ITH Poker Forum

[scapegote]

Well, it's been a loooooong time since I've gotten any serious amount of hands in, and an even longer time since I've been able to post a journal entry. I moved out of my friends place right after my last journal entry and into a new place, a really nice house with 1 other guy. Since I left my old college I had to turn in the laptop that they provided me with, and I've been trying to get a computer from dell since that time. It took me almost two weeks to order it, get it shipped during the holidays, and then take reciept of it, which I did on the 27th.

During this time, so much stuff outside of poker was going on, including family christmas and what not. To avoid all the nasty details, I had a very stressful week last week, which didn't help my mood when I launched back into $5/$10 shorthanded games.


Tuesday, December 28th, 2004

I'd managed to spend my bankroll down to $2000, even less then the already skimpy $2500 I was playing on. The problem, I needed money. I still have money in the bank, but I really don't want to touch it if I don't need to. I would view it as a failure in poker. So, needing to pull $300 for rent and another $100 for food from my bankroll in the next couple days I sat down to play, I told myself that if I dropped to $1000 I would drop down and play 3/6 full. Not exactly matthew's bankroll management system.

I never thought I'd come as close to 1k as I did. I dropped all the way down, $650 the first night. I wasn't playing great, but it was mostly bad luck followed shortly by worse luck. As far as needing to withdraw money goes, I was not sitting pretty, I'd be below 1k if I took the money I needed for living out of my bankroll at this point. I went to bed and hoped the next day would turn things around.


Wednesday, December 29th & Morning of Thursday, December 30th

I actually went back to the camp I worked at this summer to have our staff re-union, a couple of the people I was hoping would be there had come, and I had a great time. It felt like being home again, I got a number of one of my good friends that lives in GR too, so hopefully we'll get together and hang out more often.


Afternoon & Evening Thursday, December 30th


This is the day that made me realize I never want to play severely under bankrolled again. If you think that you are a somewhat unemotional poker player, try playing with rent on the line while bad beat after bad beat is destroying your bankroll. The one I remember most went something like this.

I have AK, raise before the flop, couple callers, flop AJ5, bet, call call. Turn 2 bet, call fold. River 6 bet, raise??. I call, and he flips up 62o, no crap.

This set me off, I went to hit my bed (now my computer chair since I didn't get the desk I asked for for christmas), and slapped it as hard as I could. Unfortunately my room was dark and my cell phone was laying on the bed. My hand went completely numb after shooting with pain for a few seconds. I checked it to see if I had possibly broken anything, realized that was not likely, and continued playing with my left hand. I cooled down and actually continued playing relatively well. Dropping within $20 of the 1k mark before I started to hit some hands. I went on a rush, and finished off with 900 hands for a +$352 for the day.

Friday, December 31st

I sat down hoping to continue the previous days rush, and man did I. It started off slow, wavering between -100 and +100, then after about an hour, it took off. I played two tables for a good portion of the night, playing straight through new years (no plans because of one of the "nasty details" I left out involving a girl). The tables were so good I had problems getting up to take a bathroom break. I managed to get in 942 hands before getting to sleep at about 4 am. Managing a massive day of +$1,372. This was my biggest winning day since my return this summer. I withdrew $400 and my bankroll is sitting pretty at $2673.


I guess I'm not really "wrapping up" anything, since I'm not doing a year in review (it's too much for me to fathom right now), and my goals for the new year are about to be typed up and posted seperately. The one thing I've learned about myself is I love cards more than I expected, I haven't been playing a ton recently, and I'm starting to view it more like a job (less enthusiatic), but I still enjoy it much more than anything else I've done. More about that in my goals. Above all, it got me through the year. So Happy New year to everyone, keep the fingers to the felt.

Scapegote

[kw]

Scape,

Great read. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to the "goals" post.

And, as I mentioned last night, I'll be looking to you for advice when I decide to move to 5/10.