Unfortunately, life intrudes from time to time, preventing me from logging as many hands as I'd like. I was only able to play a small number of hands the past two days, and I took a hit to the bankroll equaling $.08. I need to buckle down though if I'm going to reach my goal in a reasonable period.

The time off hasn't been a complete waste however. I restarted my PokerOffice database, removing the ill-advised NL sessions, and created a profit graph from the relevant hands I've played to date.



As you can see from this overview screenshot, even with the losing hands mixed in, I'm still running at a pretty good clip: 18.65bb/100. This is well below my projected average winrate of 100bb/100, but those annoying losing hands are cutting into the profits. I'm afraid I may be forced to reassess that number for the short term, until I'm confident I can dodge all variance. Ultimately, I need to gradually...

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Following last night's entry, I decided I wasn't done for the night, so I sat down again at the old .02/.04 FL game. I managed to grind my way back to a small profit, bringing the bankroll to $1.61. It could've been better, but I'm still having a bit of difficulty in knowing which hands I'm going to win before I commit my money. I folded my option in the BB twice, only to find out I would've scooped a big pot. I may return to checking in those situations, since I may be able to control the inherent -EV involved whenever I see a flop.

This afternoon after work, I decided to experiment a bit with multi-tabling. Sitting two 6-max tables with an .80 buy-in on each, playing good, solid, sound, reliable, safe, prudent, responsible, steady, sure, tried-and-true, dependable poker netted me an additional $1.45. While on the surface this may seem the way to go from here on out, I still had much difficulty dodging every losing hand; and, the rapid clicking between two game windows made it...

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On the advice of a forum member, I sought out the .01/.02 NL tables on Stars. Worst decision I could've made. After 55 hands, I was down $0.38, and it's painfully clear that I'm strictly a limit player and need to stick to that plan.

On to better news, I decided to download a trial version of PokerOffice to track my progress. At first, I was little dismayed that the trial version only allows you to import 300 hands before buying a license; but I figure 300 is probably a big enough sample size to get a real good indication of my play, so I'll just stick with that.

My first analysis shows a winrate of 2.68bb/100, which seemed a little low to me. To get a clearer picture, I filtered my results to only include the hands where I won money, and my winrate jumped to a much more respectable 256.51bb/100. It's probably not sustainable at that level, but if I can maintain something more manageable, like 100bb/100, then I feel good about my chances of making my goal.

I'm making a schedule...

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A brief introduction.

One night last week, we played a little forum Stud 8/b tournament on PokerStars. Since I'd cashed out all my online monies during the Great Poker Scare of '06, I didn't have the $5.50 for the buy-in. Fortunately...or unfortunately given how I fared...I had a benefactor on IRC that was willing to stake me the entry fee. After the $6 transfer and the subsequent donkfest that sent me to the rail, I had $0.54 remaining (I had .04 in there from before).

My secret sugar daddy told me not to concern myself with paying him back, but I refuse to be in any man's debt; and so, I've set out upon this quest: to turn my $0.54 into the full repayment amount of $6. I've also decided that this little journey should make for some interesting reading, so I'm going to blog about my specific plans and my progress here.

My plan was to start out on the lowest FL tables available on Stars: the 6-max .02/.04 "fast". Now, given the size of my bankroll, I had a choice to make: buy...

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...I'd swear I was cold-decked in my home game. There is almost no other reason why I'm unable to consistently beat these guys. Last night, following our fantasy football draft, we struck up the usual $.50/$1 PL Hold'em game. I dropped $130, all in the course of 2 hands.

The first was typical of the hands I've lost in this game recently. The specifics elude me, since I'm far too obsessed with the hand that followed, but it's close enough.

AQo UTG, I raise it up to $3. Folds around to the BB who calls the extra $2. Flop comes AK9 rainbow. BB checks to me, and I bet $5 into the pot. He calls. Turn is a Q. Checked to me again, I bet $10. He calls. River is a T. BB leads into me for his last $7, I call, and he shows KJ. This wouldn't be so abysmal except that villain can't begin to understand why his play was so awful. I take a walk around for a few minutes before I come back to the table.

Now here's the doozy. This hand has officially earned me the moniker of "unluckiest...

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