Forward Progress

Good and bad news to report from last night.

The first thing I did was play my last $5.50 tournament that I'm gonna play until I'm properly bankrolled, at Jorgen's advice. Turns out I went 0-4, which is quite disturbing and disappointing, but at the same time, I still don't feel like I made great decisions the whole way through. Its weird, because the $5.50s are actually played worse than the $2.20s, as I had a lot of worse starting hands outdraw me to beat me, which got me pretty steamed. At least in the $2.20s these people make bad calls, stay with you the whole way, and then show down to the river w/a horrible kicker or something. In the $5.50, twice I lost w/TPTK when, after calling a preflop raise, my opponents hit 2 pair on or after the flop and put it to me in the end. I'm confident I can beat that level, but I have yet to play one where I've hit cards and/or played as well as I know I'm capable.

After that, I played in two $2.20 SNGs and got 2nd in both. That means 4 consecutive cashes at that level (and I'd be at about $40 right now if I stayed out of the $5.50s...grrr). In the first one I got down early and battled back but was outchipped 3 to 1 going into heads up. In the 2nd one I flopped 4 kings with 2 in my pocket early, but got no other help from the board in the way of hitting my opponents and I think squeezed about the most value possible out of it. I then proceeded to dodge JK and JQ all-ins with pocket Qs to take a massive chip lead early. And finally, I hit a set with pocket 4s and took out another couple of folks, amassing myself 48% of the chips in play with 6 left. I then rode out a cold deck to the money, where it looked like I was on the way out in 3rd, but then got some help when AA took out KK. I put up a pretty pathetic effort in heads up again, and finished 2nd.

I used to really be confident about my heads up play, but now I wonder if something is wrong with it. I think my strategy is sound, but I get ZERO cards preflop and postflop to back up my play, and I seem to always be playing against call stations. I'm finding myself raising preflop, missing the flop and having my continuation bet called, and having to give up by the turn because its obvious not even an all-in move will win it for me. I'm gonna stick to my game for now and just hope I start picking up some cards to back up my HU playing style.

Regardless, that's a tiny profit on the night, and further reason to just stick to the $2.20s and hopefully build slowly but surely. Since I technically haven't made a deposit at poker.com, I'm still eligible for the 100% deposit bonus up to $100 and week's worth of freerolls that they offer new depositors. So my new plan is to build to $100, deposit $100, withdraw $100 (or vice versa) and get a little extra equity out of my money.

I'm not sure how they found me, but I got an email this morning that exactly matched one that Matt Maroon ranted about just a week and a half ago. Its obviously nothing more than highly customized and targeted spam, but still interesting that they'd take the time to pursue me, given my complete and total lack of credibility and readers. If nothing else, its the first thing I have in common with any sort of a "real" blogger. Look at me moving up in the world.

Thanks to Jorgen for the shout-out in his latest blog entry, and if you happen to be here because of him or are visiting for the first time for any other reason, be sure to see my "Reset" post just below to learn a little bit about me.