May Recap
Hey guys. May was a weird month. I'll try to recap as best as I can remember. So I ended April with a big push to both avoid the freeroll and to win the rake race on FullFlush. So I ended the month a little burn out from playing and with the good problem of having a fairly large balance on FF. I mitigated the problem slightly by losing $1.7k first session of the month, but I still had a large amount of money on FF and hadn't gotten a payment processed in a while. I decided to just take it easy for a few days until a check processed. A few days turned into a week pretty quickly, and so I decided to start playing Bovada again.
It was tough to be motivated to play on Bovada especially since I had a low account balance and started off running bad. I only had about $1.5k in the account and quickly lost a several buyins at $200nl, and left me with a few hundred in the account. I fell into a pattern of getting to a few $100 playing HUSNGs and getting the account up to $800-$1000, losing a few buyins at $200nl and repeating. It wasn't very much fun playing with a short roll and while the SNGs were kinda fun and very beatable, they were also lowish stakes and didn't run often enough for my liking.
After a week or so of this, I decided I might have to play some live poker
. I went to Parx on 5/14and won $245 on a Friday morning playing $1-2and had a decent time. On 5/18 went to Harrah's Philly and got some short stack HU $2-5 action and won nearly $800 in 3.5 hrs. It was fun playing HU live(plus the guy was awful) and then the game went three-handed and I busted both players. Unfortunately they were both buying in for $250 at a time. Then on the 22nd, I went up to Parx to play some $2-5 and it was just miserable. The atmosphere of all the live pros/semi-pro/nits and the super predatory/bum-hunty attitude is just sickening. The table was made up of 7 people who were obviously regulars who all knew each other, me, and one maniac who was obviously gonna lose, but was a fun poker player. He had good ideas about the game, and would be a nightmare HU or 3-handed, but 9 handed the nits took turns taking the nuts vs his hand.
There is nothing wrong with that. They were adjusting correctly. The gross part is they all talk about him while he's at the table to each other like he's not there. They don't give action without the nuts, and almost shamed him for playing the way he did. Berating him, asking why he would do something like that, doesn't he know he's only gonna get called by the nuts, etc.. When he eventually busted, the 8-handed(???!!!) table broke within 5 minutes? The were all fist-bumping and congratulating each other on "how bad" that guy was. I was left with a real nasty taste in my mouth, and its the main reason I hate live poker. All the mediocre regs who nut-peddle and are just soul-draining to play with. Even though I won about $100 in the game in a couple hrs, I was depressed after playing.
All that being said, I was planning on playing a bunch at Harrah's bc the room was running strong promotions for June, and I would be able to make $10-$15 hr just from promotions, on top of really soft games. Then about a week ago, ChicagoJoey had PLO endboss Ben86 on his YouTube podcast. While watching it, I fired up some PLO tables on Bovada and enjoyed it and won a little money. I've dabbled in PLO before and started reading Jeff Hwang's PLO book, watched PLO vids on RIO, etc. So I decided to play a little more just for fun. And I won. And I kept winning. The more I played, the more I love the game. I think I may be completely over to the darkside now. I've played 15 sessions of PLO since then and have won single session. That's pretty crazy since lifetime I only win about 58% of NL sessions and PLO is a much swingier game.
I feel playing the new game has revitalized my interest in poker. Having new goals and challenges makes it much easier to stay motivated, and I feel that I had pretty much plateaued in NL. That's not to say I can't get better, because there is room for a ton of improvement, it's just that in my poker environment I had reached a bit of a peak. I enjoyed playing on FF and was imo, one of the top dogs, at midstakes. There was only 1 other player who would play HU with me and I was beating the games significantly. There were players at high stakes that I'm sure were better, and would play me, but with the slow payouts and concerns about US sites, I didn't want to build or have a bankroll on the site big enough to start play $1k HU vs good players. I enjoyed playing FF midstakes but playing the same games on Bovada isn't as fun bc of the anonymity factor. Without the dynamics of playing the same opponents, it gets boring just playing standard ABC poker on Bovada.
I'm happy to say that after a month and a half I did get a check from FF and have gotten money from MoneyGram also, so I have gotten about half my money off the site. I'm also really enjoying trying to learn this new game. I'll be back in a day or so to set some goals for June. It really doesn't look like I'll reach my ultimate thread goal, as I had very lazy, unmotivated first 3 weeks of May, but I'll still do the best I can. GL to everyone out there. Cheers.
Monthly Graph all games
PLO $.25/$.5 to $1/$2