Still down from my high of $155, but I tried the strategy I outlined yesterday (early this morning) and I’m finishing the day with $120. Not bad, considering I started my most recent two hour session with $75. So it seems to be a combination of the strategy and timing. My most profitable sessions seem to be between 10PM and midnight. Catch me on Party then.

Lost $70 today. Yeesh. I chased hands I shouldn’t have chased. I let other players scare me out of pots. Overall, I saw the pot stealers lose money to the tight-aggressive players. I should have been one of them.

So this leaves me with just a little over half my profits at Party. Still not bad, but it makes me feel like an idiot blowing through half my bankroll. I think I’ll try playing two tables simultaneously and folding everything but the best hands. Hopefully that’ll increase my chances of getting good cards, and give me enough action to prevent me from playing a hand out of boredom. I’ll also step up the aggression on the hands I do play.

Check back in a couple nights for an update.

This isn’t going to turn into a poker blog… there are plenty of those out there, including Iggy’s Poker Blog. He pointed me to a bulletin board post from David Ross, who’s trying to play online poker for a living. Ross notes:

Don’t I know it! As I said in the post just below this one, my high for the day was $175. 50 minutes later and I was down to $155. Sure, it’s loose change to a guy like Ross, but the point is that I started chasing with overcards and paying to see winning hands. Brutal. It’s just not worth it. If I play enough hands, someone else will show me if the guy who’s betting into me is an aggro bluffing river rat with shit hole cards.

Gotta keep focused on profits.

After taking advantage of a PokerStars deposit bonus of a measley 15% back in February, I basically ran through my bank, leaving me with a dollar or so. It’s enough to play at the nickel or penny tables, but seriously, that’s a freaking waste of time. I’ll go back from time to time for the freeroll or frequent player point tourneys to get some NL practice in, but I don’t think I’ll be doing much more than that.

Ten days ago I bought in for $50 at PartyPoker. Party rocks. If you play well, you’ll catch lots of wins against the fish. 6 days later I had doubled up and cashed out my initial $50. Nice. Nothing better than playing with Other People’s Money.

A couple days ago I switched over to the 1/2 tables from the .50/1 tables. It’s more expensive, but provided I play well enough to minimize my losses and win enough medium and big pots, I tend to come out on top. I’ve gotten some great hands: Royal Flush, four Kings (twice), Aces full of eights, etc. Gotten some good winning flops, too.

Today I started with $122 in the bank. I ended the day with $155 (low – $100, high – $175). I cashed out $50 to Neteller (by accident) and another $50 to my bank account. I’d prefer to have $100 in my bank on Party, but I can wait for a promotion to give me a little extra. Actually, a friend of mine was watching me play earlier and liked what he saw. He may put in some real money and get me a referral bonus.

But even with all this money floating around, I’m still down $150 since June. $250 of all money I’ve spent was wasted on PokerStars, so that’s not too bad. Now that school’s back in session and I’m hip-deep in work, I think I’ll cut back on my play a bit. Hopefully I can keep up this run when I do play and get into the black overall. I have some poker purchases I want to make with my poker money: Books, software, etc.

Today I lost 50 bucks or so at Hollywood Park playing at the $2 table. I played my hands right, but I didn’t get enough good hands, and there were callers who would outdraw me with weak(er) cards. Pocket Aces, pocket Queens. Ugh.

It could have been worse: at one point I was down more than 90, and managed to score two big pots and one small pot in the space of 5 hands. That made for a pretty good comeback.

Anyway, my point is that maybe it’s not a good idea to play at a table where you can lose your stack if you have 5 good hands that get outdrawn by some idiots and the house takes $3 a pot.

On another note, I won another few dollars at Empire, putting me decidedly in the black. One pot was won with a full boat, 9’s full of 8’s (I had pocket 9’s). Another I took after the flop with a pair of Kings, flop showing a pair of 2’s and an Ace. Pre-flop betting was capped with two callers, so the pot was decent, especially for a hand that had the potential of going disastrously wrong (e.g., someone making a boat with a lower pocket pair).

So maybe .50/1 with a .50 rake for every $5 is more my game.