Let's Blog, Shall We?

OK, it’s been a long time since I posted anything. I seem more inclined to write about bigger events, away from the humdrum of the daily grind. However, that is me, a daily grinder. So here’s a little peak into the Daily DOMIT.

I’m actually rather excited today. Yesterday and the day before I passed a few milestones and am feeling proud for the micro and low limit person that I am. This month is my first month making over $800 (Whoohoo!). When you’re grinding the micros, $20-$30 in a day is awesome (-grin-). The Binion’s NLHE (that I’ve blogged about in the past) helped make that possible, and it’s actually something out of the ordinary, but I’ll take it! It’s still money that I made and will help give myself a goal for following months. How shall I go for that goal if I don’t make it to Binion’s? Well, lately I’ve been trying to move up levels in certain areas and I’m hoping that I’ll be successful. If not, I’ll take it from there.

Also, I’ve reached certain dollar amounts on certain sites, like Planet and Paradise. Planet and Pacific are my micro-grinding origins. I’ve hit a high in Pacific a while back and already cashed some out. Ahh, cashing out. What started as an experiment, taking a free $20 that Pacific gave me, and making it into hundreds via micro grinding, was thrilling. Similarly with Planet, I won $8 in a freeroll a long time ago and yesterday hit a high there (and, this is after transferring $100 to my wife’s account a little while back—which she more than tripled in a shorter time than I would have been able to, lol).

Paradise, in a way, I’m more proud of. We had $40 there that was transferred from a friend. We (Felicia and I) tried Paradise a long time back when we were first starting out in poker. We played Stud for $1/2 stakes. We lost. Felicia did better than I, but in the end, we lost the $40-$50 that we initially transferred. Now, fast forward a year or more, and Felicia has a friend that needed $40 on a different site, like Poker Stars, and was having some trouble of some sort that he needed to do a transfer like this. So Felicia gave him cash on the one site, and he gave us cash on Paradise. And there it sat for a while, until I realized that Paradise offered online Draw poker! I had been doing well in the low limits at Planet so I thought I’d give it a try. The only real problem for me was the fact that the lowest stakes that they offered was $1/2, just like the Stud, and I have been only playing $.25/$.50 on Planet—with an occasional $.25/$.25 pot limit thrown in whenever we could get a game going. Thus started the hit-and-runs!

With only having a $40 bankroll on Paradise, there was always the prospect of my busting on Paradise, yet again. Therefore, I started doing hit-and-runs. First time I played, I actually made a dollar or two. Nervous from playing such “high stakes” (for a micro limit person), I wanted to just take my win and go. Not to mention that the play was 5-handed, and I only had ever played 8-handed Draw poker. Next time I went, I had a little more confidence, but still did a hit and run when I was up a little. Doesn’t sound like a recipe for success, but I just cashed out several hundred from the site, so I’m not complaining.

I’ve also grown over there. Not only am I very confident in my play, but also I’ve started playing $2/4 and $3/6 games. They don’t always look good; I keep an eye on the percentage of people to “see-the-flop” (who enter the pot) and which players are actually playing. There are many games there that over 40% enter the pot, which shows not too tight a game. All too often the $2/4 games are no more than 20% for the flop; in the words or our blogger “godfather”, that’s “uber” tight. (It’s the classic: fold, fold, raise, fold, fold…new hand: raise, fold, fold, fold, fold…new hand: fold, fold, raise, reraise, fold, fold…) Um, no! I look for better games than that. That’s the beauty of online poker: there’s always another, possibly better, game somewhere else!

I’ll also have to give props to Mike Caro and Michael Wiesenberg for the books that they’ve written on Draw (Caro’s section on draw in the “Super System” and Wiesenberg’s “Free Money”). Especially the latter, Mr. Wiesenberg, for being as kind as to answer emails from me and give me hints and suggestions on my play at Paradise. It turns out that Mr. Wiesenberg not only also plays at Paradise, but has seen me play, too. “Aggressive, be more aggressive! Raise, never limp in, raise!” As he stated, there’s more variance, it’s still possible to get outdrawn (like being dealt a pat full house and someone drawing 3 to a pair and making quads!), but all in all, you’ll make more money by pumping the pot when you have the best if it. And you have the best of it a lot in Draw.

Well, this turned into a "uber" long, pat-myself-on-the-back thingy; I didn’t intend that at all. So, let’s get into the daily stuff.

Finally up today around quarter of nine (it’s nice being “retired”). I logged into my old stand by: Pacific Poker. I actually haven’t been doing very well there lately. Loss after loss on the Omaha 8 tables. They’re just as juicy as ever, but I’m just not hitting, getting counter-fitted, or chasing out of frustration. Today, however, I booked a little win. As I was writing this, I played almost two hours of $.50/1 and won $7. Finally! In between hands I made some coffee. That’s one other thing about Pacific that’s never changed, they’re sooo slow! On average _each_ hand will take 2-3 minutes. So, make some coffee, do some writing…I have time.

Once Felicia got up, she reminded me of the free $15 that I got at The Gaming Club. Therefore, a little detour today. Normally, I’d have probably checked out Planet; not much going on there at this time of day…pretty much have to wait for the weekends. Although I have been playing some NLHE there and some $1/2 HE ring games. I haven’t been doing too badly. I did lose my stack one time to an awful player: I flopped a straight, he stayed in with middle pair (?through my check-raise on the flop too?), turns trips and stacks off. I call, he’s got me covered, not believing he’s full based on the board, river double pairs—ouch!

At The Gaming Club, I play a little NLHE. Very little. They game me a free $15 dollars, but that’s also the max buy in for their $.25/$.50 NLHE table! Not very much compared to the blinds. Lost a bit when my flopped top pair is beaten on the turn when my lone opponent turns two pair. This also put a possible straight on the board, and as I raised him on the flop having position, was able to check the river at no cost and see I was beat as I expected. Having just lost half of my free money, I found $.05/$.10 NL and PL games. Should have tried these to begin with, but I was trying to make it to $25 for a freeroll that’s coming up tomorrow :-D After getting into the first game I could, PLHE, I almost doubled up right away with AA. Being lower stakes, max buy in is only $5, but turned it into $9 through that hand. I potted it UTG and got an amazing 4 callers—they must be playing with free money too, lol. Potted on the flop and turn, two callers all-in (unfortunately short-stacked). I think I’ll stay at this table for a while, hehe.

Later in the day, I’ll go to Paradise and check out the tables. In the morning, there’s usually just two tables going, maybe three. Mostly familiar names; grinders. Might as well wait for the fish to start coming in later; unknown names that think they’d like to give Draw poker a try. I keep notes on them all, just in case. I have a database of names we well for those sites that I can’t keep notes. One of these days, I want to write a little script that will be able to pop up the notes after I input a name, instead of having to do a search to find the name. Yes, I know that PokerTracker does this. But no! I’m not paying $40 for a program to _just_ have a database of names, something that I can do myself. I can’t use PT on Paradise for Draw, and I can’t use it on Planet due to the way they do hand histories. For me, it’s worthless. I tried using it on UB, but I didn’t really understand how do to the hand histories with the wacky way they do them. Plus, I don’t play that much hold’em there anyway, as I also play Omaha 8 on that site; and, once again, PT doesn’t do Omaha 8 (which therefore also leaves out Pacific!). So, I’m screwed in all ways for PT.

I’m ending this here. I could go on, but this is enough for even hardcore blog readers to wade through! If you got this far, dang, more power to you! Hope you enjoyed it even a little. I’ll write more later; more inside the Glennie mind, if you really want to see the cobwebs.

Thank you, please drive through.

Posted by Glenn