My Poker Strategy Is Almost A Year Old

I’ve just realised that in a few days this blog will be 1 year old. That means that it is almost a year since I began my determination to turn my poker play around. My starting bankroll was $30 and tonight, it has just topped the $280 mark for the first time.

Admittedly, my blogging effort has been nothing short of deplorable, but I have been playing quite a bit of poker (as well as maintaining all my other online presences) and felt that there would be nothing more sickening for people to have to read than me spouting off about another winning night. But that’s the way it’s gone for the last 2 and a half weeks.

I think I’ve finally gotten a handle on how to play the $10 NLHE cash games at Party Poker. For the first 3 or 4 months I’ve been up and down, mixing good play with some pretty bad play. But just lately I have chosen my moments extraordinarily well and come away with some nice wins.

A good smattering of Gus Hansen wannabes has certainly helped no end with the any two cards system not working quite as well as it does for the great Dane. Funny that.

Anyway, with around a week before the year is up, my poker play has improved out of sight. I’m actually starting to believe that I will be able to move up to the $25 tables within the next year, particularly if my bankroll continues to increase as it has.

I've found that by multi-tabling 2 tables, my game has improved because I'm not tempted to play as many low percentage hands. Not only that, I also find that I'm less likely to chase the draws that I may have done in the past and this has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

My next target milestone is the $300 mark.

Milestone #2 Reached

The milestones are coming much more quickly than first anticipated with my 2nd goal of growing my bankroll to $50 having been achieved last night. It’s amazing what a little bit of focus has done for my game combined with a moderate amount of education. Obviously I still have mountains of learning to do but I am already benefiting from the confidence of experience.

My original projected timeframe for reaching my second milestone profit level was mid-December which puts me way ahead of schedule. This means I’ll have to sit down and set myself some new milestones to aim for – some that are more challenging than the originals. I don’t want to run the risk of drifting along simply because things have gone better than expected. Like in trading the market, when things are going well you’ve got to push it even harder.

After all, my original plan was to play at least 10000 hands at the .02/.04 level and that hasn’t changed. As of last night I still have a further 8200 still to play before moving up the ladder.

Sit N Go

As a little celebration for reaching my 2nd milestone I decided to treat myself to a $3 Sit N Go tournament of Limit Hold-Em. It seems that 8 other people decided that they would get into the spirit of the occasion by allowing me to take down 2nd place. The cash was a nice little bonus but it’s the experience of playing in a tournament that I found even more valuable.

All of this is still very new and exciting for me and I feel a little sorry when I read how some people tell that they like to play 6 tables at once (or more), otherwise it’s just “too boring”.

Current Bankroll Position : +64.52%