Tracking my progress in Texas Hold'em
Bankroll: $2,354.45
Published on March 1, 2006 By PacDragon In Gaming
Well, the losses have stopped, but I haven't been able to earn very much. I played some $3/$6 last night and found a couple of very loose tables. It started out pretty bad though, as I was quickly down about $100. Again, the loose players were hitting their long shots against me. But it only took two hands of them not drawing out on me to put me back to even (plus about $10). That's really why I have to stay aggressive. If I got scared and started playing my good hands passively, I'd not only get drawn out on more often, but I wouldn't be able to earn enough to cover my losses. My style results in a lot of variation, but should provide the maximum amount of profit in the long run if I stick with it. I just hope things start to turn around soon.

I also played a tournament at Paradise Poker last night. I put $50 in there a while ago to play a specific tournament (which I lost), and since the minimum amount you can withdraw is $50, my money was pretty much stuck. Every so often, I'd log in and do a quicky tournament, but none of them worked out. I was left with about $8 and decided I should finally get around to playing with the last of it.

I logged in and saw that a $4 rebuy tournament was starting up. It was a qualifier for another tournament, but since it was starting in 30 seconds I didn't really have time to read the details. I hopped in and rebought right away with the last of my $8. You start with 1500 chips and can rebuy when you have 1500 or less, so I immediately did the rebuy before I earned too many chips to be able to do it. No one else rebought right away, which I thought was strange. They were probably waiting to go bust for the first time before they rebought. But personally, I'd rather have more chips right away. The more chips you have, the more you can win from an opponent, so it seemed like an obvious decision to me.

Anyway, to make a long story short I won the tournament! Well, I was in the top 5. But since the tournament ended when there were 5 players left, it was essentially first place. We all got tickets to the next tournament (worth $100). But then I looked to see when it actually started... noon today! That sucked; I couldn't play since I had to go to work. Grrrr.

I ended up having my wife play in that next tournament. It was another qualifier, so the winners would get a ticket to yet another tournament (worth $1000). She had actually played in that one before and earned her first big prize from it. In the one before, she was at the final table and was facing an all-in bet when she was holding 53. If one more person went out before her, she would have won the ticket. But if she got knocked out, she'd make $370. Since this was back when she was just starting out at poker, she didn't think her chances were that good for the next tourney, so opted to call and take the cash prize. She called, got knocked out, and won her biggest prize at the time. It was a good thing too, since that money helped her survive that long losing streak she was stuck in.

So yeah, I let her use my account to play that tournament again using my ticket. The plan was that if she won the ticket, I'd play in the big tournament (with a $1,000,000 prize!). But it didn't work out. She got knocked out pretty early with QQ on a board of JT4. Her opponent had AJ and she got him to call her all-in... but another guy behind him had T4 for two pair. Crappy luck, but I think it was $8 well spent.

All in all, it was a $2 profit last night. Not much, but vastly better than losing.

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