I'm still alive!

Hey All,

Just wanted to check in here and let y'all know (you know, all like 5 of you that visit this thing. Well, maybe 5...) that I'm still around and still playing poker. Right now though, I'm completely freeroll whoring. If there's a freeroll, and my schedule works, I'll be there. You can find me in WSOP freerolls at FTP, beginner freerolls @ Titan, Million Dollar qualifier freerolls @ UB, "Fun Step" SNGs at Poker.com. You name it, I'm there! :)

The best freeroll I've played in recently was the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP). That was a blast. 2247 peeps all dukin' it out for a kick-ass WSOP entry. Nope, I didn't make it.

One other quasi-freeroll is the Million Dollar Freeroll at UB. I say quasi because, while they do offer completely free freerolls, they also have UB point freerolls (pointrolls???) which is what I'm playing. Last week I played in the daily and won a seat to the weekly last Friday. In the weekly, I won a seat to the monthly the next Saturday. (as did Nikki) We both played in the monthly along with 816 other hopefuls. The top 300 would win entries into the big event on July 15th. First place in it wins a HELLA COOL prize pack. USD$500K, WSOP entry, Aruba entry, 4 other tourneys, a year's worth of Sunday tourneys, lessons from UB pros. Some crazy shit man. Right now there are about 1800 people registered for it. That's a pretty decent sized field for a person's odds at winning (compared with some of the others).

If you haven't checked out this freeroll from UB, definitely check it out. If you've got the UB points to spend, I recommend going that route. In today's daily, there were 27 people started with an additional 7 alternates that joined the game. So 34 people, 10 spots move on. While I was short stack at one point (18/18), I doubled-up a couple times and finished in 5th. So I'm playing this Sat. night in the weekly where something like 200 people move on to the monthly final. Maybe I'll see you there!

Stone Cold Busted

I'm broke. I lost my last $1.78 last night. I had considered trying to turn it into a bigger roll but it was simply too frustrating to have to play the .02-.04 levels. It just simply isn't possible to apply ANYTHING that is learned in poker books at this level. Raise with strong hands? People call you anyway. I could raise every street to the river with the best hand and some donkey will chase with some stupid hand like 47o and catch his straight. Yes, I know - overtime he's going to donate more of his money than he'll win. However, at this level, it's more likely that he'll end up donating it to a fellow donkey who chases a board of AA7 with JTo to runner-runner broadway (or RR a boat).

So here's my plan: finish up the league events. Nikki's bankrolling me for those :). I don't anticipate winning the league but if I get my ass in gear and get my act together, I SHOULD, at the very least, make the ToC and possibly finish ITM for the league.

Completely read/re-read HoH Iⅈ Sklansky's Theory of Poker, Advanced Hold 'Em, and SSHE. I'm also going to read Lee Jones WLLH. I'll probably also re-read Phil Gordon's Little Green Book. And by re-read I mean commit these motherfuckers to memory.

When I redeposit I figure that I'll save up and drop at least US$300 back into play. Then I'll start playing Limit at the .10-.20 levels until I'm crushing that then slowly start to move up levels. I haven't got an exact number in mind to move up levels (as I'm going to start out bankrolled for levels higher than .10-.20 (I suppose, following the 300BB rule, I'd be able to start at .50-1.00 but I'd be far more comfortable having a larger roll before playing that level)) but I would imagine that I'll keep it around the 1200-1500BB area. I'll also play the small buyin NL tourneys ($5 or less).

Of course, I'll also keep playing the forum events as those are great fun!

So things will probably get fairly quiet around here for a while. I'll probably make the occasional forum event related post and also post thoughts on what I've read but there won't be much other than that.

I suck

I'm almost broke. I suck.

I'm going to continue playing in the forum league events but that's only because they're fun. I don't really mind losing the $10 there.

I'm going to bunker down with a decent collection of poker books and not resurface until I'm confident I can crush the lower limits.