Introduction

Welcome to my blog about poker! I've been following some great blogs from fellow players at Poker Source Online, and have been inspired to create one of my own. I'm hoping my adventures will be an interesting read for you, will teach you a few things about poker, and perhaps will inspire you, if you haven't already, to venture out into the world of poker yourself.

I've only been playing poker regularly for about six months. My first serious game of poker took place on Nov. 26, 2005. This was the day of my friend Eagle2727's home tournament. Before this day and the preparation for it, I had played very little poker, and in fact only vaguely knew how the different poker hands ranked. I was well aware of the Texas Hold'Em craze that was going on, but didn't even know how to play that variation of poker. A few weeks before the tournament, I surfed online and familiarized myself with the basic rules of Texas Hold'Em, and then installed a java version of the game onto my cellphone, which I played often up until the day of the tournament. When tournament day finally arrived, I was pretty excited to see how my new "skills" would fare. Well, needless to say, that night ended with me being the first one knocked out. In my defense, however, it was a bad beat that did me in - I held two pairs after the turn, and my opponent put me all-in with top-pair-medium-kicker and managed to hit one of his five outs on the river (so he only had about a 10% chance to beat me).

Well, I was pretty disappointed at my performance, but that night was definately a turning point for me. I'm a pretty competitive person, and I like to do well at the things I try, so that performance motivated me to learn more about playing Texas Hold'Em. Luckily for me, the consolation prize for being the first one knocked out of the tournament was a Texas Hold'Em for Dummies booklet and pack of cards. Although it is a very basic guide, I read through it and started to learn some of the important concepts necessary to playing poker well. To apply these concepts in practice, however, I needed to play against real people, and I needed to play regularly and fairly often if I ever hoped to improve. That's where online poker comes in, and that is pretty much where the start of my journey through the world of poker begins, about one month after that fateful tournament.

Over the next few weeks, I will be working to fill in some of the details chronicling my journey to the present day, so please check back often and read the Archives as I try to get up-to-date. These blog entries will clarify how I started from zero and ended up presently at about $4300 in cash and prizes, which is about 43% of my target of $10,000 for 2006. My narrative will assume that the reader has at least a basic knowledge of poker. If I use any terms or talk about any concepts which are a little more advanced, then I will try my best to first give a brief explanation of them.

Got $5 Free From Absolute Poker

Last week, Absolute deposited $5 into my account for free. Today, I decided to play a SNG with it. I wanted to try a $10+1 SNG ($10 buy-in, $1 tourney fee), so I played for a while at a $0.05/$0.10 NL table to see if I could win enough for the buy-in. I caught two good hands - KK, which held up to the river, and TJo, which made a straight on the turn - and after an hour I managed to turn the $5 into $11.

I then played a $10+1 SNG. I played pretty solid, and with four people left and me with a medium stack, two others go all-in against the chip leader and lose. In heads-up, I play okay for a while, but don't catch any good hands, and eventually finished second for $27.

Then I played a $10 Multi-Table Tournament (MTT). Again, I played pretty well at the beginning, but didn't get many good cards later on, and finished just in the money for $11.

Then I joined a $0.05/$0.10 NL table, and in the third hand, I lose $20 with the following hand. I call UTG with Ah3h, there's a small raise but 5 other players end up calling to see the flop. Flop comes up 4hTh2d giving me 12 outs with the flush + gutshot straight draw. This gives me odds of about 1.1:1 to make my hand by the river. I ended up calling two all-ins on the flop, since the pot odds were about 1.24:1, giving me the odds to call. Turn comes up 3c, river Kd, and the smaller all-in shows KTo to take the main pot with two pairs, while the bigger all-in shows 4cTc to take the side pot with two pairs.

I quit for the night after that. Luckily, I'm still up about $3 from my original free $5.

Earnings-to-date: $4275

Played A Bit At Full Tilt

ECD held a $1 "freeroll" tournament on Full Tilt today. After building up a nice stack, I overplayed top-pair-second-best-kicker and lost most of my stack to an opponent with top-pair-top-kicker, and got knocked out shortly after that. Then I played a $6 sit-n-go and lost that, for a net loss of $7 today.

Earnings-to-date: $4267

Started New Promo: Hollywood Poker

I started an ECD promo for 600 ECD points ($60 value) at Hollywood Poker (HP) today. HP is on the same network as Poker Room (PR), which I did back in January. I had an okay experience at PR - started off down, but managed to end up with a modest profit at the tables. I'm still a bit hesitant, though, about playing on this network again due to all the negative feedback I have read on the PSO forums, mainly about how the loose players seem to frequently hit their draws to beat you by the river. Hopefully, though, now that I have a bit more experience, I'll be able to handle these types of tables.

Finished Full Tilt

I played $100 NL, and this promo was probably one of the fastest promo's I've done so far, almost as easy of PartyPoker's 250 raked hands. I played for less than four hours, and total of only 374 hands. I made $168 at the tables, earned $15 in bonus money, and got 9000 PSO points (which I'm saving for now), for a net profit of $183.

Overall, I enjoyed playing at Full Tilt. Some people have mentioned that the tables tend to be tougher there, since a lot of the pros play on that site, but I didn't run into any problems.

Earnings-to-date: $4274

Started New Promo: Full Tilt

PSO upgraded their Full Tilt promo to 9000 PSO points, so I decided to sign up for it today. It requires 250 Full Tilt Points to clear, with 0.01 points being earned for each $0.01 in rake. I made a deposit so that I would earn $15 in bonus money after clearing the promo requirements.

Finished A PartyPoker Reload

I finished a PartyPoker reload today. I can't seem to do well at Party for some reason. I lost $56 at the tables, and earned a $100 bonus, for a net profit of $44.

Earnings-to-date: $4091

Signed Up At Ladbrokes Poker

I signed up for Ladbrokes Poker today because of a recommendation from a thread in the PSO forums. Ladbrokes is European site which uses the Prima software, but operates on their own network. The have a $100 deposit bonus which clears after 500 contributed raked hands. If you get referred by a friend, you get an additional $50 bonus which clears at the same time. Plus, if you fill out a profile on their website, you get another $25 bonus. Finally, I signed up using Lawguy32's referral ID, and he offered to split his referral money with me, adding another $50 to the offer.

So in total, you can get $225 after clearing 500 contributed raked hands. The best thing about this offer, however, is that you can clear it playing micro-limits. I will be playing $0.05/$0.10 NL short-handed 6-max games, and plan to call with just about all but the trashiest of hands. Unless I flop a monster hand, I will then fold to any action. This will make the promo clear much faster, since most of the hands I get, I will be contributing to the pot.

Finished Dream Poker

This turned out to be a great promo for me. I made $276 at the tables, earned a $100 deposit bonus, earned a 300 pc Tiki Kings chip set (which I valued at $150), and also qualified for the Gold Club $2000 freeroll, where I managed to finish in the money for another $70. My net profit, then, was $596.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed playing at Dream Poker. As I mentioned before, I like to play at the Bad Beat tables on Prima, as it can be pretty profitable playing against these gambler-types, and it is well-worth the extra rake that you need to pay for the Bad Beat Jackpot. Plus, if you are really lucky, you might get quad 8's or better and lose the hand, in which case your table would win the jackpot (though I've never seen it happen).

Their Dream System is also pretty fun. Every two weeks, the top 80 players with the most Dream Points get to play in a $2000 freeroll, and the top 30 players get to play in a tournament for their chosen Dream Experience. My chosen dream was a weekend at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and I was going to make a run to qualify for the tourney, but I ended up getting sick and didn't feel much like playing poker online.

Earnings-to-date: $4047

Finished PokerShare

I made $116 at the tables, earned a $50 bonus, and earned a 300 pc Nevada Jacks chip set which I upgraded to 500 pc for 10,000 PSO points (which I've already saved up), for a net profit of $416 (I valued the poker chips at $250).

The promo was clearing pretty slowly for me playing at $25 - $100 NL. I needed to finish the promo fairly quickly, since I wanted to get the poker chips shipped to me in the US during my upcoming Seattle trip for the July 1st Canada Day long weekend, so that I could save on shipping and duty. So for the last third or so of the promo, I switched to $200 NL and played extremely tightly, and managed to clear the promo much quicker, and luckily also managed to not lose my shirt in the process.

I would not recommend this promo for low-limit players. It is best cleared at $200 NL or $100 NL. It will be a pretty long grind at $50 or $25 NL. Also, since this site is fairly new and caters mostly to Europeans, the traffic is extremely light during North American evening hours. You would be lucky to find two or three tables total at $25-$200 NL unless you play during the daytime, and if you play limit hold'em then just forget about it, as limit tables are almost non-existent. Also, I've heard reports of the software being a little buggy, although I myself did not experience any problems. This site is also not compatible with Poker Tracker. The one redeeming thing about this site, however, is how bad most of the players are. For some reason, there are quite a few players who apparently don't know much about poker, and will call your bets with trash like middle or bottom pair.

Earnings-to-date: $3451