Watched an entire DVD (4 episodes) of 24 season 1 tonight so didn't get a whole lot of poker in. Did manage a short win at Martins Poker during lunch though and thats always nice. Am I the only person who feels like most every session I play I start out on a huge downswing and then have to work my way back up to even before quitting or continuing on to win some money? I swear it seems like 95% of my sessions start out with me losing about 1/2 to 3/4 or more of my buyin before I start catching some hands and building it back up. Usually, I can build it all the way back up to and past the break even mark for the session but there are obviously sessions when that doesn't happen. I just want to know why, when I don't change my game (as far as I can tell), do I have to always start out by losing? Why is it that since my game is obviously decent enough to be winning, why doesn't it just start out on a winning note and continue from there more often? This happens FAR less than starting out by losing. Is it probably based on my reads of the other players at the beginning of the session? I wish I knew.

Martins 1/2€ Limit 6max, 52 hands, 16 minutes, $11.20 (after conversion)
Pokerstars 1/2 Limit 6max, 117 hands, 1 hour 12 minutes, $7.25
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 92 hands, 43 minutes, $6.00

RB: 0
Various: 0

Bonus Progress:
10 VIP's earned at Martins Poker, 488 total
48 fpp's earned at Pokerstars, 608 out of 750 total so far.
_____________________

Total: $24.45
Time: 2h 11m

Not much poker today as I was too busy doing stuff with the family.
3 sessions is all I got in. Nothing much to talk about as it went poorly in the first, broke even in the second and made a couple bux in the third. With the bonus, at least it kept my winning streak alive and well.

Paradise Poker 1/2 Limit 5max, 111 hands, 68 minutes, -$19.75
Paradise Poker 1/2 Limit 5max, 64 hands, 32 minutes, 0.00
Pokerstars 1/2 Limit 6max, 31 hands, 18 minutes, $13.50

RB: 0
Various: $10.00

Bonus Progress:
Another $10 of bonus cleared at Paradise Poker. Down to only $14.50 in bonus left there so I hope they have a reload bonus soon.

2fpp's earned at Pokerstars, 648 out of 750 total now.
______________________________

Total: $3.75
Time: 2 hours 0 minutes

Man o man did today go badly. I couldn't hardly do anything right pokerwise. Luckily some cleared bonuses pulled me through to the plus side of things overall and so the day looks pretty good even though it couldn't have gone much worse. Hopefully, my luck will turn and some of these folks who are beating me by calling my preflop 3bets cold with 94offsuit when I have AKsuited will start to get whats coming to them. I mean they deserve to lose when they play 80%-90% of the hands the are dealt. They just didnt today. At least not when they were at my tables. In the end I will prevail. I know it, and that is why I will continue to play these guys. One thing I have noticed over the last few days at the 1/2 6max tables and even somewhat at the 2/4 6max tables, is that it's becoming even more apparent that raising preflop does absolutely nothing to deter most folks from playing a hand. Nobody folds to a preflop raise at these stakes. Even when I am only playing 20%-25% of my hands they think nothing of it when I raise preflop. Unfortunately, when you have a pocket pair it does not hit a set all that often and when it doesn't and there are 3,4,&5 others still in the pot after you've raised to try to eliminate a few of them, your once mighty looking hand is still going to lose most times. It's VERY discouraging. Suckout City, baby. Deal with it. I will, but dammit it can sure piss you off when it happens so many times in a short period of time.

I even tried to play a couple of S&G's today just to do something different to see if it would help stem my losing. No Joy. Two 5ths for my efforts. At least they were cheap.

Pokerstars 1/2 Limit 6max, 57 hands, 39 minutes, $0.50 WOOHOO!!!!
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 78 hands, 41 minutes, $29.00
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 59 hands, 35 minutes, $6.00 looked good to this point but this is where the bottom fell out.

Ukbetting 1/2 Limit 6max, 69 hands, 42 minutes, -$40.00
Ukbetting 1/2 Limit 6max, 7 hands, 1 minute, -$8.50 Table emptied all at once. Someone must have farted.

Ukbetting 1/2 Limit 6max, 72 hands, 1 hour 1 minute, -$22.00
Ukbetting 1/2 Limit 6max, 118 hands, 1 hour 19 minutes, $8.00
Pokerstars $5.50 Limit S&G, 51 hands, 51 minutes, -$5.50, 5th
Pokerstars $3.40 NL S&G, 51 hands, 37 minutes, -$3.40, 5th
Pokerstars 1/2 Limit 6max, 36 hands, 19 minutes, -$7.50
Pokerstars 1/2 Limit 6max, 103 hands, 1 hour 13 minutes, -$40.00
Pokerstars 3/6 FR Limit, 24 hands, 22 minutes, -$17 Did this just to finish up the bonus a bit quicker in order to help out my daily total. Not sure I even actually played one hand even other than the blinds. LOL.

Absolute 1/2 Limit 6max, 88 hands, 41 minutes, $24.25 YAY!!!! At least I finished on a winning note!!!!

RB: 0
Various: $176.52 Bonus saved my ass today!

Bonus Progress:
Ukbetting - 3 out of 5 hours cleared for $26.52 after conversion from £ to $
Pokerstars - earned 111 fpp's today to finish up the bonus FINALLY!!!
____________________________

Total: $100.37
Time: 6h 52m

Well, I really proved to myself tonight that over the long haul solid play will win out over stupid play even though in the short run it can be extremely frustrating to lose huge pots over and over again to crap like Q5 offsuit 3 betting preflop against your AK suited. My last session of the night I started out with $150 playing 3/6 Limit 5max at paradise. The 2 bozos to my left were playing 70% and 80% of the hands dealt to them and raising a good portion of them preflop. Seemed like everytime I decided to play sheriff they had the damned goods too and soon my stack was down to $19. I was going ballistic and would have surely been kicked out of any B/M poker room. But I knew that in the long run if I just played solid poker like I usually do, the variance would swing the other way so I loaded another $100 into my stack and tightened up a notch. Sure enough after awhile, I started winning the hands that I should win and the bozos started losing most of what they had taken from me right back to me. In the end I busted one of them and took the other down below his starting amount and I not only recouped my original $250 but I also made $52 to boot. Felt really good to comeback like that. Especially because of why I came back like that. I mean I absolutely HATE to see dummies get rewarded for play like that and to be able to use good solid play to overcome it in the end was very satisfying.

Martins Poker 1/2

Wow. What an up and down day it was for me today. And I mean HUGE swings for me. First I start out with 2 bad sessions and am down -$180, then I come back and crawl out of the hole to be about $1 ahead, then I drop another -$160, then I finish up with 4 very quick but very good sessions that put me back on top by about $30 for the day. I think I may go back and replay some of the sessions from PT because I know I tilted a few times during the downswings. But I need to see why I was giving so many chances for the bad players to beat me. I think I was probably just playing too many hands and taking them too far because I just couldnt believe that the stupid fish playing 80% of his hands might actually have a good hand. It's really kind of puzzling to me how many times those 80% VP$IP'ers actually have good hands when I decide to play sheriff.

Anyway, I played LOTS of 2/4 and 3/6 today and I have a hard time now seeing myself go back to 1/2 unless it's to clear a bonus at the cryptos. The profit vs. competition ratio is just too good at the 2/4 and 3/6 tables. And you clear bonuses faster at those stakes as well.

I'm very frustrated with the play at Martins Poker at this point. I just cannot seem to beat the 6max limit tables on a consistent enough basis for my liking. I've got like 6 more VIP's to go to get to the next level of bonus release so once I do that am done with that site unless and until I go back to playing NL. The bonus there is nice but I don't enjoy the style of play there. That and I just hate the stupid java software they use. At least once every session I play there, the cards will just disappear from the table for anywhere from 1 hand to forever. The hands are still being played, I just can't see my cards! And the color scheme is totally butt ugly too.

Here's todays rundown:
Martins Poker 1/2€ Limit 6max, 177 hands, 1 hour 29 minutes, -$48.92
Absolute Poker 3/6 Limit 6max, 194 hands, 1 hour 35 minutes, -$131.07
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 57 hands, 34 minutes, $100.50
Full Tilt Poker 2/4 Limit 6max, 25 hands, 14 minutes, $50.00
Full Tilt Poker 2/4 Limit 6max, 18 hands, 15 minutes, $21.00
Full Tilt Poker 2/4 Limit 6max, 69 hands, 51 minutes, -$60.00
Pokerstars 3/6 Limit 6max, 20 hands, 13 minutes, -$100.00
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 56 hands, 36 minutes, $25.00
Pokerstars 3/6 Limit 6max, 23 hands, 12 minutes, $73.00
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 38 hands, 16 minutes, $34.00
Pokerstars 3/6 Limit 6max, 25 hands, 11 minutes, $57.00

RB: 0
Various: $10.00

Bonus Progress:
Cleared another $10 of bonus at Absolute. $180 left to go.
Earned 70 VIP's at Martins poker to bring my total to 594. Quitting that place once I hit 600.
___________________________

Total $30.51 It may not be much for the amount of time I put in but at least it's in the black! I'll take that result every time!
Time: 6h 36m

Saturday is starting off nicely for me. Played a little session of 2/4 limit 6max at stars before we have to go up town today. 32 hands=$30.50. That puts me above $2900 for the bankroll now. Have to hit $3079 before Feb 1 to have my very first $1k month. I honestly have a hard time believing that I am making that much money doing something that I enjoy and used to do for free with play chips. LOL! And the amounts some of you other guys are making which surpasses me by a long ways just astounds me.
The really ironic part of it all is that when I first started playing for real money online almost a year ago, I would sit and watch the tables with folks playing for $50 - $100 pots and think to myself "how can people take a chance with so much money that is surely coming out of their household income?" And here I am almost a year later playing for the same size pots and sometimes larger with no worry whatsoever about losing it and hurting my household imcome. In fact I am actually making future plans for it to become part of my usable income once the roll hits 10k which at this rate should be around Sept-Oct.
I know that a lot of you guys are relatively young and single and have not had all that many money "issues" in your life yet so this may not seem as big a deal to you as some of us that are a few years (decades maybe) older. You are the lucky ones and I congratulate you on having found this thing called poker at such an early stage of your lives. Once you do get married, start a family, get a mortgage, have huge outstanding credit responsibilities, take a moment and think about how much fun it would have been to try and support all that without this extra income that you make playing a game. I guarantee you that it will give you a better appreciation of what your parents probably went through. It should also make you a bit more proud of yourselves for what you are able to accomplish.
Well, this is starting to ramble and I guess thats ok since its my journal. But I'm not exactly sure of where I am heading with all this so I will get it back on track now.

Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 32 hands, 16 minutes, $30.50
Martins Poker 1/2€ Limit 6max, 17 hands, 7 minutes, $4.71

RB: 0
Various: 0

Bonus Progress:
Earned 8 VIP's at Martins Poker to bring my total to 602.
__________________________

Total: $35.21
Time: 0h 23m

Dammit.
My winning streak is over. I just could not get a good run of cards going today for the life of me. Didn't have even one "good" winning session. I did start a new bonus at Noble poker, played a little 1/2 Limit 6max to see how well the bonus clears. Not very fast at that limit it would seem.

Will Hill 1/2 Limit 6max, 100 hands,1 hour 9 minutes, $16.75
Noble Poker 1/2 Limit 6max, 85 hands, 27 minutes, $0.00
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 56 hands, 27 minutes, -$43.00
Paradise Poker 3/6 Limit 5max, 29 hands, 11 minutes, $0.00
Paradise Poker 3/6 Limit 6max, 121 hands, 55 minutes, $6.00
Pokerstars 2/4 Limit 6max, 39 hands, 19 minutes, -$60.00
Pokerstars 3/6 Limit 6max, 139 hands, 1 hour 2 minutes, -$60.00

RB: 0
Various: $22.33

Bonus Progress:
Officially finished off the very last of my bonus at Paradise: $4.50
Finished the final 2 hours of the Will Hill monthly bonus: $17.83
Started a new bonus at Noble Poker, cleared 59 crowns, $10 released every 500 crowns.
Earned 98 fpp's at Pokerstars but with no bonus there to clear they don't do me much good.
____________________________

Total: -$117.92
Time: 4h 47m

Heh. So much for my not going back to 1/2. After last nights spanking, it felt more comfortable to go back to where I knew I had a better than average chance of winning. Once I get the winning streak going again I will probably move back to strictly 2/4 and 3/6 but until then I think I will be playing all three again.

Found out today that I have to have surgery. Having a CT scan on my abdomen tomorrow to see just how extensive the surgery is going to need to be. Hopefully nothing too bad. Wish me luck.

Noble Poker, 1/2 Limit 6max, 49 hands, 26 minutes, $27.75
Noble Poker, 2/4 Limit 6max, 79 hands, 59 minutes, $0.50
Pokerstars, 2/4 Limit 6max, 20 hands, 8 minutes, $10.00
Pokerstars, 1/2 Limit 6max, 18 hands, 6 minutes, $19.00
Paradise Poker, 1/2 Limit 6max, 26 hands, 11 minutes, $40.75
Paradise Poker, 1/2 Limit 6max, 77 hands, 36 minutes, -$11.50 (everybody left before I could get back to even dammit)

RB: 0
Various: 0

Bonus Progress:
Cleared 165 crowns on the Noble Poker bonus. Sure does clear faster at 2/4!
_____________________

Total: $86.50
Time: 2h 26m

good luck dude

surgery is never good, neither is missing poker time. how do they expect you to clear those bonuses in time when youre laid up?