Another milestone

The Quest has passed another small milestone. The bankroll is now over $200. It's been quite a while since I started with that measly $5. The most notable jump has been since Christmas when I first started playing the Double-or-Nothing tournaments. Those have been incredibly lucrative, growing the bankroll by 66% in under two months. And that includes a couple weeks when I didn't play at all due to travel and lack of an Internet connection. (Which is also why I haven't been posting regular blog entries.)

Despite a few recent losses, my ROI on these is still over 21%. I'm not sure if that's really good or not, but I'm thinking about asking my financial advisor if DoN tournaments are an allowable investment for my IRA.

The competition at these, even in the shallow end where I'm playing, definitely seems to have tightened up recently. I'm seeing lots of players with VP$IP's under 20%. I suspect it's even worse as you move up the ladder.

I played one tournament today where I got absolute crap cards. The most playable hand I got was KQo, but somebody put in a big raise before it got to me and folding seemed the proper move. When I finally got an ace, I was in the SB and it folded to me. I had already blinded down to the point where I needed to make a move and this seemed as good a time as any. I pushed and, wouldn't you know it, the BB has pocket jacks. I make it all the way to 75/150 blinds, play one single hand the whole time, and run into a pocket pair. So it goes...

The other two I've played so far today went much better. I squeaked by in one and dominated the last half of the other. Somewhat surprisingly, or maybe not considering how things have tightened up, the last hand in the latter was played very well by one of the other players. The shortie pushes all-in for just a bit over 2BB. I call with something like K7o. (The shortie was UTG, so he could be moving with any two cards here.) One other bigger stack calls. We check it all the way down. The other big stack had QQ the whole way. Didn't raise pre-flop, didn't raise after the flop despite his queens being an overpair the whole way. It's refreshing to see it played correctly.