First off, what a sweet move by pokerstars to do that 20% thing. I was honestly never going to play there again until they did this. First I thought, PS was fucking me when I got 200 bucks in my account but then got the 1000 in my account today. Yeah!

Having been playing as much this month as last month but am playing pretty good and have worked my bankroll up to a level where I am ready to play .5/1 nl again. Really looking forward to that, and I think that I will be more humble this time and respect that other players have hands sometimes. I notice that when I am too cocky I just raise and 3 bet and call too much. You cant win every hand and sometimes you just have to lay down. Also, I really think playing 5 tables or less is the most optimum for me. Since I am still a novice, I really want to focus on player tendencies and things and its hard to do that w/ 6+ tables.

Its been really helpful psychologically reading other member's blogs and reading that even the top top players struggle and have crazy sessions where everyone is hitting flushes or sets against them. Now, when that happens to me, I just shrug and say variance and since it happens so often, Im starting to get numb to people hitting runner runner on me or 2 outing me. I guess its just part of poker.

In an effort to force myself to just play .25/5nl for a week or so more, I cashed out 1k from my account. Also, it felt pretty good cashing out an amount that essentially paid for my Cardrunners initiation, poker tracker and hud gear, cancelled out the 2 times I bought in for 200 and 250 respectively, and a few more bucks to spare. Now, I was freerolling in my head, well, there is all the hours spent playing........but lets ignore that. Anyways, the next morning, I was 5 tabling .25/.5 nl and got bad beated for a couple of stacks and I tilted, bad!! After getting sick of he, I started playing every other game.......I even sat in on a 30-60 stud game my buddy was sitting at and lost 250 in one hand. Long story short, after the dust cleared, I had 180 bucks in my account! I contemplated retirement for being so stupid, but in the end I decided to try to grind it back up and if I busted I would go from there. 2 days later, I started w/ 2 tables of .25/5nl and man was I focused. I was playing really well and after one 3 hour session rolled my stack back up to 530. Yeah! Also, I noticed that i was only 2000 fpps away from 285 bucks, so I guess maybe im not dead yet. One more thing, I crossed the 40k hands mark during that session, and my main observation is that bank roll managment and patience are the 2 key factors in poker development. I haven't learned either.

Damn is it hard! I've had a little set back in my progress at the .5/1 nl tables. I've played 18k hands and my winrate is only 2bb/100 hands. I started out real good, but ran into a road block the last couple of days. I was playing with a bankroll of 25 buyins and I feel like that is a little short to play that level comfortably. I mean losing five buyins is like 20% of your bankroll, and unfortunately I've done it a few times. My graph looks like the stock market these days; way up and then way down.

The problems I've been having are playing too many hands, making too many moves, and getting tilted by aggro players playing back at me a lot. I've got to learn how to identify who are solid lag players and who are lag tards or I have to just stay away from them. I feel like I've been playing way too aggressive at this level because I think that since the players are better, more of them are making moves on me. I've got to go through my hands and start plugging leaks.

In the mean time, I've dropped back down to the .25/.5 level and had a real good session winning 6 buyins in 1500 hands. The comfort level is just enormous and I can understand why some people never take a shot. Its hard to pass up easy money with little stress. However, my competitive nature wants to push forward constantly. But, I'm not going to play .5/1 nl until I have 40 buyins to play with It might take a while but I feel like it will make me a better player and I wont be playing as scared at the .5/1 tables.

Just finished a 2 hour session playing 6 tables of .5/1 nlhe. Im really starting to play well and adjust to the bigger game. Definitely more solid players and even the short stacks are pretty good. Not too many passive players at all and if there are, I'm not the only person jumping all over them. People are re-isolating me and doing other tricky stuff, but I think that I am making good adjustments. Im trying to play my hands differently like checking when i hit top pair after i raised preflop and checking behind after hitting top pair. Also, Im c betting less and basically playing more solid but varying my play. This definitly seems to help and Im getting paid off I think because of this deception. Im such a dork but I have to say I LOVE the challenge of figuring out the quirks of each of these levels and its AWESOME to get good almost instant feedback (cash) from your adjustments. Its really satisfying. I cant wait to progress but Im still trying to be patient and really beat up a level before I move on. Right now, Im beating the .5/1 nl game at a rate of 7.2bb/100 hands but I think that it can be better and that I am probably spewing too much cash right now. I'll have to analyze more hands.

I really think that poker is here to stay and once Congress figures out how to tax this thing and passes a legalization bill there is going to be a huge amount of new players and it will be really profitable to people who have taken the time to really learn this game. I remember the partypoker days and it seemed like people really didn't know what they were doing. I think the future will be like that. Well, Im hoping at least.

Im so stupid. I've heard of rakeback before but never really thought about it. Now that I am playing a lot of hands and using poker tracker (tells you how much rake is going out), I feel like such an idiot. I don't think the $50 VIP things are that great at Stars, which is where I play. Maybe, if you make gold or supernova, it is better, but I had no idea that poker sites rake so big or rather that it REALLY adds up. I read in the cardrunners forum that rakereduction is trying to get rakeback for existing users on Full Tilt . That would BE SWEET! For now, I joined up to Absolute poker (only site that I don't have an existing account), and will probably be playing there a lot more for the rakeback.

I've continued my good run in .25/.5 nlhe and have had pretty good success in dabbling in .5/1 nlhe. I am running at 10.4bb/100 hands for the month of april over 10,000 or so hands and feel really confident that I can beat the .25/.5nl game. Now, even when I get sucked out on, I feel confident that if I just play focused and keep making good plays, I'll get it back, and lately, I have been. Before, I would get frustrated, play worse and end up losing a bunch of buy ins. Its amazing what confidence can do and I'm really glad that I decided to start so small and work up only after I have managed to beat the level convincingly. That being said, I am not rolled yet for .5/1 nl so I'm going to play a combination of .25/.5 and .5/1 so as to control any huge downswing.

Some observations about .5/1 nlhe v. .25/.5 nlhe:

1. First off, I think there is a huge difference. There are people making moves in .5/1! Way more raising and three betting and bluffing. WAY MORE! Not as many limpers either.

2. Can't make weak c bet w/ nothing expecting folds. In .5/1, the players recognize weakness and raise. In fact, I think the players make more mistakes at this level being over aggressive as oppossed to overly passive at .25/.5. I've only played 1500 or so hands of .5/1 so take these observations for what they are worth.

3. People actually fold at this level. Not as many calling stations.

I can tell that it isn't going to be easy to make the jump up and start beating the .5/1 nlhe game regularly but its going to be a lot of fun trying. I finally get to make some creative moves.............or at least try them!

Wish me luck

UGH! Poker hurts so much when people suck out on you. Dropped 5 buy ins tonight and just about every big pot I had the best hand when the money went in. How is this possible? To get so unlucky in one night? I guess this is the variance that I always hear about, but when it happens, its like the world is crashing down around you. You start to think that there is a higher power punishing you for some reason. You start to see the 2 outer come out before it comes out and then bang! Its like your visualization of a bad card generates that card in reality. Someone should really study that phenomenon.

I have to figure out a way to change my karma mid session, but it seems like once you start getting a few bad beats, that there is nothing you can do and its almost inevitable that you are going to lose no matter what you do or how you play. Its times like this that I really understand and appreciate how strong mentally the top players are. Keeping one's emotions in check and staying positive when people are sucking out on you is SOOOO dificult. I know I know that you are supposed to say, "i got my money in good, so Im happy...." but FUCK, I want to be rewarded for my good play and I want fish to be punished for their bad play.

Sorry for the ranting but at least I didn't post the bad beats. BIG PICTURE BIG PICTURE BIG PICTURE BIG PICTURE. Maybe if I say that 1000 more times, I'll feel better. Right now, I want to destroy something.

While Im on a roll and killing time at work before I go golfing, I wanted to write a little about CTS and his blog. I too went to William and Mary for college so I identify with him a little. But not that much. When I first watched one of his videos, I was in AWE. My brain was doing somersaults. It was like the first time I watched Tiger Woods ( I know cheesy, but it really was). This guy opened up a whole new world to me and I finally understood how deep the well of thinking in poker goes. And its DEEP! I always thought I was a good poker player and that, I guess arrogance, held me back from really learning how to play, but when I saw that 45 min video from CTS, I understood how bad and naive I was. WOW, thats all I can say. I've got a lot to learn, but it is going to be a great journey. Im amazed that that guy ever loses.

I just read Empire's recent blog entry and thought it was hilarious. The guy seems like someone I wouldn't want to hang out with but I definitely respect him. The guy should be proud of his accomplishments, they are very impressive. However, instead of hating on someone like that, it gives me more motivation to play well and succeed. It reminds me about the time I was studying for the bar exam. I was super nervous, everyone was franctic, and I though to myself, "geez, if I fail, I will finally be exposed for the idiot I am.........etc. etc. (that reminds me of that sweet Radiohead song, but I digress)" However, one of my buddies said look, U. of Miami has like a 60% passing rate, and I thought to myself and looked around at my peers and said, "there is no fucking way I am in the bottome 40% of these people" So, when I read Empire's blog and his success, I thought, if that dude can do it, I know I can. Thanks for the motivation Empire and keep rocking and "ballin!".

I've never done a blog before but I wanted to chronicle my poker journey and thought what better place to do it than on Cardrunners. First off: my history. I am 31 about to turn 32 and I started playing poker a LONG time ago when I was still in Junior High. My friends and I would play a crazy 5 card draw game w/ aces, dueces, one eyed faces, and the suicide king as wild. Needless to say it was a pretty crazy game. We didn't play w/ an ante, but since we all loved action, it got pretty crazy. I was always one of the winners but not the biggest winner. My buddy Jon always dominated (found out later he was stacking the deck, but he probably would have won anyways) and my friend Steve always did well. I guess we were the smart kids in high school and we would always fleece the "cool" kids. After 5 card draw we started playing 7 stud hi lo, Omaha, and a crazy game we called double barrelled shotgun where you got 7 cards and then arranged them in whatever order you wanted and flipped over one card at a time and bet. It always ended up somone reping a flush v. a fullhouse and the 4th street would always be BIG BETTING. After we got our licenses, my friend Jon started going to Atlantic City all the time grinding 7 stud and I would go, but generally just play blackjack. Jon started destroying 7 stud and even played w/ Phil Ivey when he was still grinding 3-6 stud.

After that I took a long absence from poker until the online revolution started. I was in law school in Miami at the time and started playing sng's on starts and party and did pretty good. I would usually roll up my stake in sngs and then blow it all in the highest cash game I could afford. Eventually, I turned to mtt and actually did pretty good. I made a lot of nice scores on Partypoker and probably netted about 30k in multis. However, I had horrible bank roll management and lost a lot at NLHE and especially LHE. Then Party went busto and I tried to make the transition to Full Tilt and Stars but I found that the mtt were so much tougher than Party and after depositing and going bust a bunch of times, I decided to take a break from online poker. Working at a lawfirm didn't help.

Fast forward to a year ago, and I started reading about Brian Townsend and all of his exploits and that lead me to Cardrunners. I started reading Townsend's blog and then Stingers' blog and was like, Holy Shit, these guys are awesome. So I anted up and started playing again, with a focus on cash games. However, it didn't go to well and I went bust a couple of more times. Then I decided, to hell w/ it, Im going to join Cardrunners and see what these guys are doing right and what I am doing wrong. I started w/ Taylor's videos and loved them. Sbrugby's videos were also good but they were a little above my head and his super aggro style was tough to emulate. Stinger's early videos were also great and I really felt like I was learning the next levels of thinking in poker. I even purchased Poker tracker and HUD to track my progress. HOwever, I still wasn't winning consistently. I decided to start small (even though my BR could afford bigger games) but I wanted to feel like I could crush the smaller games before moving up so I started at .25-.50 nl. I just couldn't beat the game though. But, I continued watching vids and analyzing my hands. Still no success. I started questioning whether I was good enough to win.

I took a little break and just fooled around the site looking at other blog entries. I started reading Gordo's blog and LOVED it. So insightful, no ego, just straight stream of consciousness. And it got me to start playing Omaha, and I loved it, and started doing really well. My BR was about 140 bucks when I started, but I doubled it the first time I played. I played the .25-5 plo 6 max and the .5-1 full ring and was getting hit by the deck, which was nice. I ran my account to about 800 bucks and thought this is it. Well, turns out, I was just running hot and had one big down swing to 320 or so.

Crestfallen, I pulled up the NLHE tables again and finally started playing and winning consistently. Playing omaha a few days really expanded my levels of thinking and have been doing well ever since. Thats only a week ago, but I really feel like I have turned the corner. I have run my bankroll up to 1k and I can finally look at my poker tracker w/out throwing up. Its mainly green now and I love it. It is SO MUCH EASIER playing when you are winning.

Anyways, thats my poker story and hopefully it continues because I don't want to be a lawyer my whole life. Don't get me wrong. I have my own firm w/ a buddy of mine and we make really good money, but, romantically, I love the idea of being to be any where in the world and making money on a laptop. Thats the dream and I have to thank Cardrunners for keeping it alive in me. So, Im sure no one else will read this blog, but I wanted to chronicle my journey nonetheless. WIsh me luck and I'll keep the blog and progress updated.

Brian