Operation: Stay Balanced

Time to get back in the online game. I backed off when I started back up in school, but now that I realize how easy even upper division business stuff is, I think I can get to work. The key for me is to remain sharp mentally. I have fared well playing small stakes limit cash and then got into tournaments and did well with the $4 180s on Stars.

I need to keep poker a small part of my life, and deal with the downswings. I remember the last time I played alot online and I was whoring through PSO, I went absolutely nuts at Paradise playing .5/1 limit to clear that bonus. It was unreal, I would sit down with $20 at 3 tables and almost immediately would have about $40 at each table. And this lasted a couple of weeks, and I decided that it was an indicator of my true talent level. Well, it stopped of course, and I didn't keep it in perspective. I am an unusually calm individual in every aspect of my life, except for during bad runs in poker it would seem. And even though I have turned a nice little profit from the online experience, I always end up cashing out during a bad run out of frustration and swearing it off.

So I am gonna take one more stab at being a well rounded and focused poker player who is prepared to deal with the good and the bad equally well. I have some things working in my favor to give me the best chance I have ever had of being successful at this.

My parameters/goals for myself:

-One tournament a night. I am going to be mixing it up between $4 180s, $5 45 man SNGs, and just regular old $5 FOs. If I have had 3 short lived runs in a row, on the fourth night when I bust out in the first orbit when aces get cracked, I am not going to fire up another one that night.

-My goal is to build my roll up to $600 so I can transfer it over to Full Tilt and grind away that bonus at limit cash, then spread money around to play tournaments/grind bonuses elsewhere. In the interests of keeping it simple, I am going to just focus on building to the $600 first. One other flaw I have is impatience to reach my goals, so I don't want to look too far ahead to something which might be more than a year away.

-No cashing out. I don't know until when, but that time is far enough away that for now I am just not cashing out, period.

-Just play good poker.

-No playing poker in the evening if I neglect something else during the day. If I decide to pass on my jog, no poker. If I decide my homework can wait for another day, no poker.

-Take my time during a hand. I'm in a hurry to do things too often. Especially post flop, I want to stop, think about the action thus far, put opponents on a range, etc., before making my move.

I may think of more stuff between now and when I can start playing again, in which case I will add to this post. I can't play until next weekend, as my funds won't be available from epassporte until Friday afternoon (the money is out of my bank account, I don't suppose there is any chance of convincing them to release it?). Saturday morning will be my first possible opportunity, and that may not work either. I am going to use this time to think more about how I want to go about this and will jot down any more ideas if they come to me. Suggestions welcome, naturally.

Originally Posted by Al Golagnic

-One tournament a night. I am going to be mixing it up between $4 180s, $5 45 man SNGs, and just regular old $5 FOs. If I have had 3 short lived runs in a row, on the fourth night when I bust out in the first orbit when aces get cracked, I am not going to fire up another one that night.

I like the way that you plan to be focused and and not tilt, but playing one 180 or 45 a night is gonna make for insane variance. IMO, a 2 month losing streak is more than possible with that. What are FOs?

Originally Posted by Ash256

Originally Posted by Al Golagnic

-One tournament a night. I am going to be mixing it up between $4 180s, $5 45 man SNGs, and just regular old $5 FOs. If I have had 3 short lived runs in a row, on the fourth night when I bust out in the first orbit when aces get cracked, I am not going to fire up another one that night.

I like the way that you plan to be focused and and not tilt, but playing one 180 or 45 a night is gonna make for insane variance. IMO, a 2 month losing streak is more than possible with that. What are FOs?

FOs are freezeouts, tourneys with no rebuys. At least I think that is what I have picked up as the terminology on this board.

The one tourney/day thing may be something which can be looked at later as I progress. I want to make money at this, but I also want to enjoy it, or at least not resent it. If I can come to the point where I get sucked out on or kings run into aces early in a tournament and then register for another one without feeling my blood temperature rise, then this can be amended. For now, I think setting this limit is a good idea. I want to experience getting knocked out, closing the program and getting on with my life a few times first.

Freezeout=FO

Standard tourney

Someone, or something, does not want me to play poker. My funds are to be available at epassporte this evening, but I can not play tonight. So Saturday was going to be my grand return to the tables, then my mom goes to the emergency room on Wednesday night with severe stomach pain. The doctors take out her gall bladder and find out that it isn't the problem and do tests and biopsies Thursday. At this point I'm thinking my mom has cancer or something so I make plans to go see her Saturday. Turns out she just has a nasty ulcer, but I'm already pot committed to a Saturday visit, I can't fold now.

Sunday, maybe? Pretty please?

Ok, well, money got funded at epassporte 4 hours earlier than they said it would, which would give me time to play a 45 man SNG before I have to leave for the night. But, I have been a lazy ass today and not fulfilled my obligations to myself before playing any cards. So even though I really want to get my feet wet again, I know I'm not in the right mindset and so I will pass.

Operation successful through its first 5 minutes.

Well, with 4 hours to spare and a 45 man tourney taking two hours, I went for a run, showered and sat down for some action.

PokerStars Tournament #56005704, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $5.00/$0.50
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $225.00
Tournament started - 2007/07/20 - 18:14:13 (ET)

Dear jte87,

You finished the tournament in 2nd place.
A $48.38 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 81.59 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at
http://www.pokerstars.com/tlb_tournament_rankings.html


Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

Nothing really spectacular to say about this one. I barely got anything playable early rounds, but the two that I did get were AA and QQ and I got heavy action both times to give me some chips. Then I mostly was dead again but was able to stay in the background while everyone knocked each other off. Short stack at the final table but I can dodge bullets baby and I dodged them to second place. The big stack kept getting his money in against others with the worst of it and drew out on them on the turn invariably. By the time it was him and I left, he had 50K to my 6 or so. I went all in first hand with 65o and he called and his rags beat my rags. A quick and painless death.

good luck with your operation!

I´ll be playing the $5 18/45 player and the $6.50 turbo 45 player on stars ocassionally, see you at the ft =)

Thanks man, I'll keep an eye out for you.

Weekend playing is done, I went to visit my recovering mother yesterday and she basically just sleeps all the time right now and it was pretty pointless being there, so I fired up a 45 man and squeezed ITM in 7th place. Last night a buddy of mine wanted to see how this online poker thing works, so we played three 1 table SNGs. Took a second and third place finish. The second place one kinda irked me because once we got heads up, it was all in every hand for my opponent, he'd even call off his stack with anything. I moved all in on him with QJs and he called with 93o and took the chip lead and then went on to win. He was nowhere near desperate enough to need to make that call, he was just purely all in every hand regardless.

This morning I played the 5K guaranteed (Does Stars ever have to add any of their own money to a pool to reach the guarantee? Doubtful.). 2408 entrants, and snuck my way to $4 of profit by going out in 355th. Pretty happy with this, considering in 200 hands I never had a pair higher than tens, got AK twice with no action from anyone, never AQ, etc.

My favorite hand from the tournament came when I was suffering early and got to do this to a genius limping his aces UTG.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t150 (9 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: FlopTurnRiver Cards)

MP3 (t4395)
CO (t6650)
Button (t24005)
Hero (t2020)
BB (t4635)
Villain (t5390)
UTG+1 (t8440)
MP1 (t6572)
MP2 (t2765)

Preflop: Hero is SB with , .
Villain calls t150, UTG+1 calls t150, 4 folds, Button calls t150, Hero completes, BB checks.

Flop: (t750) , , (5 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, Villain bets t750, UTG+1 folds, Button folds, Hero raises to t1870, BB folds, Villain calls t1120.

Turn: (t4490) (2 players)

River: (t4490) (2 players)

Final Pot: t4490

Results in white below:
Hero has 8d Kd (flush, king high).
Villain has Ah As (one pair, aces).
Outcome: Hero wins t4490.

Severe tilt from villain here who was still ok with chips and went all in the next three hands until getting called and his J5 went down, LOL. If I'm gonna get mad when an idiot gets my chips, I'm gonna at least enjoy it when I come out on top.

Ok, well that takes care of leg one of the operation. Just took down the 360 player max $5 MTT at Stars for $450; roll exceeded $600 and now I can move to Full Tilt. I don't know if I want to do it just yet, though, I wasn't really expecting to get there in 3 days.

I was going to make this post about how I decided to mix in some micro LHE at Stars, because I enjoy multitabling those and because I intended to grind away the FT bonus at .5/1 or 1/2 LHE full ring. So it seemed like a good idea to play some of that and get back in that mindset at Stars.

Anyway, right now is not the time to worry about all this. Just bask in the glory of my biggest win ever by far. I won a $4 180 in the past, this more than doubles that payout.

I decided to withdraw and take my roll over to Full Tilt to get to work on that bonus. One note is that in my operation banner I had listed $200 as my bankroll, but I only deposited $100 on Stars to begin with, hoping I wouldn't need that extra $100. Since I don't, I am removing that from my bankroll calculations, and I now sit at a cool $611. I withdrew $600 from Stars, so as I wait the 72 hours for the excess moneys to get into my epassporte account, I can play a couple tourneys at Stars.

Phase 2 of Operation: Stay Balanced is simple.

Clear the $600 Full Tilt Bonus. Yes, FTR honchos, I signed up for FTP through your link.

Well, epassporte wouldn't let me put $600 on Full Tilt, as I need to upgrade to some other type of account. Their site says I can do it by adding a second load option, so I added a credit card, but that didn't fix anything; maybe they expect you to actually load money or something. But, no matter, I put $500 there and can put the other $100 back on Stars for some of those tourneys of theirs.

Had one 45 minute session of three and four tabling small LHE on FTP, earned 0.5 BB, woo! Would have been a nice session except for a guy turning his set on me after a horrendous flop call and another guy calling preflop and on the flop with A9o after I hit my set of queens on a K-Q-7 board. Then he called the turn which was a ten, then the river was a fucking jack. But I'm staying balanced. Serenity now! And cleared $2.08 of bonus! Bow-chick-a-bow-bow!

Boy, this Full Tilt bonus is gonna take some time to clear, especially if their software fucks up every night like it has so far since I deposited. When able to I've been 4 tabling some .5/1 LHE, just about breaking even with the earned bonus included in that calculation. But that result is ok since I haven't really had any hands to pay me off. I don't think I've done any better than three of a kind, and none of those was a set. Well, I take that back, I keep flopping sets when I have aces, kings, or queens and don't really want the help. Give me some straights, flushes, or boats and then maybe things will pick up.

I did play one $5 tourney there with 257 entrants and finished 16th. No real payday, but I'm still playing solid, so I can take comfort in that. Went out when AK didn't improve vs. JJ.

Just finished up a $5 45 man SNG on Stars and took 5th for an extra $15 on my buy-in.

So, still running good overall, just hope Full Tilt gets their shit together.

There really isn't any point in continuing to try and clear this bonus at Full Tilt. I stink at LHE now, I lose money faster than the bonus accrues. Obviously I haven't played a significant number of hands, but I can tell where I am making mistakes. LHE is where I broke into online poker, and I was much more a student of it back then and was once profitable, but those skills have eroded as I have transitioned to NL tourneys and SNGs. I enjoy those games so much more, and this bonus at Full Tilt will take me so long to clear and probably cost me money anyway, so I am going to move everything back to Stars. I'm not real fond of Full Tilt's software, the only thing I like better compared to Stars is that you can see your notes on a player by just hovering the mouse over the player.

Anyway, I'm not sure what my next goal should be for this operation. I suppose just to simply reach a certain bankroll, but I don't know what a good number would be. I'm at about $550 right now, so $1,000, $2,000, $5,000?

For the time being, while I work this out in my mind, this will just become sort of a blog about my poker playing.