A little bad...a lot good

Friday and Saturday were tournament nights this past weekend.
Friday night at the Yanok's for 2 tournaments, due to quick blind escalation. The wife actually came along with me this time. (Lately she's been showing a great deal of interest in this little game!) Actually that night, we just broke even. In the second tourney, Julie and I chopped the prize pool, since it was late...and she was my ride home. :) That put us at $80 each. So, since the evening cost very little from that perspective(I won back both of our buy-ins from both tourneys, Big Red decided that the Saturday game at Shuman's was a "go" as well! We bought in for $26 each there, including the "bad beat" pot. Out of the 19 who showed, I finished in 2nd place and took down $145. Big Red nearly made it to the final table...so she did quite well. She enjoyed the game there too! So the weekend showed a tidy profit of $93 in my little world of poker, since I was supporting the buy-ins of two people. "Technically" I was up $159...but I didn't want to state that too strongly...I was just glad to get to play!
That was the "a lot good" part...

A little bad, followed the next morning (Sunday.) Recall that I'm still finishing up the bonus points at Nine Poker (Nine.com.) I still need to crank out about 37 points per day for the next 45 days or so, to complete and claim an additional $150 bonus. I bought in on 2 tables ($1/$2 Limit) for $50 each. Nearly bled to death over a couple of hands in particular. First my set of Queens that I hit on the flop got spanked by a straight on the river, which cost me a huge chunk, since the bet was getting capped. That one really hurt. Second, was the river brought me my straight to the King, only to be greeted by the Nut Flush, when the guy caught his runner/runner for his backdoor flush draw. I think I could have saved a few bucks if I'd left then and there...but you all know how hard that is, when you feel you can still turn it around. I probably could have walked at that point I merely been down $50, but I opted to stay to finish out my 37 points for the day...but kept going beyond that out of frustration (yes, they call that TILT!!!) Anyway, when the dust finally settled I dropped about $65 on that site during the session. However, I'm still up $35 from my initial deposit there, not counting the extra $100 I got from PokerSavvy in a gift card for promo-ing the site. So, I guess there's still a silver lining. The sucky part is that I had just broke the $200 mark on the site. But that's poker I suppose. So, depending on perspective I'm up $28 -OR- $94 for the weekend. I'll let you all decide! :) I'll play again this evening on Nine.com to put in my 37 points again, but I'm going to pull the plug on the whole site if I drop the last $35 back to my initial buy-in. At which point I'll just cash out completely, and move on to greener pastures. Their bonus clears horribly slow...and I'm not getting much extra for my play time there. Other sites have much more attractive bonuses for me at much more comfortable "limits" to me. I'm not a big fan of limit hold 'em in the first place.
I am beginning to recognize the make up of a table when I'm playing limit. There are some tell tale signs that point to an "unprofitable" table for me, though some might disagree with me. The table will see approximately 5-6 people to the flop every single time. At least two people at the table will be at $60+. Someone in late position...every single time will make it $2 to see the flop, and nearly everyone will call this raise. And, finally at least two guys at the table will seem to be from the same geographical spot in the world. I'm not particularly saying that there's cheating afoot, but I don't rule that out. No, what I'm beginning to see is a couple of friends just jockeying at the table for dominance, and the rest of us are just along for the ride. You will see lots of suckouts...lots of any two will do players, crap cards hitting flushes and straights, your good hands meeting monsters, and just generally a bad time for you! Sometimes though, you find the berry patch table, the planets align, and lady luck plants a big wet one on you...and all of a sudden you can do no wrong. Ride that...briefly, and then walk away and count your bankroll and be happy. You will need these sessions to counter-balance those spank sessions, I've laid out above. Getting this all off my chest, will let me move beyond this now, because I can sense that the losing session was still on my mind, and would affect my game. So, now I've let myself have the little pity party I had coming to me, and now it's back to the game plan. Tight/Agressive...lather/rinse/repeat. Nuff Said.

Regards,

cheer_dad