Second Place

Baby Freeroll. Admittedly, when we were heads-up, I got sloppy, since I wanted the game to end. Still, there's almost a trend here.

OTOH, I did lose a 1€ buy-in game without placing ITM, so... maybe I'm just better than the complete beginners?

Playing mid-late with a combination of believing opponent's bluffs and being ridiculously aggressive, seems to work.

*edit*

Also, third place on another tourney today.

And another, 2nd July.

Long time no play.

Huh.

After a long while, I played some free MT tournaments online, and got to three final tables. Won one, got a spot in a satellite tournament from the other and... well, 8th place from the last one.

PartyPoker Got Exciting!

They recently gamified their game. :D

Basically, they added achievements, and something they call 'missions', which are basically achievement-goals, or achievement-sets, which do grant some minor rewards, too. 

Anyway, got me playing for a few days. 

I really suck.

I've Been Playing Again

So... I haven't felt much like playing, as my paycheck is so much better than whatever I could make at poker with my skill level.

That changed a while back, and I've been playing some.
One of the changes in my attitudes towards Hold'em, has been, that I find zero-sum games to be essentially immoral, so I think I'll only be playing sponsored / guaranteed tournaments from now on.

Since I've admitted to myself I'm not very good, really, I've changed my strategy to playing really tightly, not bluffing (outside semi-bluffs, anyway), thinking others don't bluff much, and folding if I don't hit anything better than a pair on a flop. I'm also very aggressive with the top hands I play.

Of course, those are just guidelines. A lot of depends on the table and my reads, too. My reads are pretty good, I just find myself not trusting them enough.

Say, I've put a lot of chips in a pot, and a card puts a potential completed draw on the table. If my mind tells me another player just made their hand and that I'm beaten... I have really hard time laying down my hand.

But... yeah, basically. I need luck to win, and I'm tailoring my play style around that a bit.

I Cashed

Okay, so... Since I have a day job now, my playing has been more for fun as of late.
Last night, with my bankroll of about $30, I first played in a $11 double-or-nothing game, where I cashed,
after which I played in a $11 buy-in $4000 Guaranteed tournament.

Yes, I played that SnG just so I would have the money to play in that tournament.

In any case, I was doing well when, at around 11PM, the game went to wait, before a 5 minute break. I was rather sleepy at that point, so I set up an alarm due in 10 minutes and took a nap.

That was the plan, anyway.

As the alarm sounded, I turned it off and went back to sleep. This morning, as I checked my bankroll at PartyPoker, it had gone up a little - a nice amount, really, but not by much. I currently have about $45 there, meaning I can now play 1-2 cent NL games, or 10-20 cent FL games, while sticking to Chris Ferguson's suggestions - never buy in for more than 5% of your bankroll and leave table once you hit 10%.

Cool like bowties.

Another losing streak

There are two big reasons for those.

One, my hand range tends to be too wide for fixed limit.

Two, I attempt to bluff a bit too often. 

Bluffing in FL is very hard - you have the people who mulishly call with any hand even if there are overcards, potential flush draws and so forth on the board. Also, calling is cheap. 

In NL you usually only have to worry about the other guy having the hand you're bluffing to have.

As for hand range... well, Hellmuth says suited connectors are like candy - you play and win with one, it's hard to put any of them down. 

This is true. 

Naturally, I haven't had an opportunity to play SnG's since those require a winning streak. Also, my tournament performance has been shoddy.
I usually start out doing okay, but large blinds in addition to the fact that most tournaments run so late, local time, I'm ready to go to sleep anyway.

A little bit of gambling

So... lots of ups and downs - I'm still between 30 and 40 dollars on my bankroll. 

Some of the downswings are due to playing too much - for a certain reason I was trying to gather a certain amount of frequent player miles, so to speak, but that's past.

Anyhoo, just for fun, when I have a good run, I play a $1 SnG. A ten-seater pays around $5 for winning. 

If I happen to place first, I then play a $3 SnG. And so forth. 

If I happen to lose, or not place first, I start from the beginning... A self-imposed tournament, if you will.