Cash Game Update and a New Goal

Before I discuss the cash game stuff, I did play in the $1000 Bellagio tournament today but busted pretty early. There is nothing to really highlight here, but I want to use this blog as a sort of journal for what I'm calling "my summer as a professional poker player", so I want to keep a well documented source of every tournament I play.

Ok, now for the cash game status. After I returned from Europe (around May 27th), I ran up about $1000 in four, short sessions of play at 1/2. Since then though, I have basically given all of that back in two longer than average sessions in which I took some horrific bad beats and had some really bad set ups. But hey, that's poker. So like every good cash game player does when they are on a bit of down streak, I stepped up to 2/4 and flopped top set against a guy's middle set and stacked him for a cool $400. I then ran a nice bluff with absolute air to take down a $200 pot, and I can tell I made the guy lay down top pair with a marginal kicker. So as I reflected on my recent results with the big swings in the 1/2 and on tonight's 2/4 session, I came to realize a few things:

1) My winning sessions are too short and my losing sessions are too long. I still haven't conquered the problem of getting up and then being afraid to lose it all back. On the opposite, once I am down, I feel I can't quit until I get it back or a certain pain threshold is reached, which is why my losing days, while few, were often anywhere between $400-800. I do believe the great results I've had in 1/2 thus far reflect my ability and I feel they would've been even better had I been able to continue playing when I was up and instituted a stop loss for my down days.

2) I have been reading and studying poker a ton these days. I've been really trying to improve on hand reading and have learned some nice bluff techniques and situations, as well as other ways to exploit players. The only problem was that I would sometimes try these things at the 1/2 level and I would get destroyed. These concepts are for thinking players to use on other thinking players, and there are very few thinking players at the 1/2 level. From my short session at 2/4, the play was definitely more solid, which allowed me to bluff a player out of a nice pot.

So after all of this deep thinking, I have come to the conclusion that I am going to start playing 2/4 now (two to three tables until I get comfortable) and try to start climbing up the middle stakes ladder. My original goal was to take my starting $8k Pokerstars bankroll and build it to $12k before moving up. I made it as high as $11.5k and am now at $11k, so it's close enough. My new goal is $20k and then I will move up to 3/6, so here goes another run...

Oh and btw, I am playing the World Championship Pot Limit Holdem $5000 event tomorrow, and once again I am on the staking deal with my dad. I can't afford to play all these 5k events yet, but I think my dad is dying for some action since he can't be out here for another week, so he is putting me up for another one. I also feel it isn't a bad investment for him because I feel I am starting to play pretty well and if I can get some things to go my way, like they did for the Bellagio tournament, I am capable of something pretty big. So if I get anywhere near a decent stack, I'll make sure those bastards from Cardplayer give me some ink, so stay tuned...