To combat this plague, I finally got Akismet working which is an anti-spam service from wordpress.com. I had to get an API key to activate the service which becomes available after registering at their site. Man I sure hope this works. ]]>
Due to Party Poker being out of the picture, I played a couple of tournaments at Full Tilt as well. I expanded my tournament play today by signing up for a $2.25 18-man sit-n-go. My play was focused and I was able to make it to the final table sitting in 4th place. Here I stayed until there was 6 players left and the 2 low stacks were to my right and left. The guy on my right for the last few time he was on the button was going all in with about 1300 chips. My stack was around 2500. Then I was dealt Big Slick. Everyone folded to the button and as predicted, button boy went all in again. This time I called. GRRRR, no more easy blinds for you mister. Big blind folded.
And what did he have…. the LADIES !! My AK vs his QQ. Not terrible odds unfortunately the cards didn’t land in my favour. Just like that I was down to 1000 chips.
The very next hand I got A9 unsuited on the button with only 1 mid position caller. LET IT ROLL!! I went all in. Small blind folded and I was called by the mid position monster who was sitting on 4500 chips. He showed KJ. Things looked good until the turn when the Kings brother showed up. No help on the river and boooom. I was out!! Top 4 was getting paid but I wasn’t joining the parade today.
I managed to update the stats on the sidebar today and I noticed that my numbers were a little off. I had an extra $20 in winnings for Cake in December. A little over zealous I guess. Well everything should be in order now. With the second full month done, I am still shy of $200. A little slower than I would have liked but using percentage gain calculations, that works out to 925%. Looking at the percentage definitely helps me to stay positive.
Here’s to February and all the treasures it will bring !! ]]>
If you are not familiar with what rakeback is, here is a quick explanation. When you play at an online poker site, the site earns their money through a rake. The amount can vary per site and game type. An example of a rake in a cash game is that for every $20 in a pot, the house (poker site) will take $1. For tournaments, the rake is generally included as part of the registration fee. Example, a $2 + $0.20 tournament means that $2 will go into the tournament prize pool and the $0.20 is the rake.
Now, if you signed up under a rakeback promotion, a portion of the rake that you have paid will be paid back to you. This works out to a continual bonus which will pay you extra for simply doing what you are already doing. ]]>
. Now the turn, it’s a King !! After my initial ecstatic cheer, I remembered the flop cards. Crap! The chip leader had an A10. Well my hand didn’t improve on the river and I was out empty handed.Not to be detoured, I found another sit-n-go format that I hadn’t tried before. It’s a 10 player sit-n-go but each of the top 5 players get paid double the tourny buy-in minus the entrance fee. So once the 6th player is ousted the tourny stops and everyone left standing gets paid.
To start, I tried a $2 version of the double up game. A few bad moves and I ended in 8th. Well not the best start but I was still intrigued. I tried another $2 and this time I made it to the end. $2.20 in, $4 out. I think I got this one figured out now. Solid steady play is the key and the risk reward has a good balance for the challenge. I decided that I would have 1 more go at it. This time I chose the $5 version and once again I made the top 5. I think I have found my new game.
During my tournament play, I also had a couple $0.10/$0.20 10 man cash games running. I took a bit hit on my aces and lost $15 on the hand but I was able to battle back and after 200 hands I was back into the positives.
On the challenge front, I am now oh so close to the first level in my challenge of $10 to $100. This is of course just on the Cake Poker site. For a quick summary of my overall winnings from all sites, there is now a Stats section in the sidebar which shows best sessions, worst sessions and monthly earnings. ]]>
Today I played 2 sessions in Cake Poker ($0.05/$0.10 game and a $0.10/$0.20 game) plus a cash game at full tilt ($0.05/$0.10) all at the same time. Prior to starting, I set my game plan and the goal was to execute my orders without deviation throughout the session. My marching orders today were tight formations and avoiding the urge to outgun the other guy. In other words, play tight, only get aggressive when I am in control AND have a hand to play with and do not call other players pre-flop pot raises unless I feel comfortable in re-raising which only leaves the top hands (AA, KK, AK suited). The last change up I did was to play at full tables which means 10 man tables at Cake and 9 man tables at Full Tilt.
The result … slow consistent gains over all tables! A very good session and finally a healthy outcome playing the higher stakes $0.10/$0.20 table. As you can see on the Challenge Overview, higher limit games have not been kind to me so far.
Now I can look ahead to the first full month of the challenge in December.
Here are my goals for the month:
- Reach the $100.00 marker in Cake Poker. (I am actually shooting for around $200)
- Reach the $50.00 marker in Full Tilt Poker. (This will open up the higher limit tables)
- Enhance PokerDreamsOnline.com to allow others to track their own $10 poker challenge.
I also made an adjustment to the Challenge Overview page. I believe the information shown in the tables is sufficient enough to show my progress at this point. ]]>
It took a little while to get it going but I think I got most of the kinks out now. Thanks goes out to the crew at Open Flash Charts for providing some great charting tools.
And now to fill up those charts !!! ]]>