As anyone reading my blog has probably figured out, I haven’t been playing nearly as much poker as I used to. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the major ones is that I’ve played a lot of poker in the last eight months and some of my enthusiasm is fading. I’ve played tens of thousands of hands online and made a decent amount of money, but other things have been taking up my time recently, not least of which is the fast approaching deadline of a project at work. And I haven’t wanted to force things because, really, if you’re not at your best you shouldn’t be sitting down at a poker table. I don’t know what the future is going to hold for me in terms of poker and this blog, but I do know that I did play some poker this past weekend and I wanted to write about it.
First off, I was finally able to wrangle enough people for my semi-regular PLHE tournament. Unfortunately, my results were hardly better than they were last time, when I busted out after five hands. This marks 5 tournaments without a money finish after taking 1st place 3 tournaments in a row. Obviously I need to take a closer look at my live game. And the first thing I need to do is stop making some assumptions. Too many times have I made the mistake of limiting my opponents’ hands based on their calling a pre-flop raise. Sometimes whatever pressure I apply is not going to get that K4 to fold, and I need to be able to recognize this a bit more often and not push my marginal hands so hard when I sense weakness. Sometimes the weakness is going to stick in there. I have a huge edge on many of these players and I should really wait for better opportunities. Unfortunately, there probably won’t be another game until next year due to the holidays, so I will have to be patient in trying out my new-found patience. Maybe next time I’ll last long enough to have a good tale to tell.
But all was not a loss. Bowing out early meant I got to boot up Party Poker on my laptop and start working off my bonus while the tournament winds down. I don’t know who decided to start making these reload bonuses require 700 hands in 7 days, but I’d like to kick them in the head. Still, free money is hard to turn down, particularly when I tend to make more money while trying to earn it. A few hundred hands later I’m up 60 bucks and packing up the poker table once again. I managed to get in the remainder of the hands by Sunday night (my bonus would have expired Monday night) though I decided that I wouldn’t even attempt the 800 hands I would have had to put in at Poker Now to get the $100 there. I did sign up at Checknraise poker to take advantage of the 50% pre-reg bonus, as they finally went live on Saturday, but I haven’t had the opportunity to play any hands there. This weekend’s play (at my usual 25PLHE tables) was completely on automatic and while I did make a profit on top of the bonus amount, I’m sure that I let many bets slip through my fingers just because I couldn’t be bothered to watch the tables more carefully. Maybe I need a jump in limits to start getting me to get a bit more involved in my game.