Focus

Well it's been a while since I made a blog entry. I've decided to drop railbirds for my real "blogging" so far, so good old blogspot will be the only place where you (my imaginary readers) will be able to check how things are going with my poker "career".

September was good for me on the poker side of things. Not only did I have a REALLY good month online after a slow start (finally coming back to playing seriously), but my live game in our friendly home game has brought constant gains. If the first few days of October are any indications, that hot streak seems to be still going on. Funny how sometimes some time away from an activity can bring you insight into it. I really feel that it all clicks now and I've been posting pretty much constant gains in micro-stakes. After putting some money back in my online bankroll and setting up my playing environment properly I have had very good results.

I have set goals for myself and I think this is one of the reasons everything is going so well lately. I stepped down in stakes, going back to 0.01/0.02 and I now follow a more rigorous bankroll management system. I'm not stepping up in stakes until I get 10 buy ins for the next stake and will step back down once if I'm ever down to 8 buy ins. At first, reloading and going down in stakes was a bit hard on my moral (and let's face it, my ego). So that's where my focus is right now. Getting my bankroll to $100 so I can move up to 0.05/0.10 again. Then up to $250 and so on.

I have been mostly focusing on No Limit Hold'Em cash games. I've stopped playing the daily railbirds freerolls, have not really done any Sit & Gos, have not played other games much either. I definitly feel that cash games is where you can get a more constant income. Tournaments involved too much variance for it to be really profitable although the payout when you win a big one is hard to beat. As for other games well I still love them, but it's all about focus right now so I try not to divide my energies on too many different things.

Sit & Gos are a place where I've traditionnaly performed pretty well, and they provide a pretty interesting return on investment when you can do well in them. I will most likely start playing a few sit & gos again (always with the same bankroll guidelines), even though lately I'm enjoying the cash games so much that I have to say I don't miss them all that much.

Last week we had a record home game, sitting an awesome 9 people! People were in a gaming mood too and multiple times people added more money on the table. As usually (and as you can see from my homegame ROI% posted in the results sidebar) I've performed very well there. The action we had last week was just awesome and makes me think that we might be able to up the stakes a bit pretty soon. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while and as a first step towards that I will try to introduce more and more straddles. Having quite a few new people last week it was definitly not the right time for it though.

I have been asked by a few people on railbirds to post a guide to using pokertracker and although I still haven't had the time to sit down and write this (ok that's a bit of a lie... I would have had the time I just decided to play instead) but I think it's an interesting project and should get down to it pretty soon.

I've been working on organizing a fundraiser tourney for a friend. This should be held on November 4th and we still have quite a few things to settle but it should be fun. I won't play in it, I will either be dealing or doing floor. Still not sure which one. Will keep you posted. That's it for now! As part of my "focus" moto I will try to keep this blog updated more regularly.