that I'm not the best player in the world but I have a sound understanding of the game. The trouble is that the games are so loose that no raise gets a fold, If I raise with 66 UTG I will get 4 callers and then not hit my set, see a sea of overcards and have to check and fold. Somebody with j2 will then pick up the pot. This process has been repeated about a million times.

PT says I have played 5234 hands at absolute and have lost $188, some must have gone in MTT buy ins and other ventures. I am loosing 3.02 bb/100 there. Time to leave.

Live tourney

Played in the EMS championships yesterday at Dusk Till Dawn, Nottingham. Very nice venue and excellently run tournament.

I feel that I played okay and at the end of the day you have to get lucky to do well in these things. I came in the mid 30s out of about 48 starters. Once the blinds get to a certain level the i feel you have to get your chips into the middle and start ante stealing or you are just dead. I had pushed 3 hands in a row and looked down to see ATh. I considered folding as my image was becoming loose however at the end of the day i couldn't just sit there so I shoved again and got looked up by AQo. I figured unless I ran into a premium hand the opposition wouldn't want to call of their chips, but I did and the board didn't help me.

I have played some more limit this morinng, I added a 4th table however things didn't go well and I found myself $50 down after about 1 1/2 hours so I'm having a rest.

Will crack on again later and perhaps go back down to 3 tables until I win back.

Limit again!

I am playing limit again, just cant help it. When you have no money bonus whoring has to be the way. There's just free money out there for a guy like me. I earn very little RB from NL however at limit you chomp through it!

I have been playing 3 tables, 2 $1/2 limit and one $50/1 limit. Lovely!

I rekon it will take me 10-20 days to clear the Absolute reload bonus.

Well got cained at the tables last night. I was about 8 buyins down but came back by playing limit and am only 4 down now. Have reloaded at Absolute Poker and am looking to clear their bonus. Absolute is a bit of a dodgy site with all of the scandal re superusers however it shouldn't affect me at the stakes I play at. I will do a hit and run on them ant try to get the $150 bonus out with my bankroll in tact. I left the site I was on after there was only one table available to play at at 50nl and I bust out after a guy called me to the river with a gutshot and i had AAA. That was too much !

So I have started from scratch and am now rebuilding.

I have turned my $200 into $700 so all is good, I'm comfortably beating the games and will move up once I hit $1000. This shouldn't take too long however I yearn for the rush of higher stakes play. I am naturally conservative so I will be taking my time getting there.

My mantra has always been to try to become a student of the game. I have read over 30 poker books and this will increase I assure you.

I'm a bit disappointed at the moment as I ordered Heads up No Limit Holdem by Colin Mosham from Amazon and they have emailed me to say that they cannot send it!

Oh well, the 6 max limit book by DG publishing is out 30/11 so I will be forking out for that one. I struggle to function without a good poker book to devour.

My latest reads are Power Holdem Strategy by Daniel Negranu and The Secrets of Professional Poker by Rolf Slothboom.

Negranu's book is excellent and I would recommend it to anybody, I particularly enjoyed his chapter on Small Ball and liked his thinking on using extra outs, I will try to incorporate this into my game.

Slothboam's book is a bit wierd. I love to see anybody's ideas and i certainly like Slothboom's approach however he admits to being a bit tight and seems to base his analysis on laying in tight games with high rake on the european poker scene which may not be the same as the games that you or I play in. I will read anything believing all players have ideas which will help my game and Rolf is worth a look even if he goes against the grain in some areas.

The Story So Far

Hi,

Name's Jon and I will be sharing my journey through the poker world, gaming and life in general.

Principally I will be sharing my poker journey as I try to make my fortune at the virtual tables.

On New Year's day 2005 I hit my head giving me concussion which lasted 3 months. I had to stay off work as I could do very little without feeling dizzy. I decided that to aid my recovery I would play poker on line so I took the plunge and deposited $25 into Pacific Poker.

I decided that limit poker was to be my forte and I first set about learning the starting hands and going from there. I had already played a bit for play money and had made a few thousand play dollars so I felt confident I could beat the low stakes games.

I ran my initial stake of $25 up to $14000 by late 2007.

I only played limit texas holdem and mostly played 1 or 2 tables.

In late 2007 I started to run bad to be fair to myself a big chunk of my losses came from Royal Card Club on the microgaming network going bust. I was on a 100bb downswing at the time which is about $2000 at $10/20 Limit Poker.

100 Big Bets is nothing at those limits but the loss of another $1500 with RCC going under left me $3500 down in a month.

This made me re-evaluate my position in the poker world, for me $10000 is a lot of money and I didn't want to run bad and have it all gobbled up in a month of running bad. I could see how volatile the games were at $10/20 and even though I had faith in my game I saw that that amount of money could come in handy and I decided to cash out and get married, which is exactly what I have done.

The money has paid for an engagement ring, a good chunk of my wedding and a slice of the honeymoon so Poker has changed my life for the better.

I left myself $200 in my account and am now trying to build it back up.

I have started to play No Limit Texas Holdem to rebuild as it will help me to stay motivated to crush the smaller games with learning a new skill. I considered playing limit but it was doing my head in playing 25/50c limit against the idiots as low stakes limit is no foldem holdem!

I am now going to try to get my bankroll back and get started towards playing semi pro.

Wish me luck!




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