First post

For my first lil post.. a brief history of how I started and where am I at today..

I first heard of Texas Holdem, prolly like alot of people, watching the movie, 'Rounders'... I thought it was a decent movie and did not really pay much attention to the card playing aspect of the movie.. shortly after that, I started watching Bravo's Celebrity Showdown, which did pique my interest in the game. I then signed up to Pacific Poker and Ultimatebet and played there for a couple weeks, play money only.. and after a few intial and humiliating losses, started winning pretty regularly. It quickly became boring... so, I did a search on the internet for local places that might be hosting tournaments and found that the local Clicks Billiards, did, and does, host a tournament.. you can qualify for the 'money game' during 1 of 3 tourneys every friday night.. they start at 7pm and each last about 2 hours. The 2 chip leaders from each table, qualify to play in the 'money game' the following Wednesday. I've qualified every week the last 3 months, except for once, where I learned that if your serious about poker, you should not drink, at all. The prize is 100 bucks for first place. I've taken it twice.. and always made it to the final table.

I learned playing with real people is different than playing with online people. I learned that playing tight/aggressive, ie, being patient, is the key to going far in a tourney, eithre live, or online.

Ok, towards the middle of October.. I went and took 50 dollars I had left from one of my tourney wins, and deposited into Party Poker. I had been playing there off and on with play money and winning pretty much top 3 in every SnG I played, it made me cocky. So, now with my real money in the pot, how much different could the 5+1 SnG's be? Well, alcohol and poker do not mix and niether does attitude(cockyiness) and poker mix. The 6 hours or so it took me to win that damn 50 bucks was gone in less than 30 minutes. So, do I logoff and wait to win another local tourney before I try the real money again? hell no! I deposit 55 bucks more, from my own money, ie, my money for groceries, gas, rent, et al. Why 55? cuz that would be 5 10+1 SnG's, of which I was certain of myself, since I was no longer cocky!!!!

To sum it up... I made my initial 50 dollars back and sent it back to my bank account...and have been hovering between 35 and 100 ever since.. til about 5 days ago. I had a really bad run of cards and just kept putting money into partypoker and now after five 50 dollar deposits, my bankroll is at 51.75. I am not discouraged. I was, and that is partly why I let myself do that. I lost it experimenting with ring games ( .50/1.00 ) and instead of quitting while I was ahead there, just tilted, big time.. tried to make it back with the SnG's, as i did before, and was way too emtionally challenged to be playing.... there were a few bad beats as well... my Kings got raised by the BB, I called. flop is 448 or such. I bet out turn and river, which are rags J7 I think and he flips 4 8. Now, I had a hard time not mucking those kings to rockets, but I had put him on AK or AQ, just by the way he had played.. and besides, i never mind losing KK vs AA. the idiot had 4 8, raised my raise before the flop.... he was trying to bluff me outta an A10 or QJs or such, he didn't know I had KK.. then the flop and kapow! he had me. the bets for turn and river weren't that huge cuz i figured he had AA and he just called me....and I had chips left, for the next bad beat......

So, now today... I think about poker alot, and I try to figure out how much value to put on Q8s depending on position and what happened with the bets and such afore it got to me....

I feel I'm a good player with still much to learn.

Hopefully I will keep this blog up to date and folks with frequent it with advice, suggestions and whatnot...

Peace