February-March Recap

Again, it has been too long since I have last posted, but I'm bored at work, so I decided to start blogging again.

This last month and a half has been rather productive, as far as poker goes. There has been a theme this year in my poker playing in that I will win a big tournament then slowly bleed and bleed and lose confidence, then win another big tournament then follow the same pattern. Even though this is quite profitable, and I understand that it is impossible to avoid fluctuation in poker, I would like to work on grinding it out a little bit more, whether it be through live game or sng's. Either way, here is a recap on my last month and a half:

The first two weeks of February were not very memorable. I didn't really have any big scores and may have made only a couple of final tables.

The second weekend of February, Derek, Nate, Grant, and myself decided to make a little venture across the border (North) to a big casino/resort up there called RiverRock. It was kind of ironic because we made the exact same trip with the same guys at the same time last year (see earlier post where I seemingly did not lose a pot over three 8-hour sessions). But this time, my brother Paul decided to pull off a sikkkkkkkk slow roll to be the 5th guy.

We got up there on Friday night at around 10pm and decided to kick the night off with some old friends Captain Morgan and Jack Daniels. Some nice pots and waaaaaaay too many drinks later, and I was a $350 winner for the first night. When you consider that the waitress brought around either a Bud Light or a Corona just about every round at about $6 a pop, I was quite happy with this profit.

The second day/night did not go as well. I played some good, quality, sober poker for a very long time and just tried to grind out some profit, but I just could not win that key pot to get over the hump. I ended up losing $100 on the night but made the very poor decision of wandering downstairs to the casino (note to self: drunken roulette theory is not the best idea). After food, drinks, and hotel costs, I saw a very small profit, which I was okay with.

But when you consider that my friend Derek made $2000 in that same $1-$2 NL game that I could not win it, it makes ME look like a donkey. Honestly...who makes $2000 in a $1-$2 game?? He won 2 $1200+ pots and played the best poker I have ever seen him play. He had a perfect image set up by some shown bluffs and obviously had a few great situations, but I was quite amazed.

Derek is known in the crew as a grinder - a guy who usually always wins but does not go crazy outside of his bankroll. He is a very methodical player, but his reading ability is uncanny. But this does not give him credit at all. His knowledge of the game and his willingness to discuss certain hands and to learn from players that have more knowledge than him is why he has gotten to where he is at. I know that he has all of the talent and capabilities in the world to do some special special things. I owe much of my poker success to him.

ANYWAYS......

So the weekend ended in a most bizarre fashion involving Nate, a married girl that he met playing poker, and a disgusting smell in our hotel room (I'll let the reader use his/her imagination). We ended up checking out at around 3:30am and driving home.

The next day, I had to work the desk from 1pm-10pm (a.k.a. play tons of online poker). I signed up for the 1:00pm $50 $6k guaranteed tournament, which I had one before. 3 1/2 hours later, I had significantly bumped up my minimum hourly wage working the desk here when I won the tourney for around $1700. This, again, was huge in boosting my confidence, and this theme just continues to rear its ugly (or beautiful) head. Two weekends later, I won the 12:00pm $15 bounty tournament for around $1000, also while working the desk.

Instead of just cashing out like I normally would, I decided to leave some money in my account to see if I could win playing some 6-handed NL live game. I started off on a tear, and, over a 3+ day stretch, I had netted over a $800 profit playing $.50-$1. I found the games to be incredibly profitable and decided to make a run at $1-$2.

It has been well known that, over the past few years, with all of the online poker prohibition, the $1-$2 NL game is what the old $5-$10 games used to be (or so I've been told). This is due to the fact that money is more tough to put online, and so most of the people playing are winners. This became evident to me, as I noticed a significant jump from $.50-$1 to $1-$2. I ended up breaking about even for the first couple sessions but then netting a $400 loss where I completely blew up. I then realized that I may have been playing outside of my bankroll slightly and that I would continue to grind out the $.50-$1 NL, $20 and $30 sng's, and the MTT's on Ultimate Bet.

Since winning those tournaments and dominating the $.50-$1 game, I am down around $800 with no significant cashes to speak of. This, however, does not worry me at all, as I am still quite confident in my ability to weed through large fields in MTT's, which is where I feel I am most profitable.

As far as upcoming plans on the horizon, I have quite a bit of studying to do for my two finals next week, and, after that, I will have almost 2 weeks off to sweat the NCAA games, play some golf, relax, and play some online poker.

I am really looking forward to the Spring and the Summer and maybe Aruba...

God Bless,

JG

P.S. Congratulations to Derek on winning our race to $5k $100 bet. :-(