Foolish Force of Will

Well, the experiment isn't doing so well. As I mentioned last time, I was given $5 by PokerStars on the first of March to begin playing on their site. My plan was to see how large I could grow that initial seed money during a 30 day period, a'la Jesus Ferguson's freeroll experiment.

For a while, the experiment was doing well; I was up to $8 by playing Tight-Aggressive poker in their micro 2/4-cent limit ring games. Unfortunately, as the bank roll grew, I got more and more greedy and ended up playing a couple of $1.+0.2 SnGs on the site. I didn't money in either game, dropping $2.40 in a matter of a couple hours. Worse, I donked off a couple more bucks in their low-stakes stud hi/lo cash games. Following this, I suffered a number of AWFUL losses that further depleted the 'roll. For instance, in a 2/4-cent cash game, I picked up 2-2 in late position. The UTG guy(a very, very tight player) raised, so I knew he had a big hand-- something like AA-JJ or maybe AK. A bunch of cold callers, however, made the call worth making from my position in the cutoff seat. The flop came 2-T-6 with two hearts, giving me bottom set. UTG bet, another guy called, I raised, UTG reraised, caller called, I capped, yada yada. We were three way with a big pot going into the turn, which came the T of hearts, putting a flush on the board, but giving me a full house. This time, the other guy was the aggressor, and we again capped 3-way going into fifth sreet. The river, unfortunately, was an UGLY ace. UTG checked, other guy bet, I called, UTG raised, other guy reraised.... and I made the crying call, losing of course to aces full. Needless to say, my stack took a huge hit on that hand. But the fun wasn't over yet.

I reloaded, and then lost a number of other big pots with these kinds of hands. Had a K-high flush busted by someone with the nut ace. Lost a flopped nut straight to quads. Lost yet another flush to a straight flush. You name the big hand, I went down in flames with it. When I finally pulled the plug, I was down to a measly $1.8 in my bank roll. Not good. Not good at all...

So, what did I do? I basically figured I could slowly grind my way back up playing micro-limit cash games, or I could roll the dice and try another SnG. I chose the latter. This was probably foolish, but I was getting disgusted and rationalized it to myself, thinking hey, it's better to burn out than fade away, right?

Long story short, I took second place in the SnG. I did this by: a) paying VERY close attention to what the opp was doing; b) playing relatively tight; and c) playing VERY aggressively when I did get involved in a hand. A number of times I basically bullied weaker players off the pot on the turn and river when I knew they had a reasonable hand, but also knew they were weak.

Following this marginal success, I attacked a limit cash game with vengeance, playing hyper-tight, hyper-aggressive poker, winning pots by, well, sheer force of will. It's a high-stakes way to play poker, but when it works, it works wonderfully (ah, but when it doesn't.... sigh. Been there, done that.)

Anyway, my PS 'roll is now up around $4.10 or so, which feels like a victory of sorts. Even though I'm still down from the initial $5, I feel like I'm back on the right track... but we'll see. Again, this is an experiment, so I'll let it run its 30 day course. Right now, I'm simply hoping to double my stake by the end of the month, but I'd be happy to just end up in the black by a small amount.

The only other good news to report is I played some $1/2 limit on FT yesterday and walked away with $35 in profit for 45-mintes of play. The secret? Ultra tight (VPIP=10%) and ultra aggressive. Sheer force of will again--both in forcing myself to throw away shiny-bright hands in early position, as well as forcing the opp to fold.

We will see how today works out. I played simultaneously on both PS and FT while I penned this morning's blog. On PS, I made a whopping 8 cents. On FT, I took third in a $2 turbo SnG. Not great, but not bad, either. Now we will see if I can keep it up... I'll probably play a little more PS limit today, plus I got into another of FT's Ironman freerolls that starts this afternoon. Just gotta force myself to play good poker...

All-in for now...
-Bug