OPERATION: Baby Steps

Hey everyone! Finally decided to get on the wagon and join in on the operations. I called this operation "Baby Steps" after the movie What About Bob. At the moment I'm a low limit cash game player grinding out 25nl and plan on steadily moving up in stakes to as high as my skills will take me while still making a profit.

About me... I'm an electrical engineer and live in the western suburbs of chicago. I've been playing poker since I was about 18-19 years old (I'm 25 now). I started out just playing for fun. I had a lot of time to play since I was in college with no job. I would switch it up between sng's, tourny's, and cash games depositing $50 at a time. After a couple years of playing I started profiting on a regular basis. At that time I was mostly playing sng's. I made a couple thousand between sng's and tourny's, cashed out a few hundred here, a few there, and quit playing for a little while after school because I had a full time job and didn't have the same amount of free time.

In october of 08 I got laid off from my job, like many other ppl in the USA. :( I had worked there for over a year as an engineer and it was my first job out of college. The first week or two I spent just going out to bars and living it up, thank god for unemployment insurance! After the initial fun factor settled, I was really bored during the day time since everyone else was at work. I decided to get back into poker, and I was playing sng's and tourny's. After some ups and downs I was left with $500 for my bankroll. I quit playing for a few weeks and concentrated on finding a job. It took me 3 months to find a new job YIKES! This economy blows. Anyways I started working full time again mid january of 09. It was at this point I decided that I wanted to get serious about playing poker and actually try to make some GOOD money from it, not just pocket change. This is when I took my $500 bankroll and started grinding 25nl cash games. After work each day I try to get in anywhere from 500-1000 hands, and more on weekends. So far it has been excellent. I will post my stats and graph at the end of this post.

FTR has been great to me. I've posted a handful of hands with questions about what to do and received great feedback. I plan on posting more hands to this operation as I go along. Just wanted to thank everyone on FTR for your advice and free information, it has been a big help to my game. That's it for now, and I will continue to update this OP so come back and check it out on a regular basis and leave some feedback. Thanks!

Here are my stats and graph so far for 25NL, any feedback would be great!

http://img7.imageshack.us/my.php?ima...statsshort.jpg



http://img56.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hemgraphnew.jpg

wtf my images don't show up. How do I get them to show up?

gonna try this again

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/2829/hemstatsshort.jpg


http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/7980/hemgraphnew.jpg

Nice good luck dude, it's because you've used the php code - ?image= etc... instead of the html path, look in the link you'll see a full link, looks like you found it above. if you want it bigger, delete the .th - so it reads somerandomletter.jpg at the end and not somerandomletter.th.jpg and it'll switch to the full view!

Good luck with your op! =)

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Originally Posted by LuckySlevin

Nice good luck dude, it's because you've used the php code - ?image= etc... instead of the html path, look in the link you'll see a full link, looks like you found it above. if you want it bigger, delete the .th - so it reads somerandomletter.jpg at the end and not somerandomletter.th.jpg and it'll switch to the full view!

Good luck with your op! =)

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Ahhhhhhh FANTASTIC! Thanks!

Played another 1000 hands last night. It was quite an interesting night. I was getting some crazy good cards but.... I kept running into bigger hands. It was a little ridiculous I must say. I ran my AK on a K high flop into AA, a set of JJ into a straight, and a flopped straight into a donk who called my all in on the turn chasing a flush draw with horrible odds which he obviously hit on the river. <==== Gotta love donks like this, they can get annoying though when they actually win. There were a handful of other hands that I got coolered on also but these three were the worst. I started off the night at $842 and ended at $830. I was being much more aggressive in position than I have been doing and it seems to be working well. I think I've been playing a little too passive postflop so increasing my aggression should help. I was down to $800 but picked up enough pots here and there to grind back up to $830. Not a bad night but no profit which blows. Variance is a bitch, but I'm not worried. Within a week or 2 I should be rolled for 50NL.

From your graph it looks like you are running a decent clip above EV (not sure colors are kind of hard to make out), so don't get too pissed off when you do start running closer to that other line.

Other then that, looks like you are doing good, keep up the good work :)

OK so I put in a 700 hand session last night. Let me just say it was AAMMAAZZIINNGG. It's always nice to run hot! The sick part is it's not like I sucked out on players. I just kept flopping the nuts or close to it, it was awesome. Some of the hands included flopping 4 of a kind 8's, ace high flushes, trips, very concealed 2 pairs. After all this I came out exactly $100 ahead last night in just over an hour of play.

It's nice getting boosts to the BR like this cause they don't happen often, and it helps when variance strikes back. As of right now my bankroll is sitting at $930 and I'm hoping to break the $1k mark by the end of next week. Then I can start trying out 50NL.

I'm leaving for Texas next Friday with my friend's band to go on tour for a week. They will be playing a ton of shows at South by Southwest music fest in Austin. We will have some shows along the road in Iowa, Missouri, and Dallas TX.

My plan is to build the bankroll up as much as possible this next week, and then once I get back from tour I will start playing 50NL.

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Originally Posted by HeAVyB101

It's nice getting boosts to the BR like this cause they don't happen often, and it helps when variance strikes back. As of right now my bankroll is sitting at $930 and I'm hoping to break the $1k mark by the end of next week. Then I can start trying out 50NL.

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I would probably wait for 1500-1750 unless you only play a few tables at a time

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Muzzard

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HeAVyB101

It's nice getting boosts to the BR like this cause they don't happen often, and it helps when variance strikes back. As of right now my bankroll is sitting at $930 and I'm hoping to break the $1k mark by the end of next week. Then I can start trying out 50NL.

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I would probably wait for 1500-1750 unless you only play a few tables at a time

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+1

But I guess if you feel ready for it and don't mind moving down if you lose a few BI then its fine to give it a go. gl.

I 6 tbl the 25NL game right now. I will start off 4 tabling 50NL until I get to around $1500 then 6 table it. I would like to start 50NL with over $1200. That gives me 4 buy ins above the min. But I'm not afraid to take a shot with $1k. I'm confident in my game. If I'm winning 25NL averaging 12bb/100 then I can't imagine 50NL being much more difficult. Even if I only make 8bb/100 I'll still be making $1 more per 100 hands than at 25NL.

Last night after playing I decided to watch some 200NL, 600NL, and 2000NL tables. What great inspiration! At the 600NL table I saw a guy try a squeeze play on the button after early position raised and had 2 other cold callers preflop. Button pushed all in for like $300. The original raiser thought for a while and called. After all the cards were out the button walk away the winner with trip 2's. Now this would seem standard but..... the button tripped up with 92o!!! LOL The original raiser mucked so I didn't see his cards but man that's rough!