Results for the year so far

I keep pretty detailed records of all of my play online. I use PokerTracker on my PC (where I play most of my hands), which creates a database of all hands that I play. On top of that, I have a spreadsheet where I track the overall results of each session. This is somewhat redundant, since PokerTracker also has this capability, but synchronizing on a spreadsheet is easier than having PT on multiple machines.

Over the last several sessions I have been playing the $.5/$1 Deep tables on FullTilt exclusively. In general, the deeper the stacks in big-bet poker, the bigger the edge the better players have over the worse ones. The mistakes that players make at these stakes (overvaluing one pair hands, not controlling pot-size) are not nearly as serious if the stacks are only 100BB deep. On the other hand, on the deep tables where 200BB+ stacks are common, these errors become extremely expensive. To date this year, I have played 6 sessions. Out of these, 5 were winning sessions; the first session of the year I lost $4. On Monday (1/12), I had my biggest winning session so far. I got very good cards (you hit a set 1 in 2 times right?) and played well. +$988.45. The net for these sessions is +$2136.10, which is already more than 10% of my $20K goal! Onward and upward!

I really should move up stakes soon to $1/$2. My pattern so far has been to play ~26K hands at each level before moving up and I am at just about that mark right now at $.5/$1 with a win-rate of ~9ptbb/100 Hands. In general, I am a super bankroll nit. I should already be playing at higher stakes, but I have chosen to be very conservative and make sure that I have at least 40x the buy-in before increasing stakes. In any case, more on the play at $.5/$1 in the next post.

Hello

Hey all,

This year, I've set a goal for myself of making at least $20K playing poker on the intertubes.  I think it might be fun to chart my progress and so I have created this blog to do just that.  It would also be cool if I can use this to discuss hands and spur conversation.  E-mail me if you want me to post and discuss any hands!  I should take this opportunity to say that my word is definitely not gospel; I'm just a guy who really likes poker and I will always welcome reasoned debate.

I will be posting about my sessions as they occur as well as random thoughts on poker and probably other stuff too.  As I move up in stakes, I will also be posting my analysis of the play that I see at each level and what I perceive to be the most common exploitable holes in the average game.  

Lastly, in case you're curious about the name of this blog, I have decided that my cat, Sir Meow, will be my online poker mascot.  He is quite the poker fan himself:

Here he is telling James how to play his hand:

And here he is sweating Lee's cards:

That's it for this inaugural post.  More to come later...