Poker Dreams Online

May 2010 Update

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:59:46 +0000

I have been playing off and on over the last month and a half. At one point, I was getting hammered on Cake and dropped down to $300. But using patience and proper money management, I was able to pull back and my totals are now back on track again.

Totals as of today:

Cake Poker: $949.33
Full Tilt: $447.75
Party Poker: $331.90

Total: $1728.98

The 10% Plan

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:51:20 +0000

My strategy for now is to play fairly light as there is a lot of other stuff going on right now outside of poker. My goal is to leave each session with 10% more than what I brought to the tables.

This strategy has so far worked pretty good. After 4 sessions, I have made positive gains each time. Cake is now at $713.78 from $679.96 when I started again. I also got a couple extra bucks on Party and that is at $204.29.

I`m hoping that sense of accountability by posting my results will continue and provide for more steady and consistent days.

I`m Back for 2010!!

admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:33:54 +0000

After a long hiatus, I have decided to once again start tracking my poker play again. Over the last several months I`ve just been playing casually and event taken out money from my Cake Poker account. By the way, they now offer 1 free cheque a month which I have gotten delivered by priority mail within a week.

My first challenge was to take $10 and see if I could convert it into over a $1000. I was able to accomplish this and actually take out the $1000 with money remaining. As of today, the amount I have at poker sites is $1344.60, spread across Cake Poker, Full Tilt Poker and Party Poker.

For my second challenge, my goal is to reach $10,000 by Christmas. This seems very lofty but what is a challenge without making it challenging.

1st Anniversary !!!

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:51:34 +0000

It is finally here. One year has passed in my poker challenge and although I haven’t broken any world records, I have been able to grow my initial deposit from it’s meager beginnings of $10 up to $2633.10 as of today.

My current game of choice is 6 man cash games at $1/$2 no limit. I generally play just one of these tables plus a sit-n-go heads up match. My side experiment of playing 100 heads up matches is still under way and after 63 matches, I currently have 37 wins and 26 losses.

I am really looking forward to year 2. Cake Poker is still going great for me and I hope they are able to keep up the traffic. The other day, they had over 9000 people logged in! My goal of achieving $10,000 is still out there waiting in year 2 and I am really looking forward to the first withdrawl. You know, fruits of your labor kind of stuff.

Mid Month Blues

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:33:14 +0000

It never seems to fail. Things go awesome at the start of the month and then after a few weeks, the wheels seem to fall off. I am now down $450 from my highs and lost all of this within 1 week! I have decided to take a break from poker until the weekend to let my frustrations cool off and get back to some web development which I have been interested in working on again.

When I return from my hiatus, I am going to setup a new mini challenge for myself. I call it the heads up challenge 100 rally. I plan to play 100 heads up matches. My goal is to achieve a success rate of 70%. I’m not sure how long this will take but it should be a nice change to refocus my play and add some new skills to my game.

Cake Poker Oktoberfest

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:48:55 +0000

October is rolling along nice and smoothly. We’re having our first taste of snow and it’s also Turkey weekend here in Canada. I’m looking forward to visiting with family and having a great meal. Happy Thanksgiving!!

My poker play this month has been pretty much focused on blasting away at Cake Poker. They are currently running a promotion called Oktober ChipFest. The deal for me is that I need to clear 500 frequent player points in order to receive a free entry into a $10,000 freeroll on Oct 17th. If I clear another 500 points, I will receive 300% more gold chips during the second half of October. Well as of last night, I have cleared 1100 points in the month so all requirements met.

The $0.50/$1.00 cash games have also been very fruitful for me. My balance at Cake is up over $700 so far this month and it is all due to cash games. Once my bankroll reaches $2000 at Cake, I plan to move up once again to the $1.00/$2.00 tables. I have a feeling that this will be the highest I go at Cake due to the limited number of higher stakes tables. So my goal for Cake is to reach $3000 and have any winnings beyond that point withdrawn at the end of each month. My most likely next stop will be Poker Stars due to the large number of players (number #1 in the industry) and bonus options. I hope to reach this point by the end of the year.

September 2009 – Summary

admin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:19:57 +0000

Another month has gone by and once again fall is starting to arrive. I have been doing the challenge now for over 10 months and everything is still going nice and steady. I did have a record breaking month for earnings but they were still solid with just over $200 added to my bankroll.

Cake Poker has once again started to become my friend again like the old days. I am now comfortably playing $0.50/$1.00 cash games with up to 6 tables. This game is much looser than the lower stakes tables and there are some great opportunities to have some serious gains.

I played a lot on Full Tilt again this month with unfortunately a negative return. I was playing to receive the Two table play bonus of $50. For this, I needed to play on 25 different days of the month while playing two tables at once (I almost always play more than 1 table at once). This should be quick sessions but I don’t like to walk away with a loss which got me into trouble a couple times.

Party Poker is like me little poker site buddy that keeps on giving. I didn’t play a lot but had a huge percentage gain for the month. I’m still not sure what I will do with this site as far as play but for now I guess it will just remain my little side gig.

On a personal note, I was able to achieve a personal goal of running a 10km road race in under an hour. Me and my wife and a bunch of friends joined the Banff Melissa’s Road Race last weekend and had a great time.

After getting back from the race weekend, I was definitely ready to boost up my poker bankroll and so far Cake has obliged. In just 2 days at Cake, I was able to have profits of over $300 and I also received my $50 bonus from Full Tilt. October is gonna be good.

August 2009 Summary

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:34:23 +0000

The vacation month is now over but it was very enjoyable. It was good to get away from the usual and have a little R&R. The family and I were able to get out to British Columbia and we were also able to have some great visits with our friends. I even had a chance to repaint our deck which was definitely in need of a little attention.

Although I didn’t even play half as much poker as last month, I was still able to walk away with my second best month to date.

September is now here though and it’s time to see what the fall will bring. With my bonus clearing window running out, I was once again playing at Full Tilt. Only $30 left to clear. This time though, I stepped up to the next level. $0.50/$1.00 games at 6 tables. I brought $50 to each table. After a fairly quite start for the first 30 minutes, the big cards finally started to come. I played a total of 277 hands and must have got AK at least 7 times.

My Kings however proved to be the game changers as I basically trippled up. The aggressor in the hand was in 3rd position right after the big blind and simply called $1 pre-flop. It was then folded to me on the button where I raised to $4 with my kings. Small blind folded, big blind called and then the aggressor bumped it to $13!! I decided I would play this one out knowing that my stack of around $50 would most likely all go in the middle. The big blind also called. Flop comes with a bunch of low rag cards. Big blind checks and then big boy goes in for another $10. That definitely did not seem like an AA type of bet so I called. Big blind also called. Hmmm. On the turn Big Bettor then put me all in for another $22. I called and the big blind folded. We flipped and he showed QQs. NICE!! I escaped a Q on the river and my table stack was now over $120.

I never managed to clear another $10 of the bonus because I decided to walk away early with the big win. Things are definitely starting on the right track for September.

Getting Back Into The Action

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:39:41 +0000

I played a little Full Tilt tonight but didn’t play enough to release anymore bonus. So far I have cleared $50 and I haven’t lost my shirt doing it which is very easy to do when you start focusing on the bonus instead of playing solid poker. There is still another $50 waiting to be cleared by September 8th and I think this should be achievable.

Most of my play tonight was in tournaments at Cake Poker. I played a mix of heads up matches and double ups. I ended up being down about $10 due to the entry fees even though my results were 50/50.

For some additional excitement I decided to play a couple of larger tournaments. The first one was a $6.60 bounty tourny with 401 players. Even though I was able to double up right of the bat, I ended up finishing in 150th without a single knockout.

The second tourny had some better results. This one was an $11 standard multi-table tourny with 78 entries. I was able to grind my way to the final table and at one point I was sitting in 7th out of 8 with 3500 in chips. First place was sitting at 40,000+. Well things started to go very well for me and with 5 people left I was able to work up to being chip leader. Unfortunately this didn’t last and I ended up in 3rd. The ducks managed to shoot down my AJ. Oh well, I’m pretty happy anyways. The 3rd place finish awarded $103.35 which was a nice boost to the Cake bankroll.

Lovin Vacation

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:50:37 +0000

I just finished my first week of vacation and what a great time I’ve had so far with my family and friends. Our first stop was in Calgary last weekend. It was an awesome visit and the kids had a lot of fun. I even got to go to the casino with my buddy Greg. Surprisingly enough it was my first time playing a no-limit cash game at the casino. The nerves were with my for the first 20 minutes but I fell into the groove after that. I was able to walk away with $11 after a couple of hours. Not bad for my first showing.

After that, the family and I headed to Panorama, B.C. for a little R&R in the mountains. A little colder than I would of liked but still excellent all the same. Finally the week was capped off at the lake with my family reunion.

Tonight was my first night back at the online tables in a while. Just dipping my toe back in the water, I stuck with just 2 double up tournys at Cake and was able to get 2 wins. Nice start for August. I will probably play a little more Full Tilt this month due to their Big Bonus promotion in which I now have a $100 bonus which can be cleared at a rate of $0.06 per Full Tilt Point.

I also was able to update my stats for July. It was kind of a roller coaster month but things ended up quite well with my best month to date. I was even able to break the $1000 barrier!