I'm in the mood...

I don't know, maybe I'm back into the mood for poker. Two nights in a row working on the quest. And last night I actually made modest progress. Up $1.59 for the session bringing the bankroll to $23.30.

I tried a few times to use the Phil Gordon approach. As I suspected, it didn't work particularly well. If you raise it a reasonable amount, people seem to look at it like, "It's only six cents more." If you raise it a lot, they seem to think you're trying to buy it and will call anyway. I suppose that doesn't mean the approach is a complete failure. My pocket aces probably took a considerably larger pot than they otherwise would have due to my early raise.

I have no hard evidence to back it up, but I'm of the opinion that at this level a strategy I'll call "tight speculation" is the right way to go. Normal tight aggressive play, modified to play a lot more speculative hands where you can get in cheap. If you don't hit the flop big or have a ton of outs to a monster, bail to any pressure.

Last night I got mostly junk right up until just before I had to quit. I was down over $1 at one point, but slowly worked my way back up. Then I hit a couple big hands. I would have had a nice double-up in there too if the other guy hadn't hit a 3-outer at the river to split the pot. I ended up losing money to the rake on that one.

The Bodog Blogger tournament is tonight. Not sure yet if I'll make that one or not. Give it a try if you haven't already.

Quest for fire

I seem to have again sort of lost steam with online poker. My quest to turn $5 into $5000 has bogged down at about $20. A bit shy of the goal.

Last night was the first time I've played in several weeks. The cards were not kind. I was actually lucky to finish the session down less than a dollar.

The bankroll now stands at... drumroll please... $21.71!!!

I have to admit I'm having some trouble reading the players in the shallow end of the pool. The play tends toward the erratic and illogical. One hand sticks out in my mind. I didn't lose that much, but I just sat there shaking my head afterward.

Just two of us in the pot. The flop brings an ace and two rags. Check, check. So when I catch second pair with a good kicker on the turn I figure I'm good. Nope. The other guy had a medium ace that I guess he wasn't proud of. I can't believe he thought he was slow playing it. Of course, I can't believe he didn't bet it out either, so my belief doesn't appear to count for much.

I was going through some old email today and came upon a Full Tilt article by Phil Gordon I hadn't read. He was basically espousing the raise-or-fold strategy for pre-flop play. I have a suspicion it wouldn't work particularly well at this level, but maybe I should give it a try anyway. Anything to get things moving again.