I guess I just suck at this game anymore. I switched over to NL100 6max the other day to play at Doyles Room, UKbetting, and one of the bazillion Prima sites (for rakeback) and everything went just peachy for awhile. Made a good chunk of change starting out but the last 2 days have just been hell on my bankroll! I'm pissed off now and am actually looking forward to having surgery later today as then at least I can't be losing money at the poker tables. During recovery I'll just read about poker and not play it at all and see if that helps. I haven't had a day off completely away from poker for at least 2 months now. I don't know if that has been bad or good but I do think I might need a break. When I come back, I am going to switch back to Full Ring Tag play on the NL tables with some Limit thrown in there every now and then for variation. One thing I plan on doing when I come back is playing some MTT's. That way I know just exactly how much I am going to lose if I lose and I don't have to constantly think about how this particular hand might affect my bankroll. I also finished reading the HoH books recently and want to try it out while it is still fresh in my mind. That $200 2nd place finsh the other day at Noble poker kinda makes me want to try it more as well.

Either way, I think I'm done with 6max for a week or two at least. I need to replenish the BR and I know I can do that at FR. I'm also considering consolidating a lot of my BR onto just one or two sites that I can make rakeback on and forget about the bonuses for awhile. I never get the popups at Party or Empire anymore anyway like it seems everyone else is getting. Not to mention it always seems like a rock garden when youre clearing bonuses anyway and that is not fun to me. I need for poker to be fun again. In order to be fun, I have to be winning I think. So hopefully this little break will be good for me and renergize me a bit so I can come back strong.

I played all sorts of limits today it seemed like. Both Limit and NL. I even took a shot at NL400 for a bit at Doyles Room. Talk about clearing those action points fast! Didn't do so well in the money department though as I couldn't catch a damned thing. I did notice that there are folks at that limit that play just as bad as they do at NL25. Maybe even worse. I just couldn't catch anything to hit them with.

Jeez this is getting long. Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to avoid posting my horrible stats for the day.

Horrible stats for the day:

Noble Poker NL100 6max, 105 hands, 73 minutes, -$103.30
Noble Poker 10+1 NL Tourney with and addon at the first break, -$21 - 84th place, but was at least fun. Purse was $4000 guaranteed.
Totalbet NL100 6max, 161 hands, 112 minutes, -$130.78
Doyles Room NL400 6max, 85 hands, 56 minutes, -$156.25 - Took a shot, missed. But I know now I CAN beat this game and will in the future. Will wait until better BR'lld to do so though.
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 144 hands, 92 minutes, $94.00 - shoulda stayed, only decent table I had all day.
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 24 hands, 18 minutes, $3.00
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 33 hands, 20 minutes, -$83.00 - UNGODLY bad beats! worst one was getting AA in the hole and 3 betting preflop. called by a guy with Q3soooooted, of course the hand plays out with him getting 2J323 for a board.
Pokerstars NL100, 43 hands, 33 minutes, -$47.25 - went well for awhile then my normal bad luck kicked in. I managed to quit the table before I lost it all though.
Pokerstars NL200, 64 hands, 62 minutes, $24.10 - Quit for the night so I didn't have to go to bed on a losing note.

RB: 0 - but I did pay quite a bit of rake at sites I will get RB from so at least I made a little extra here although I aint gonna add it until it shows up in my accounts.

Various: $10.00

Bonus Progress:

Cleared 34.75 mpp's at Totalbet towards the 200 required for the £25 monthly bonus there.
Cleared $10 of bonus at Noble poker. $90 to go there.
Got Doyles room action point total up to 4184. 13500 needed to clear the $135 bonus.
___________________________

Total: -$410.48 a new all time worst for me. Just what I needed. When am I going to have a $400 winning day?
Time: 9h 7m

Thanks for the comments fellas. I'm pretty sure they were all in good spirits and I appreciate it. That goes for those of you who sent PM's as well.
Although I have never actually had sex in a chandelier, it does sound interesting. But since it probably would give me another hernia, I think I'll pass.
Adam, you come visit and I will gladly let you try out the NORCO's. Sorry, no percocets. never had a percocet but I can't imagine it being any better than these NORCO's. When I was in the hospital back in the 80's for a ruptured appendix, the had me on Morphine and to this day I have never had anything so nice as that stuff. But these NORCO's come close. I find myself saying stuff in a dream only to find out I was in a half awake state when my wife goes, "What do you mean you flopped quads?", then I realize I'm riding in the car and not sitting at a poker table. BTW, not that it matters, but it was quad 9's that I flopped. Not sure why that sticks out in my memory but it does. The dreams seem so real it's almost like they are memories of real events. Unfortunately I know I am not lucky enough this month to flop quad 9's so that had to be a dream.
In case any of you ever have an umbilical hernia (BTW, thats not the kind in your nut sack) like I just had fixed, I can tell you now you will be quite sore for the next few days. I am just halfway through day 2 postop and it is still extremely painful when not on my lovely NORCO's. Hopefull by monday it will feel much better.
Trodgers, only one of the surgeries was a hernia, I've had all kinds in my life so if you ever need to have surgery and want to know what youre in for let me know and I'll fill ya in cuz I've prolly already had it.

And now for a few poker stats. Surgery day was the first day I've taken off from poker in over 2 months and even with being doped up most of the day, it still felt kinda weird. But today I was back to playing a little bit. Got all signed up at Staff Poker incase the tripledraw game is going to be held at a B2B site. If you like B2B network sites, this one has a decent bonus going on right now. Deposit €500 and get a €150 bonus that only takes 750VIP's to clear. That's a pretty easy one to clear. Pays in 30 days, not 90 like Martins Poker was. Anyway, I played there a bit today and still insist that I hate the java software they use. There are a lot of times that my cards will just disappear for a hand or ten. Then you see the HH later and find out you folded AA or KK cuz you didn't know you had them!
I signed up at Doyles room the other day and that software is WAY better! I actually like it better than any of the other sites I have ever played at. I just wish they had the player traffic that some of the bigger networks have.

Todays Stats:

Staff Poker NL50 6max, 145 hands, 96 minutes, -$18.23
Staff Poker NL50 Full Ring, 118 hands, 81 minutes, $45.60
Staff Poker NL50 Full Ring, 48 hands, 30 minutes, -$3.57
Staff Poker NL50 Full Ring, 116 hands, 79 minutes, -$32.42
Staff Poker NL50 Full Ring, 19 hands, 12 minutes, $0.00
Full Tilt, NL Tourney, $5+.50, 67 hands, 56 minutes, -$5.50 : 105th place out of about 300
Doyles Room NL50 6max, 31 hands, 18 minutes, $11.49
Full Tilt 10+1 S&G, 2 table, 18 person, 30 hands, 21 minutes, -$11.00 : 11th place.
Rakeback Poker NL50 6max, 51 hands, 38 minutes, $25.49

RB: 0 (but it is coming soon finally)
Various: 0

Bonus Progress:

Earned 86 VIP's towards the Staff Poker bonus, 750 needed total.
Earned another 144 action points towards the Doyles Bonus, total of 4328 now, 13400 needed to clear.
_____________________________

Total: $11.86
Time: 7h 1m (didnt actually play for 7 hours as 4 of the Staff poker sessions were simultaneous)

Didn't play a whole lot today but did get some time in. I even played a couple S&G's at Doyles Room Poker. In the past I haven't had a whole lot of success at S&G's and because of that have stayed away from them for the most part. But Doyles Room actually has them as cheap as $.10+$.01 LOL! I'd never seen them at that low of a stake before. Heck, even on a losing streak I can afford 11 cents! Good thing they were cheap as I didn't make the money in either one. Makes for a nice cheap change of pace after a session of monkey boy suckouts when you can't seem to win anything. I really like the Tribeca Network software (I think I already mentioned that in a previous post) as it's fast, looks good and is supported by PT. Poker Ace Josh hasn't gotten around to making PAHUD support it yet but GT+ does so that will suffice until he does. He must be one seriously busy cat as he still hasn't gotten Paradise Poker support for PAHUD yet either and he had said that would be done hopefully by the end of 2005. That being the case, I don't look to get Tribeca network support anytime soon but like I said GT+ does work for now. All 3 sites have fairly decent signup bonuses too so those of you looking for a new place to play may want to check them out. The other 2 are Victor Chandler and Golden Palace. Maybe others but those are the only 3 listed at BW.

Todays Stats:
Doyles Room NL50 6max, 151 hands, 2 hours 10 minutes, $26.71
Doyles Room NL S&G .10+.01, 6 hands, 8 minutes, -$0.11 Oh the HORROR!!!!!!
Paradise Poker 1/2 Limit 6max, 49 hands, 26 minutes, $11.00
Rakeback Poker 1/2 Limit 6max, 166 hands, 1 hour 19 minutes, -$50.00 Total Aggravation
Rakeback Poker NL50 6max, 14 hands, 11 minutes, $55.80 It's so nice to make up over an hours worth of suckout losses in 11 minutes!!!!
Doyles Room S&G .10+.01, 5 hands, 4 minutes, -$0.11 Jeez it's nice to be able to lose and not be pissed about it. My new goal is to get past 10 hands in one of these before being knocked out.

RB: 0
Bonus: 0

Bonus Progress:

Earned another 1051 action points towards the $135 bonus. 5379 total now, 8021 to go.
Made another 25 points towards the next Paradise $10 release. $40 still to release.
____________________________

Total: $43.29
Time: 4h 18m

Not a whole lot to report today as other than an early AM session of NL50 I didn't play anything other than nano stakes poker. Didn't feel like risking much money today but still wanted to play poker. Just had kind of a dreary day with nobody home. Did watch the Daytona 500. My car didn't win of course.
One thing I can say about the nano limits is that it sure aint much different than the play money tables that I used to play at UB. You either cleanup or get wiped up. These folks will call a big PFR with crap and so will all the folks next to them. So you better have a good hand on the flop or get out. I lost 3 allins during my last session with AA, KK, and a set of 5's. The AA lost to T3 off, LOL.
Anyway, here's the lowdown. At least I was still in the black at the end of the day.

Doyles Room NL50 6max, 22 hands, 15 minutes, $26.71
Pokerstars PLO8 .02/.05, 18 hands, 25 minutes, -$3.00
Doyles Room NL4 6max, 80 hands, 84 minutes, $1.33
Doyles Room NL4 FR, 43 hands, 62 minutes, $2.48
Doyles Room NL4 FR, 43 hands, 57 minutes, $3.56
Doyles Room NL4 FR, 38 hands, 54 minutes, -$0.46
Doyles Room NL4 FR, 35 hands, 59 minutes, -$0.88
Doyles Room NL4 FR, 29 hands, 29 minutes, -$5.00
Doyles Room NL4 FR, 99 hands, 114 minutes, $6.61
Doyles Room NL4 FR, 65 hands, 58 minutes, -$15.00

RB: 0
Bonus: 0

Bonus Progress:
Earned 500 action points towards the Doyles $135 bonus: 5838 total out of 13400 now.
________________________

Total: $16.35
Time: 9h 17m (total time, not actual as I 4 tabled a lot)

Check your PM genius...

Very little poker today. I did get to play in the 2-7 triple draw game with the BTP Sharks tonight though and that was a good time. Hard to believe I am saying that when it cost me almost all of the winnings I had made earlier in the day! I'd have to say though that playing amongst friends and folks who are better than you definitely makes forking the money over much easier on the stress levels. I'll get'em next time. If you know the triple draw game, I posted some questions on it in this link , and I would love to hear your thoughts and answers on any of them. It's always fun to learn a new game for those times when you need a change of pace because you're getting the shit, that's poop to the lay person, kicked out of you at your normal game.
Piers has told me for awhile now about the softness of the Limit Omaha H/L games. I hadn't really tried it until tonight when I was waiting for the triple draw folks to show up. Piers was playing and told me there was a seat open at his table. It was 1/2 and I hadn't ever played Omaha that high before so I was kinda nervous about it. I needn't have been because as usual he was right. Those folks are terrible at that game! I played 20 minutes and made 20 bux! I only stopped because it was dinner time and I needed to eat before the triple daw game or I'm sure I'd have kept on making money at that table. Of course it was even nicer to sit to the immediate left of Piers because then he would raise whenever he had a playable hand (no slow playing me in other words) basically telling me to fold unless I had a monster. This worked out well as I won every hand I played if I remember correctly. I'll definitely be playing more of this game in the future as it's getting harder and harder for me these days to beat the low stakes limit hold'em games on a consistent basis. Much less luck involved in Limit Omaha H/L and your edges are greater so your win rate is much higher if you play TAG. Might have to invest in PT Omaha if I'm gonna do this though. I just hope PAHUD works with it. Although if what I saw tonight was any indication of a "normal" group of players, PAHUD will be unnecessary at the low stakes games and PTO will be basically just used for record keeping and to make checkups on my game every now and then.

Todays Stats:
Rakeback Poker NL50 6max, 42 hands, 35 minutes, $29.20
Rakeback Poker NL50 6max, 57 hands, 36 minutes, $7.85 - was a very tight table
Staff Poker Limit Omaha H/L 1/2€, 34 hands, 20 minutes, $19.06
Staff Poker 2-7 Triple Draw 1/2€, 79 minutes, ~80 hands, -$54.19 after exchange rate figured in. This was the BTP game I spoke about above. Xaston, Piers, & bobby.

RB: 0
Bonus: 0


Bonus Progress

I finally cleared the 500 hands played this month mark at Rakeback Poker so my affiliate for that site permanently increased my rakeback % for that site to 40%. That's a 10% increase which I think is pretty good.

Earned 33 more VIP's at Staff Poker. That makes a total of 119. 750 needed for the 150€ bonus.
____________________

Total: $1.92
Time: 2h 50m

I knew I was supposed to stay away from NL today for some reason. Of course I couldn't help myself and opened up a NL50 6max table at Doyles this evening. Kinda weird buyin rules at Doyles, at a lot of the limits you are allowed to buyin for 200xBB instead of the normal 100xBB at most sites. Then once you get up to NL200, it drops to 100xBB max. Then at NL400, NL600 and NL1000 its 75xBB. Seems kinda odd to me why they make it different for the different limits. In fact the MINIMUM buyin at NL1000 is $500, is that non-standard as well?
Anyway, with the uneeded 200xBB max buyin, I bought in for $50 because everyone at the table all had around $40-$50. Promptly lost all but $2 within about 20 hands because I got my AA on the button busted by the SB who called my 4xBB PFR with 10-3 offsuit and goes runner runner to catch a flush after I hit my set on the flop and put him allin and he calls with his backdoor draw. That one sticks out in my head the most because it was the biggest pot I lost all night and took a good whack out of my stack. There were a couple others where I call PF allins by some really short stacks because I had decent hands like JJ or AK or whatnot and that dropped me down to about $2. Next hand I go allin with my $2 with an A2off and hit a straight that brought me up to about $8 or so and I bought another $50 stack to add on to it. I was not going to let these morons break me and I was adamant about it. I wanted my money back. I did get a lot of it back before the morons left but it took me over 2 hours and never did get quite all of it back. Still finished down $14.47 for the 137minute session.
Luckily I had played a little Omaha HL earlier in the day and had made a little at that and also cleared $10 in bonus so I am still up for the day but not as much as I would be if I had just listened to my inner voice telling me not to play NL today. Oh well, maybe I'll listen to that voice next time. Probably not, but maybe.

Paradise Poker Limit Omaha H/L .50/1, 41 hands, 62 minutes, $14.25 VERY SLOW GAMERS!!!!
Pokerstars Limit Omaha H/L 1/2, 50 hands, 39 minutes, $3.00
Doyles Room NL50 6max, 210 hands, 137 minutes, -$14.47 - What a marathon scrap that was!!!!

RB: 0
Bonus: $10.00

Bonus Progress

Cleared $10 in bonus at Paradise, still $30 to go

Earned 1049 action points at Doyles toward the $135 bonus. 6887 now, 13500 needed to clear
__________________________

Total: $12.78
Time: 3h 58m

Hey, did a lot better today. At least it seemed like it. Only one losing session andone bubble finish in a S&G today. Other than that I actually won money today for a change. Well, it seemed like I won more money than I prolly did but thats just cuz I got a 1st and a 2 in my other 2 S&G's so I feel like a tourney pro at the moment! I usually suck at those but this friend of mine IM'd me and asked me if I wanted to play some S&G's at FullTilt since he's been having such a wonderful streak there. He said the 6 person ones are really easy to beat since you only have to out last 4 other players to get ITM. Problem is they only pay out 2 spots. I got a 1st, a 2nd, and a 3rd. The 2nd place one, while still a money maker, was also a heart breaker as I was 2nd in chips and got allin with, well heck, here's the hand history since it tells it better than I can. Probably more honestly too.

Seat 1: SebQtaneus (1,660)
Seat 2: slim yosh (7,340)
SebQtaneus posts the small blind of 100
slim yosh posts the big blind of 200
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to SebQtaneus
SebQtaneus calls 100
slim yosh checks
*** FLOP ***
slim yosh bets 7,140, and is all in
SebQtaneus calls 1,460, and is all in
slim yosh shows
SebQtaneus shows
Uncalled bet of 5,680 returned to slim yosh
*** TURN ***
*** RIVER ***
slim yosh shows a straight, Five high
SebQtaneus shows two pair, Aces and Fours
slim yosh wins the pot (3,320) with a straight, Five high

That's right, he rivered me after going allin on a draw. At first I was excited to see the Ace come as it gave me 2 pair, but then the chips started sliding towards him and my high came crumbling down. Game Over. Oh well. Making the money in 2 outta 3 is like unheard of for me. Normally I go out on the bubble or really early on. But not tonight. Tonight I was "Jesus" Ferguson!

Now to back track a bit, earlier in the day I played "badugi" for the first time at Doyles Room. For those that don't know, it's a form of triple draw lowball. You only get 4 cards and you want them to all be different suits. If you get that it's called a 'badugi'. The lower the cards the better. 4 card str8's don't count against you but pairs and flushes (duh, obviously) do. I didn't make a whole lot playing it but then I was only at a $.05/.10 table to learn.
Then played a bit of NL100 6max while I was there. Then since I was bored went to Paradise and got in a .50/1 Limit Omaha H/L game and made a coupla bucks. From there it was on to Staff Poker for some practice at 2-7 triple draw. The guy I was playing HU was a real bonehead so that helped since I'm just learning this game. Then Piers stopped by for a few hands and started taking our money so the boob left and Piers continued taking more of my money. Good HU practice is what it boiled down to. It was a really cheap table so the lesson didnt cost much.
Then after dinner decided to play some more Omaha H/L at Pokerstars. Man those guys just weren't very good but I just didn't catch many playable hands so just won a small amount. This is when my buddy contacted me about the S&G's at Full Tilt.
Normally I don't do these like I said earlier because I seem to suck at them even though I try to play the way everybody says to play. Tight early, loose late, steal blinds late when you can. But tonight folks actually played what I consider to be 'normal' poker and I was able to do well. I also really like the fact that I didnt have to beat nearly as many players. The weird thing is the payout. It's only 2 places and instead of it being (these were $10+1 6 person games) 40/20 or 45/15 like I would expect. It's 39/21! WTF?!!! Anybody have an idea why the weird split? Is it so that 2nd place gets his entry fee back plus a double up?

Todays Stats:
Doyles Room Badugi .05/.10 Limit, 24 hands, 33 minutes, $0.49
Doyles Room NL100 6max, 52 hands, 38 minutes, $13.25
Paradise Poker Limit Omaha H/L .50/1, 27 hands, 25 minutes, $5.50
Staff Poker 2-7 triple draw .10/.20€, ~90 hands, 90 minutes, -$2.50
Pokerstars Limit Omaha H/L 1/2, 42 hands, 38 minutes, $8.00
Full Tilt Poker $10+1 6 seat NLHE S&G, 69 hands, 33 minutes, $28.00 (39 minus entry) 1st Place
Full Tilt Poker $10+1 6 seat NLHE S&G, 61 hands, 41 minutes, -$11.00 3rd place - on the bubble
Full Tilt Poker $10+1 6 seat NLHE S&G, 133 hands, 52 minutes, $10.00 2nd place

RB: 0
Bonus: 0

Bonus Progress

earned 235 action points at Doyles Room. 7122 total now out of 13500 needed.
________________________

Total: $51.74
Time: 5h 50m