April Recap and Busy months to follow

So, April has come and gone already. Luckily for me it was another very solid month winning right at 50 buy ins. The above graph illustrates my month in big blinds rather than dollar amounts won. This is for my desktop only, as I won another 1200 or so big blinds on my laptop. Overall, I am quite pleased with my month in total both profit wise and winrate wise. I was able to sustain a winrate of 8bb/100 for the month. Where I failed during April was table time. I worked less than 100 hours in April, and only played slightly more than 55k hands for the month. I will grant myself a repreive considering HUGE things are happening in my life at the moment, but I'll discuss those in a bit.

I did not make the full transition to 2/4NL in April as I had planned to do. I had every intention of doing so, but after only one bad session of 2/4 I reverted back to 1/2 and started crushing again, so I decided to stick with it. I did manage to still win in the 2/4 games for the month, but only at a rate of 3bb/100 over a very small sample size of 3400 hands. I know that soon I will make, and succeed, at the full transition and climb the poker ladder, but for now I'm comfortable at my current stakes until I get all of the "life stuff" in order.

Last order of business on the poker front is of course FeltStars. Starting tomorrow, May 5th, FeltStars will be running its first "Pro Bounty Challenge" tourney. This tourney will be a standard MTT with a HUGE bonus opportunity. Each of the 4 pros will have a bounty on their head. Knock out a pro and get $100. Knock out 2 of the 4 and get $2500. Knock out 3 of the 4 and get $50,000, and knock out all 4 pros during the tourney and get $100,000! Sounds simple right? Well, sign up now using bonus code BootnTee and hop in the tourney tomorrow at 7:30pm Central time for this $10+1 buy in weekly $100,000 FeltStars Pro Bounty Challenge tournament. There are only 27 players signed up so far, so join in and take your chance at $100,000! You can find more details about it at the following link: http://feltstars.com/poker/promotions-pro-bounty-challenge.php

Poker aside, these next few months will be super busy. As I have previously written, Kim and I will be going to the Bahamas this week for our "weddingmoon." We will be getting married at the Sandals Royal Bahamian on May 12th and returning to Houston a few days later. After getting back to Houston, we will be going to Mobile, Alabama and start house hunting there. Kim was offered a job at her companies Mobile office and she accepted it. So along with a wedding in the Bahamas, we are also moving, buying a new home, and she is starting a new job. That's a lot of life changes in the next few months! We are both looking forward to living in Mobile. I am excited to be within 1 hour to the Beau Rivage and IP in Biloxi, as well as an hour the other way to a poker room in Pensacola, Florida. Finally I can play some live poker midweek and not have to jump on a plane to do so! Also, it will only be 3.5 hours to my parents home rather than 5.5, so I can make weekend trips to visit them. All in all it's going to be a great thing, but it will definitely be hectic for a while. Unfortunately because of all these plans, I will have to cut down on my WSOP trip, or may possibly have to miss it for the first time ever since I've been 21. I have attended 7 consecutive WSOP's and really don't want to break that streak! Hopefully all the cards will fall right and I'll still be able to make it out to Vegas for at least a week or so during the series.

One of the other FeltStars pros, Ken "DrCheckRaise" Callis hosts a radio show on his website, http://www.drcheckraise.com/, and they are taking the show on the road to a dozen or more cities for their "Poor Mans' Poker Tour". On June 4th and 5th their tour will stop at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, and I will be the featured pro for this tour stop. On Friday June 4th there will be a meet and greet for forum members, as well as cash games to follow. On Saturday June 5th there is a $20,000 guaranteed tourney at Noon with a $300+50 buy in which I will be representing Team FeltStars. If you happen to be in Biloxi, come out to play the tourney or to just say Hi and learn more about what FeltStars has to offer. Hope to see a few of you there!
Because of all these events in my life, I really think May could possibly turn out to be my slowest poker month EVER! My realistic goal will be to play 40 hours this month. Yeah, it's a low goal, but realistically I don't think I will have time to grind considering the wedding, the temporary move to a corporate apartment, the house hunting, and the back and forth between Houston and Mobile while trying to pack up the house here. Such is life.

Guess that's about it for this blog. Hope to post another one after the wedding in the Bahamas, and maybe include a few photos. Best wishes to all of you and hope to see you in Biloxi June 4th-5th.

Til Next Time....

GulfCoastPoker.Net, Team FeltStars, and Poker!!

Just wanted to post a very short blog thanking Wild Bill and Gene D from www.gulfcoastpoker.net for adding me to their stable of featured bloggers. I have known Gene for years and he is a really good guy. If you guys haven't been to the site yet, there is a hyper link on the right side of my blog page that will take you straight there. The website is all about poker in the south, including tourney updates, player profiles, blogs, and other poker news happening around the country. Check it out!

Also, congrats to my fellow Team FeltStars Pro Tyler Smith for winning the $2500 Spring Break Poker Championship tourney at the Beau Rivage this week. Reports show that he took home nearly $100k! This gives Tyler 2 WPT TV final tables at the Beau as well as a 1st and a 2nd in this particular event in back to back years. He is definitely representing Team FeltStars well.

Poker has started to turn around for me this month. I am winning about 25 buy ins so far on the month after 12 days. My all in EV is almost back to even as well on the month, which is a good feeling considering I was way below EV after the first 5 days. I have been playing mostly 1/2, but have mixed some 2/4 in as well with decent results. Hopefully I will have a very nice graph to post at months end.

Til Next Time....

Climbing the Ladder

So after having very solid months in February and March, I decided that April would be my time to start transitioning to higher stakes games online. When I first started playing for a living back in 2004, it was nothing for me to put 10% or more of my bankroll on the table at any given time and not think twice about it. After riding the bankroll rollercoaster for several years I finally took a step back and realized that there is no need to put myself through those kinds of emotional swings. I told myself after I won the Sunday 200k on UB in August of 2008 that I would never put my bankroll in jeopardy again. The best way that I would rectify this situation was set a strict guideline for my online bankroll and play based on that set of rules. From the time that I returned to cash games in July of 2009, I have played mostly 1/2 no limit online while refining my game under the guidence of a few very successful players.

This month, and after 250k hands of 1/2, I decided to try make make a full transisiton to 2/4. Previously I have taken shots in the 2/4, 3/6, 5/10, and even 10/20 games when they are good, but I haven't tried to sustain at these levels. After being a 5bb/100 winner over 250k hands at 1/2, I am still finding it hard to "climb the ladder." I have been playing 2/4 on both FullTilt and FeltStars with not a lot of success this month. I am up less than 1k so far and we're already 1/3 of the way through the month. For the most part, I really don't find the players to be that much better, although there definitely are some very good regulars. I'm not going to bemoan my luck as an excuse, but it does seem that every time I try to move up in stakes that I run a good bit below EV based on my Hold Em Manager graph. This is of course short term luck and variance at work considering I have only put in about 15k hands this month, about half of what I normally play.

This also brings up a good point about whether playing double the stakes but only playing half the hands is worth it? I think all it does is increase variance in the short term, but I truly believe that in the big picture it will be worth it because I am getting better faster playing against better regulars. Eventually I will be able to successfully 9-12 table the higher limits and get back to playing 1k hands an hour comfortably, which should increase my hourly earn. I think my plan for the immediate future is to not put so much pressure on myelf to move up and to just let it come naturally. I will continue playing a lot of 1/2 NL Rush poker on FullTilt, but I will also play 1 or 2 games of 2/4 NL, probably on FeltStars at the same time. 4 tabling rush poker is equivalent to the hands you'd see while 12 tabling, so essentially the 12 tables of 1/2 should compensate for the variance that I will have playing only 1 or 2 tables of 2/4 NL. As an aside, I find it humorous that I have trouble sticking at the 2/4 level online, when 2/5 live almost seems like a small game. I much prefer playing 5/10 live and feel completely comfortable with the buy in, and know that I am properly bankrolled for the game. Just seems funny how I struggle with the online transition.

Kim and I are really starting to get excited about the wedding. Its just over 1 month away, and we're doing a destination wedding at the Sandals Royal Bahamian in Nassau, Bahamas. Last week my best friend told me that he just finalized his plans to come to the wedding. We were in the same fraternity (Theta Xi) at Nicholls State in Thibodaux, LA, and then he moved to Las Vegas a year after I had moved there. We were roomates in Vegas for a few years until Kim and I moved in together. Now I rarely get to see him because he also left Las Vegas last year and moved to Orange County, CA. to be near his girlfriend and for a new job opportunity. He and his girlfriend are arriving in Nassau the day after Kim and I arrive, and they will be spending the whole week before the wedding with us. It's gonna be a blast hanging out with them and having another couple to do activities with. It will also be nice that when Ben and I want to do some water sports, the girls can go to the spa or shopping together and we won't need to worry about them.

I was considering going to Lake Charles in a week and a half to play the last 3 events of the Louisiana State Poker Championship but I think I will have to cancel my room and pass on this trip. Kim and I have a lot to do before the wedding, and I also would like to make a quick trip to Thibodaux to see my parents. Kim is also in the middle of a possible job move to Mobile, Alabama. If this happens we will really be busy and poker will be the furthest thing from my mind for a while. I really hope she does get this job though because I think I would rather living in Mobile than Houston. Mobile is only 3.5 hours away from my parents rather than the 5.5 hour drive that I currently have. Another huge draw is that I will be a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, which means that when I get tired of staring at the computer screen I can take a quick drive down the road and play some live poker (yeah, I can do that in Houston in underground rooms, but I'm not fond of the $40/hand rake!). Also, I would just be happy to be back on the Gulf Coast, as it was all I knew for the first 21 years fo my life before moving to Vegas. I guess only time will tell what will happen, but hopefully she'll find out more about the job by the end of next week.

Lastly, if you haven't checked out www.feltstars.com, you really should. Big things are happening there as well as with the Merge network in general. FeltStars is part of the ever growing Merge Network, which houses other skins such as CarbonPoker, VIP Poker, PokerNordica, etc. On April 15th, 3 big skins from the Cake Network (Sportsbook.com, Players Only.com, and Lock Poker) will be migrating away from Cake and joining the Merge network. What's this mean? Well, for starters it means that the Merge network should more than double it's current active player pool! This is huge news. Game selction will be much better. I anticipate there being 20+ .50/1 NL games, 10+ 1/2 NL games, and 5 or more 2/4 NL games, as well as a few 5/10 and maybe a 10/20 running on a regular basis. Also, with the addition of sportsbook.com, I think we will see a higher surge of gamblers on the site, as they will both be betting sports and playing poker through the same bankroll. We will also have some great promotions coming soon at FeltStars, including Sit n Go challenges, MTT challenges, and even cash game challenges. The SnG and MTT challenges will also feature free rolls where you have a chance at free money by beating all 4 Team FeltStars pros (Myself, Tyler Smith, Jason Lipscomb, and Ken "DrCheckRaise" Callis). Lastly, we will be introducing a bounty tournament, where each pro will have a bounty on their head, as well as progressive bounties if a player knocks out multiple pros during the course of the tournament. These are all reasons to be excited about playing at FeltStars, so come join us. Use bonus code Boot n Tee to sign up and receive 30% rakeback daily, and a 300% deposit bonus up to 3k! Also you'll be enrolled in a VIP program where you can use your points for cash back or tourney buy ins. Email me at bootnteepoker@yahoo.com with any comments questions about FeltStars.

Guess that's all for now. Hopefully April turns around and I can report a solid graph by the end of the month.

Til Next Time....

WCOIP wrap up and Week in Review

Well my first week back from Vegas is in the books. Unfortunately I was sick at the beginning of the week and never fully got grinding like I hoped, but I did manage to log a paltry 12k hands for the week. The cash games combined with my few small tournament cashes still led to a very profitable week, nearly half as much as I made in the month of February. And speaking of tournaments, as you may or may not be able to see in the above picture, I was able to win another WCOIP event, the Pot Limit Omaha Championship on FeltStars. For my efforts I won an insignificant amount of money, but more importantly a new Rolex Submariner watch. I'm pretty excited about the silly watch because it is a luxury item that I would not buy for myself. In fact, I am still wearing the $60 Pulsar by Seiko watch that I bought for myself on my 21st birthday (I'll be 29 in 2 months)! I also will be awarded a WCOIP gold bracelet for winning the PLO championship.

I also got heads up in the No Limit Championship going for my 3rd win out of the 6 events that I played in the WCOIP. I started heads up with a 100k to 32k chip advantage. After losing the first 5 hands I was still in the lead 72k to 60k when I was dealt KK and got all in vs my opponents JJ. I dodged a T-5-2 flop, but unfortunately he hit a J on the turn to cripple me down to 12k in chips. I lost the next hand. Aside from the small pay jump between first and second, I really wanted those Kings to hold up so that I would be the winner of both bracelet events in the WCOIP and be the only person in the world to own WCOIP bracelets. Yeah, I know, it's silly, but whatever. I guess I'll have to settle for a WCOIP bracelet on my right wrist, and a shiny new Rolex Submariner on my left. I know, tough life!! LOL.

I just played my first session for the week after doing household chores all day. Unfortunately my concentration level was abysmal as illustrated in this hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5295195

Obviously I NEVER check the river back with the near nuts, but I literally think that I fell asleep or something. After this hand I realized that it probably was best to call it a day, get some rest, and get back to the grind tomorrow. I did start playing a little higher tonight. Instead of 4 tables of 1/2 NL Rush poker, I played 2 tables of 1/2 NL Rush poker and 2 tables of 2/4. Eventually, hopefully, I will phase out the Rush poker all together and play 9 to 12 tables of 2/4 NL. This is assuming that I stop checking the nuts behind on the river! :-P

Hopefully I will be able to grind a lot this week, with less emphasis on number of hands played and more emphasis on working up to playing more 2/4 and less 1/2. I feel confident enough to be moving up and am properly bankrolled, so I'm gonna cross my fingers, close my eyes, and enjoy the ride!

Til Next Time....

Vegas Trip recap + I hate colds!!

Well, another 2 weeks have passed since I last blogged, along with another trip to Las Vegas. This trip was par for the course- great food, great friends, mediocre poker. The long and short of it is that I made enough money to cover my expenses for my flight, rental car, a few gifts for Kim, and all my food and entertainment(I didn't have to worry about lodging as I stayed at a close friends home). The truth is that I really look forward to playing live poker, but then after a few hours of playing I find myself wishing I was seeing 1000 hands an hour on the internet. Go figure!!

There were some highlights of the trip though. These highlights included spending at least 10 hours watching friends play online over several sessions. I think that I will not be able to put a price on the lessons I learned in this time. I also was able to hang out with all of my friends, join them for nice sushi, Italian, and Vietnamese dinners, basketball games, and even a night of live poker where they beat up on me pretty badly! I'm not gonna rant about this, but note to self: If you can't play hard verse close friends when real money (hundreds, not quarters) is on the line, then don't play at the table with them..plain and simple! I also spent a night playing a home game with another group of great friends which was a blast. We played quarter limits badugi, badeucey, 6 card Omaha hi-lo, and various other fun games. These are the things that I miss most about living in Las Vegas. People have always told me that it's hard to make friends in Vegas because there are so many fake people. I can see that logic, but I can also so that I have made some of the best friends thus far in my life in Las Vegas. These are people who I would trust with my bankroll, and if you know how tight I am that says a lot! LOL.

The unfortunate part of my trip was that I started coming down with a slight cold the day before I left. It seems to be almost gone now, but it has caused me to miss playing poker the last 3 days. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow and can get back to the grind.

I had extensive conversations with my friends who's advice I respect very much when it comes to poker about moving up in limits. Based on my skill level I have kept myself playing relatively small. While some play NL games on 20 or so buy ins, I have been playing them on a much deeper roll due to a lack of confidence in my own skills. I think after talking with my friends, I will begin to integrate a few games of the next level into my daily grind. If I feel comfortable in doing this I will hopefully make a full transition to the next level by the end of April. I think this will give me more than ample time to be confident in my skills and keep winning at a higher stakes game. In the meantime I will continue studying videos on Bluefire poker as well as reviewing hand histories with friends whos games I really respect. Hopefully all of this will be a recipe for success.

My "student" who is really not a student at all but the friend who's home I stayed at during my last two trips to Vegas has been working on his game. I spent 6 or 7 hours watching him play online during this past trip, reviewing hands, and discussing strategy for the 9-handed games in which he plays in. He is being very stubborn and resisiting change for the most part, unwilling to get his 100bb stack in to the middle in situations that demand it. In his defense, he moved to Las Vegas in 1978 and remembers a much more passive game where the good players were nits and would sit back and collect the money. I don't think this holds true as much today as in yesteryear. I have promised him a few hours a week of help to review his hands. Hopefully he will progress from a 2.5 year break even player to a goal of 1bb/100 winner before rakeback. He is considering retiring soon and just getting him to that winrate would suffice for him to maintain his standard of living. If only I could get him to stop folding AK and QQ preflop...sigh.

There are 3 more events left in the WCOIP series on FeltStars.com. I have not won a second event yet so my wrist is still without a free Rolex. Hopefully I can win one of the last 3 and snag that watch! It concludes on Sunday the 21st, so I'm sure I'll blog sometime after the last event about this week back from Vegas and whether or not I'll be getting a nice new timepiece.

Til Next Time....

WCOIP Event #1

Just a quick note. WCOIP event #1 on FeltStars just finished and I won the tournament. The prize money is peanuts since it was only an $11 buy in with 79 entrants. The good news is that if I can manage to win 1 more WCOIP event then FeltStars will send me a Rolex! I've always wanted one but I dont think I'd ever plunk down that much money for a watch. Hopefully I can snag another title and the Rolex. I'll keep you updated. It will be hard to play 5 or 6 of the events while I am in Vegas, but I'll try my best to squeeze them in.

Til Next Time.....

February Recap and Vegas trip

So February is already over! The month went by really quickly. My month was filled with up and downs in regards to poker, but when the smoke cleared I was relatively pleased with my results. The good side is that I put in 93k hands over the 28 days of February and maintained a win rate of 5bb/100 according to my Hold Em Manager. The bad news is that I actually lost money from hands 60k-93k. I know that I ran a little below EV during this stretch, as well as I was on the wrong end of a bunch of coolers. I also somehow lost money with pocket Aces during this stretch as well. Ultimately though, upon reflection, I feel part of the reason that I lost was due to overconfidence. After starting the month up 50 buy ins in 2 weeks, I felt semi invincible. This "confidence" can be great when it sharpens your reads and helps you think through bluffs better, but "over confidence" can be very harmful. Over confidence can leads to FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome), in which you think that every bluff will work. The problem with that is that you begin to tell not so believable stories. Thinking players will start to sniff out these "bad bluffs" and cost you buy in after buy in. Over confidence also hurt me in that I became a POW (Pay Off Wizard). I stopped relying so much on my reads and started calling most bets of $25-$100 because they seemed "small". The problem is that over a 5k hands session these "small" bets added up.

Luckily I was able to identify these problems and hopefulyy will be able to rectify them in future sessions. The old me would have just jumped up to the next higher limit, but I have my reasons for staying in my current limit for at least several more months, and at least 250k more hands. I'll try to include my graph if possible for the month. Once again the red line is Non Showdown $ (this line in a perfect world would stay around zero or be a bit above, but thats very hard to do). The dark green line is money won. The light green line is ALL in EV (in a prefectly mathematical situation this line would end at the same place as the dark green line). The dark blue line is total winnings for the month including rakeback. Finally, the light blue line is winnings at Showdown (This total minus the red line total equals the actual money won, or dark green line, before rakeback is added in).

Tomorrow I am leaving for Las Vegas for 11 days.  I am really looking forward to seeing my friends while I'm there, as well as grubbing up at some of my favorite restaurants that I miss from my time living in LV.  My plan is to play some cash games while there, along with one or two tournaments going on at the Wynn Classic.  Also, I'm hoping to go to my friends house and watch him play online to help me improve my game as he is an unbelievably talented player.  Other than that, I will just enjoy being in the city that always feels like home to me.

The WCOIP (World Championship of Internet Poker) on FeltStars begins today. It is small buy in tourneys ranging from $1 to $100. The neat promotion accompanying it is that if you win 2 events (and i promise some fields will be 50 players or less) you will win a Rolex Submariner watch along with the prize money. I will be trying my best to play as many events as my schedule allows in hopes of getting a free Rolex! The schedule is as follows:

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OF INTERNET POKER TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

1
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 1
7:30 PM
$10 + $1

2
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 2
7:30 PM
$5 + $0.50

3
NO LIMIT (6 HANDED)
MARCH 4
7:30 PM
$5 + $0.50

4
POT LIMIT OMAHA (10 HANDED)
MARCH 6
4:30 PM
$5 + $0.50

5
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 7
4:30 PM
$25 + $2.50

6
NO LIMIT WITH REBUYS AND 1 ADD ON (10 HANDED)
MARCH 8
7:30 PM
$1 + $0.25

7
POT LIMIT OMAHA (9 HANDED)
MARCH 9
7:30 PM
$10 + $1

8
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 11
7:30 PM
$20 + $2

9
POT LIMIT OMAHA HI-LO (9 HANDED)
MARCH 13
4:30 PM
$20 + $2

10
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 14
4:30 PM
$50 + $5

11
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 18
7:30 PM
$30 + $3

12
POT LIMIT OMAHA MAIN EVENT (9 HANDED)
MARCH 20
4:30 PM
$50 + $5

13
NO LIMIT MAIN EVENT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 21
4:00 PM
$100 + $9

If you need money on the site to play the events, or havents signed up for a FeltStars account yet, email me at bootnteepoker@yahoo.com and I'll try my best to get you set up.

Other than all that good stuff, not much is new. Kim and I are becoming anxious and excited about our wedding in May. I guess I better get to packing for Vegas.

As a side note:  I thought this blog was deleted before publishing due to a misclick so I just spent another 30 minutes creating a similar (but not nearly as detailed because I was super tilted) blog.  I will just post this original one as I think it is better.  Hope whoever, if anyone, reads this enjoys my 1.5 hours of work between the two!!  Haha.

Til Next Time....