Tracking my progress in Texas Hold'em
Published on September 15, 2006 By PacDragon In Gaming
Work hooked me up with a new cell phone. It's pretty swanky, it's the Treo 650. Huge beautiful screen, nice keyboard, camera, email, web browser, etc. I've been using it as a kind of portable computer.

When looking for some poker software to put on there, I found out that Ultimate Bet has a version of their software that let's you play online, from your phone, for real money! Bonus Whores showed that UB had a 100% deposit bonus, up to $650, so I transfered some cash from Full Contact into UB.

I logged into their mobile site and found... nothing. There were two tables, but no one at them. The first night, I just sat down at an empty table and waited. Every so often someone would sit down, we'd play some heads up, then they'd leave. Got boring fast. The free tables were overflowing with players, but apparently no one wants to play for money on their phone.

I played at a full table on there once, over lunch a few days ago. It runs pretty decent, it's fast and easy to see what the actions are. But there's hardly anyone one there most of the time, so that sucks.

Since I had that $650 in there (well, make that $667.50 from the few mobile games) I decided to try out the $1/$2 no-limit table for a $100 buy-in ($200 max). It's a little higher than what I'm used to, but I've had enough wins lately that I can finally move up in stakes (w00t, Level 7!). I've also been reading No Limit Hold'em Theory & Practice by Miller & Sklansky. That book is fantastic and really helped me think about the game better. In limit, it's all about what odds you can get from what's in the pot. But in no-limit, it's all about the odds you can get from what's left in your opponent's stack. Totally different game.

I can only describe the experience as shooting fish in a barrel. Only the fish had $100 bills and were being constantly refilled by a fish-pipe. The games were just great! There are maybe two to three decent players at each table, but the vast majority just can't wait to get all-in with the second best hand. I've made over $600 this week, playing maybe 5 hours total. I now have Poker Tracker watching the tables 24x7.

Last night, I made $200 in just one hand. I limped in for $2 with 33 under the gun. It's a good hand to see a cheap flop with, since all I'm looking for is to get trips. A guy in middle position raised it to $7, another guy in middle position called, and the big blind called. I decided to make the call, since my hand plays really well in a multiway large pot. The flop comes KJ3... exactly what I'm looking for. So I check. The next guy bets about half the pot, the guy behind him raises the size of the pot. The big blind folds and I push all-in. The first guy thinks about it for a long time and then finally calls. The guy behind him folds. I thought I might be in trouble, since I couldn't imagine getting called by anything besides KK or JJ... but I was hoping he had KJ for two pair. It was even worse than that, he only had KQ for top pair. It was a classic no-limit mistake, putting all your money in with one pair.

I hope this keeps up, my bankroll is starting to get really healthy from all this good luck recently...

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