Today's entry brought to you by the good people of Florida, Motto: "The weather's really nice here in October"
The up and down ride continues. First, I added 200 NL back into the game plan. You might wonder why, since I've been breaking even. Or you might not wonder at all. In fact you might not even be reading this. But on the off chance that you are, let me explain. I've got the bankroll to play 200. But I don't keep a bankroll in a traditional manner. I keep about $1500-$2000 online, and whenever I get much more than that I withdraw. I used "poker money" to pay for my upcoming Alaska trip. Now if I ever go bust, I have no problem redepositing to get my poker going again. After all, that's where the money came from. But I'm not building a roll in order to move up -- I'm playing poker because I like it and I make money.
So you'd figure that with $1500 or so online, that's enough to play NL200 in the short term. But my problem has been that I've got money in a bunch of different places. When you are making deposits to stack bonus money, $1500 doesn't really go very far. With the current Europoker World Cup promotion you can stack $200 in 10x bonus every day, but you have to make $400 in deposits to get that. Add to that the $600 I have to deposit to get the Full Tilt Bonus, and I've lately just never had enough money on one site to play at 200.
But last night I found myself with $800 in the same place, so I played 3 NL100s and a NL200. As per my recent trend, I dropped a stack of $100 early with set under set. So I was immediately in a hole. The tables turned very tight, and it wasn't uncommon to raise and have everyone fold, and people weren't stacking off. At one point, holding JT I got a flop of Q 9 8, I bet, got min raised, so I re-raised, and he folded.
The hand of the night -- and this is a little bit of a brag -- but I played this one as well as I could...I really don't think I could have gotten anything else from it.
At 200NL villain has 190, I have about 225. I have
[Ks] in EP and I make it $8. Villain is the only caller in MP. My note on villain is that even though he is 18/2, he calls a lot of raises from position. He's trying to steal pots and/or hit with speculative hands and take a big pot from someone with an overpair.
Pot is $17. Flop is
[Kd][5h]. Obviously I like this flop. I bet $11. He calls. Okay, no info there. He could be calling with just about anything trying to pick off my continuation bet...which is what I hope he does.
Pot $38. Turn is
. I don't care much for this card. This guy is not playing KJ or KT, but KQ is certainly in his range here. And he wouldn't have re-raised PF with QQ...he's too passive for that. I think hard about this here...if I check, I think he's going to bet to steal the pot and I can check raise him. But in the end the two hearts on the board make me decide to bet...there's too much chance that he played a suited connector and would just check behind, giving himself a free draw at the flush, and that would be criminal. So I bet $30. He calls without much thought.
Pot $97. River is
. The flush didn't get there. At this point, I think he's either got a monster or he's got air. I can't see any possible hand that I beat that could call a bet here. I check. He thinks for awhile and bets $50. I insta-call. He's got
[6h] and I pick up a nice $197 pot.
I go on to finish the day ahead about $45, putting me down $135 over the last 4 days. But I finished the $200 europoker sign-up bonus, so in dollars I'm ahead $65.
A quick thought on bonus...this was a 7x Ongame bonus...doing the math, with the way Ongame does bonus, 7x is equivalent to 100% rakeback. So over 4 days I paid right about $200 in rake, but got it back in bonus. I think guys who are playing NL100 or NL200 and not getting bonus are missing a LOT of money over the course of a year. Even NL 50. I'm out of 7x bonus, but I still have a bunch of 10x, so I'm staying at Ongame for awhile longer.
Tonight's a night off from poker. I might play a short session, but mostly it's going to be time with the wife tonight. I'll definitely be logging on to stack some more bonus at Europoker...4 day weekend coming up, after all. There's a 60 day time limit to clear them, and I'm going on vacation next month, but I should make it through a few of them I think. I expect Hollywood to offer a 5x or 7x reload in the next couple of weeks, so that will take priority over the 10x.