So it has finally come to this. I've decided to write a member journal. I suppose that that makes this the introduction:

You're probably wondering about who I am, what I do for a living, and a bit about my poker history. Why you'd want to know these things about me, a complete stranger, is almost completely inexplicable. If I had to guess... You might think I'm a funny guy, but then again you might be put off because I just think I'm so dang smart. You also might be some sort of identity thief looking to build a repoire with me until I agree to meet you so you can slit my throat and take my bankroll. I'll tell you right now, forget it. You may earn my trust, I'd probably meet me, and you'll most certainly kill me (Et tu brute?), but not even my beloved aging grandmother knows the password on my account.

I'm a college kid in my senior year down up in Oregon. I'm on the verge of completeing my degree through summer school and embarking on an exciting adventure in the real world. However, until I reach that point I'm fairly typical. If you met me during the day you might think I'm a farily nice, clean cut guy. At night you'd probably think I'm a drunk and a jerk. I while away my days in my shoebox appartment sucking second hand ramen through a used straw. On a typical day I'll coat the meal with tobasco and chase it with 4 tums and a glass of water.

I started poker last year when I was in the dorms. Two of my friends played and I watched over their shoulder for hours and hours until I picked up the gist of the game, while at the same time pressing them hard to make terrible calls (I'd barely stop short of grabbing the mouse myself and slamming call) and calling them derogatory names if they folded. Later in the year, after fooling around with them in little 3 way live games, I invested 100 bucks and started playing SNG's on UB.

At this point I should mention I had read about the first 7 lines and glanced at a chart in Phil Helmuth's book. Taking these sentences for gospel, and diving in knowing I too would be seeing Phil at the final table within a few years, I mashed the raise button when I got a good hand and pressed the fold one when I didn't.

Not too surprisingly this strategy worked. It was sort of like a 3 legged dog at a track, but luckily the opponents wouldn't stop sniffing their butts long enough to run. I built and built, and eventually entered micro cash games and haven't looked back. Meanwhle I I kept meticulous records on spreadsheet (Poker tracker is 55$ and didn't make sense in my mind to buy). Looking at Runner Runners journal I sort of wish I had bothered to learn the game by fancy book 'readin.

Anyway long story short (I'll probably elaborate the stages if I can get myself to write more in the next few days) later my bankroll went from the 100 to about 2.6k it is today, and I'm pondering a jump to 100NL cautiously.

My largest challenge in the game is making bad calls for a reason not apparent to myself. I am constantly trying to figure out a way to focus and get through this issue. Aside from that I'm a little sloppy in my tactics and at times believe that mashing raise is the end-all-tell-all move of poker. Despite my mental issues I go out of my way not to take it out on players, especially the fishies. My chat is nice and friendly. Oh, and my hand shakes when I play live, even after hundreds of hours in casinos.

Thats about it for now, I think I'll go through some of the details of my poker history before getting into the hear and now.

So here's results for 5 Jun 06 as promised:

5 hours
-99.5
2489.43

This is sad times for me in the realm of meaningless benchmarks. Not only did I drop beneath a nice big round number (2.5k), I also am negative for the month!

On the 23 May 06 I started reading here, got some feedback from players, and decided to open up my game. I'm not doing bad per se, with 15k hands logged I'm picking up 2bb/100 hands. Five tables that adds up, but I also see it as being pathetic. Especially as I collect more data in the bad plays department:

5Jun06

Bet twice into TN on flop with two K, agressive PF went silent 22
Called min-raise with AK, caught K, went all in on flop 20
Bet all-in into loaded board (Straight flush both visible, he called with low set) 25

I wasn't careful to see if I recorded the total lost on the hand, or the additional lost to the bad play, but next time I'll get it right. Anyway, assuming this is best case scenario and I am including the entire hand, I lost 50 dollars to stupid plays! An over-aggressive raise, attacking a TN who was aggressive PF and suddenly went quiet! And the AK play was pretty bad when I know the min-raise indicates AA or KK. Could I have a worse hand to call with if I'm uncertain?

Until I knock it off and stop burning hundreds of dollars a day I'll never make it to my vaunted goal of earning 8bb/100. I can't even explain what wonder the concept of earning over 20 bucks an hour at small stakes NL poker would bring me.

Tomorrow I move on to party poker, and hopefully greener pastures. I'm worried that this is a band-aid where I need surgery. Sure, my bb/100 will grow, but its because I'm playing against weaker opponents. It isn't self improvement, in a way its delusion. However, I look at it this way; its a strategic move. Tactics are focused on the local things. Hold 'em tactics are knowing when to bet, fold, check-raise, extract. Strategy is bank-roll management, table selection, choosing to use statistics, and in this case moving sites.

Its a good strategic move in the short term. I'll make more money at the new site. However without the rock-garden challenging opponents I have at UB NL50 I'll no longer have to keep as sharp as possible just to keep afloat. I worry slightly my skill will degrade. My countermeasure is to bump it up. I've got BR for 100NL, so I'm going to take a shot. I'm working under the assumption that PP100 is roughly equal in skill to UB50. Thus I'll stay in practice and make twice as much in the process. The move happens after a few days when I'm satisfied I've got a handle on the new software and have said farewell to my precious mini-tables.

platyplus,

i think you are overestimating the quality of opponents at UB. Granted, that is the place where I win less, but i wouldnt say that it s because competition is incredibly better. They are rocks who dont pay you as much as everywhere else. That is a reality but there are also lots of bad players. Maybe different kinds of bad but still bad. They might lose less than other places but it s not so much.

Anyway, I think you made the right move when you decided to leave and try something new. Be prepare for some crazy action and a lot more interesting games.

I have played with you on UB, what does your PT say about me? I remember my long term winrate there to be only 3PTBB/100.

Good luck!

Hey everyone, time for another exciting update! First of all, fan mail: AlexMR, thanks for the post. I agree with you the players aren't awesome, but I've been staring at 14-20% VPIP on almost every table I played. Everything I've seen at PP indicates it averages about 23-35. Talk about jumping into the wild west! I'd hate to see it on weekends. Also, I'm afraid I don't see a record for you on my PT. We must have played prior to when I got the program in mid may.

06 June 06

A day that will live in infamy. Actually its d-day, not the pearl harbor attack, but doomsday is about an appropriate moniker for the day. Incidently 6-6-06. I'm not superstitious, but the cosmic forces were certainly not aligned in my favor today. I'll start off with my humiliating error log:

called down straight with 2nd pair against tight player heads up 30
re-raised a fish after a little bring in bet on a big board he had a flush 8
called low synched board 2 unecessarily 6
10 bucks calling low board. Bet or fold for god sake 10
should have value bet a river flush with FH showing, didn't and called a min-raise on the end. 8
Called down betting rock on the river for a min raise 8

Count it up! Seems I screwed up for a total of $70, and I'm not even counting the marginal plays I make. My switch to PP, which I expected to be a transition to a target rich environment, just involved in a rocky adjustment period. Fair enough, I should have seen it coming. For one, I'm not used to moving my head around in circles as UB mini-tables are horizontal. Also I had some software issues including disconnects, and a strange error where I couldn't click inside a window which resulted in me timing out on an AK in late position, and betting 1$ with top pair top kicker into a 17 dollar pot. That story ends badly, but I don't sweat it. Here's the rest of the day:

7 hours
-141.33
2287.15

That's a 70$ loss stacked on top of my 70$ of throwing money away. I've got to start getting it right! Prior to coming to this forum I used to be a very tight player. I'd toss 99 if I didn't have a few callers before me, or I was EP. Really I still don't think its that terrible an idea so long as other players don't catch on. Recently, by the advice of other players in this forum who are more succesful than I, I've expanded my meager 10%VPIP 5%PFR to 15 and 6 respectively. I'm having trouble keeping it that high without getting into hands with cards that are just plain wrong. Check out my trips post in the NL hold'em section for an example.

So what's the new battle plan? Nothing, keep doing what I'm doing. I have to have proof something is wrong before I try to fix it. Considering my win-rate at PP is -108 for 35 incidences of trips, I need to get to at least 10k in hands before I start screwing around. I've been running hot, and this is probably the cards biting me back. Agression remains high until I see a need to change, and mistakes are going out the window. One other thing I'm going to have to compensate for is that my PT doesn't offer meaningful information until I've sat for about an hour. Additionally, since there's so many players, I think it's going to take a while before I am able to sit and know even a few of the people there.

Party Poker is like the garden of eden from what I see. Unfortunately I got hit on the head by a few coconuts thrown by monkeys today.

Here's something else to try at NL100. Don't worry about action from the table, instead look for action from the guys you want action from. Last night I was sitting at a party 100 table and the table VPIP was 20%. That's not high. But there were two players over 50%. So I was going out of my way to get into hands with these two guys but not the rest of the table. Since they would call a raise with just about anything, I raised extra hands preflop in order to isolate against the two donkeys. The rest of the table was so tight that my plan worked several times (at which point I missed the flops and didn't get paid, but dammit, I had a plan!!!)

I strongly disagree with Alex when he says you shouldn't raise anything but premium hands preflop. He is correct, in that the donkeys won't notice. But the nut pedlers will notice. And it makes it harder to mess with you if it's harder to put you on a specific hand. For example, if a guy makes only 2% PFR, I'll take a shot at him from position for $4 preflop...because I am totally sure what he has in his hand. Sure, I'm an underdog, but I'm an underdog playing against a guy who has his cards face up on the table.

Additionally, raising and continuing works at NL100 sometimes. Even at party. Last night I played 90 hands of NL100 at party. I raised preflop 7 times. 4 times it folded the blinds and limpers. Three times I got a caller or two, and folded them with a continuation bet. I never saw a turn with a hand I raised preflop.

At other tables, on other days, I'm sure I'd have gotten a lot of calls -- at which point I'd stop raising. But to make a general rule for all tables NL100 and below, that's just not possible. Not raising is passive. Passive, while it CAN work, means you are allowing other people to dictate the action.

Played a little ROME: Total War today. Fun game, but you don't win any money from it.

however I do find that slaughtering a few 100 Gauls always improves my mood after a day of bad beats!

Well, I cleared a bonus at party poker today and it didn't show up... Or so I thought. Turns out I cleared the darn thing last time I played on the 6th. After hunting down the money trail I realized that I lost an additional hundred that day! That brings me down to a meager 2187 on the day with a 200+ loss. And if you think that's bad I absolutely dropped some bombs on play today. Two major mistakes ate up what would have been a very solid session. I was rolling along fine for my first two hours too!

Called re-raise with AJs, called 5 dollar bet when hit a J on flop 5
Called down straight with AQ 8
All in against calling stations min-raise on flop with overpair on turn 667 board 34
Pushed overpair to min-raise on j55 board with a large stack in play. 65

That last one was late in my play and stung a lot. How could I let myself get pulled into it? QQ just looked so damn tempting when lined up with the J55. But the min-raise should have let me know I was done. Hell, it was the second time it happened that day. There was a third play that also didn't look too good for 50, but I wasn't ready to chalk it up in the absolutely horrible catergory I list off in these.

I think my self-esteem is starting to decline, which should mean I'll seek to improve it soon by playing better, but who knows. Despite all of my bad play, PP is starting to show its true colors. For every hit I took there was some crazy willing to part with his money on plays I would never make. I mean, the ones I've got listed are bad, but the ones I've seen were unbelievable. It stands to reason that over the long term, even without improving my game, I'll make money.

4 hours
11.23
2198.38

However I intend to improve my game. That's over 100 bucks of money up there. That's 2 kegs of PBR!!! Maybe at the end of 10k hands I'll total up all of my money thrown away and it will stagger me out of bad play.

I've been getting a lot of responses on my play on the forum and it is helping me understand things more. Even if I go back and do the same thing again, my knowledge base is growing. The more knowledge I have, the beter my play will be. Its a slow collateral effect and I can't wait for it to kick in.

Well, I'm off to complete a large project due tomorrow. College is fun stuff, but there's these damn finals. I've got a good 7.5 hours before morning though, so I'll be able to throw something together and hopefully graduate. Or maybe I'll just kill some more gauls on ROME...