You too can make ALMOST $3 in ONLY ONE MONTH!

Today has been thirty days since I resumed my path to poker glory.  It has been fun, educational and profitable.  Though the last one didn't occur until yesterday.

Here is an over all view of the last month.

At first glance you might think "lolwutloser".  But I am actually pleased with it.  At about 1434 hands is where I started experimenting with being more aggressive.  It was a scary ride and you can see where I became very happy then very unhappy.  I kept up the aggression though, fine tuning my starting hands as well as concentrating a lot more on position.  It stayed bumby but mostly even and my biggest concern was my redline.  I researched and started being more aggressive in areas I was ignoring and it seemed to level out a little until the end where you can see it actually starting to rise.

I attribute this small success to playing speculative hands a little more carefully IN POSITION.  OMG.  Playing in position is something that will improve any noobs game.  For some stupid reason (my brain) the concept of position just wasn't gelling with me.  So for you new guys and gals, I'll try to explain what I understand.  It's an easy concept but doesn't really sink in until you've had your ass handed to you for playing that J10s in early position.

In simple terms, you might be playing decent hands but if you play those mediocre speculative hands in early position, what are you going to do when you have a raise or two behind you?  Stick with it?  Dump it and lose your bet?  The way I play now is, when I'm thinking of playing a hand, I ask myself "is this a hand that can stand up to bets or is it one that would be better off calling with against more players"?  With a lot of pairs, I'll occasionally risk them in early position since I would pretty much call any normal raise anyway.  But what if it's reraised?  Then it better at least be a medium pair.  I hope you get the gist of this.

Another thing I've become much better at is folding more.  I no longer hold on to those medium pairs with a death grip hoping those 2 outs work out for me.  AA and KK are not unbeatable either!  You see a possible straight or flush or somebody is betting hard when nothing seems to be on the board.  Guess what, they could be bluffing and trying to represent those hands or they might have a set.  If my hand does not improve on the flop and somebody is betting, I will probably fold unless I have an overpair and sometimes big overcards if the betting is minimal.  Also, another thing that was biting me in the ass was when I had Axs (Ace suited anything) or a broadway and junk from the BB and make a pair on the flop.  Yay!  You have a pair of aces with a 3 kicker.  I would definitely make a bet with that but if somebody fights back hard or calls, time to be careful or fold.  Those speculative hands will bite you too.  If your hand does not work out on the flop, be careful.  Yeah, I know you see all kinds of shit hands being played but that's why you play better hands and have some confidence that when it does hit, you are probably doing good and if it doesn't hit, especially against loose players, you might be in deep shit because they could have anything.

I don't know if I'm playing correctly by taking raises against me as seriously as I do but it seems to be working out.  It's another aspect that I need to fine tune.

I'm one month away from getting the rest of my new guy bonus and I'm a little over halfway with the points I need so I'm on track.  Oh... here is the chart for just this month on NL5.

Be! Aggressive! Be! Be! Aggressive!

Easier said than done, being aggressive.  Seems like if you just play tighter than a gnat's butthole and call when you have a good hand is the safe way to not hemorrhage your bankroll.  Yeah.  There may be some truth to that.  But you are missing out on a lot of extra money AND worse, you are going to be victimized harshly.  Chances are, if this playstyle describes you than you are probably the same kind of player that will fold to any sign of aggression.  I have news for you.  Despite anything you read about micro limits not having bluffing.... those articles are probably written by bluffers.

"So just start playing more stuff and betting more?"  Well, kinda.  This is where my knowledge and experience shows its true colors.  The fact of the matter is I am still struggling with aggression.  When you are used to playing tight and passive for a long time it is intimidating as hell to change to an aggressive strategy.  At least for me although I have found that adopting a more aggressive style has added to my wins by virtue of blind steals, chasing draws out of the hand and just blatantly stealing pots by representing a great hand.  When I say "representing" I don't mean to imply that I actually have a great hand all the time but it is great for other players to think so and not want to risk any more money for their AJo.  The problem is that if there's an Ace in their hand then they often think they have the Golden Ticket.  You have to learn how to gauge players for their style and know who is likely to fold and who will call everything you throw at them.  And if you are that tight/passive player I was talking about at the beginning, you are probably the first type (the folder).  How do I know players will try to bluff you?  Because a lot of them love to show off their shit hand once they chase other players out of the hand.  I personally only show my monster hands but I'm a newish guy so...

Read up on the different types of players and how to play against them.  It will have the side effect of experiencing self awareness.  There are tons of great articles you can find on forums and blogs.  I highly recommend, if you are pretty new at this, that you check out Pokerology.com.  It has a pretty comprehensive and structured guide for you to learn the basics and intermediate concepts of Hold'em (as well as Omaha and some other poker variations).  That's it for now.  Time for some poker.

But WHY Paul?

I'll tell you why, since you asked so nicely.  This blog is being created for multiple reasons, mostly self serving.  Foremost, it will be a living journal of my progress in micro-stakes online hold'em sprinkled with insight and lessons learned.  It is public because I have no problems sharing my  achievements or shame in hopes that others can benefit from my limited experience.

"But that's kinda counterproductive isn't it?  Don't you want other players to suck even worse than you?"

Another good question... erm... questions.  I seriously doubt that will be an issue.  Estimates I've read in various articles are that 95% of poker players are losing.  If I were a betting man, I'd guess that the vast majority of those players won't be looking at this site.  No, if you found it then you are obviously a diligent and inquisitive person with questionable tastes in blog posts.

For starters, a little background on my (ahem) poker career.  Similar story to other American online micro stake players.  Had a good time.  Made a little money.  Black Friday.  Back to less profitable ways of spending my time online.  That's it in a nutshell.  I will elaborate that I was strictly a limit player and was not very studious in the ways of poker.  Until very recently, I was your typical tight and passive player with a chronic limping problem.  To demonstrate the point, until I started again almost a month ago, I did not know what a limper or limping was.  Now I'm throwing poker slang left and right like a boss!  Still suck though.

Now I'm playing NL5 at one of the rare sites that accept folks from the US.  My sample size is still too small to give you an accurate representation of my abilities but let's just say I put $50 in a month ago and I still have $50.  Seems like I'm going nowhere unless you realize that I've already paid over $20 in rake and have actually been down to $30 at one point.  There were missteps I have taken and things I would do differently had I know what I know now.  And if you are a new player and thinking of going to one of those sites, let me give you one piece of advice before selecting your poker site:

Have a sufficient BR (bankroll) to support the limit you will be starting with.  $50 is NOT a sufficient BR for NL5 (.02/.05 no limit).  You will find a multitude of opinions on what size your BR should be.  I've been going with 15 BI (buyins: 100 times the big blind, in this case 5 cents) but I will be moving up to 20.  That is still the low end of what most recommend and not even the minimum of what others suggest.  But 50 bucks is all I was willing to give up at this point.  If I had researched sites better I would have known that I could have gone elsewhere and had a mostly sufficient BR to start NL2 (that's right! 2 cents! your really quick).

So my challenges:  Get gooder at pokering.  Continue to study every aspect of poker.  Play a shitload of hands.  Keep updating this blog.  Play a shitload more hands.

I will go deeper into what I'm doing currently and share my triumphs and failures.  Just wanted to throw this up to stop procrastinating.  Seriously,  I got more than this.  Right now I need to go play some poker!