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.