This Week in Poker

This has been my best week in poker overall.  I started this week with $80 in my Full Tilt Poker Account.  Today I have $220 in my Full Tilt Poker account.  I also went to Pechanga Casino in Temecula and I walked away with $120.

What happened this week compared to any other week? I finally to my own advice and I decided to play very tight.  The reason I lose in Limit Hold'em is that I play way too many hands. Basically, I wait for playable hole cards.  In early position, I'm playing premium hands.  In late position, I'm looking for good flush and straight draws.

Here's some highlights of the week.  One reason I get in trouble online is that I get bored and will play anything.  I now play two tables at a time. Generally two different games so that I don't mix things up.  The only trouble I ran into with this strategy is when I play Hold'em and Omaha Hi/Lo. I am tempted to go for the low hand in Hold'em.

My second strategy is any game is to wait for good starting hands.  I already talked about Hold'em a little, the standard I want to maintain is playing no more than 33% of the hands dealt. In the case of Omaha, I'm looking for hands that can scoop the pot.  I want Aces with suited x cards, good pairs, three cards to the wheel.  I'm also playing Razz and here I want my first three cards to be below an eight.

I also started playing a lot of Sit-N-Go.  Here's how it went.  I played three Omaha High/Low SNG's and came in first in games 1 and 2.  Third in game 3.  I played two Razz SNG's and came in third in game 1 and first in game 2.

Today, I was at Pechanga.  I performed only in the 9:45 show at NCT so I figured I'd play from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.  By the time, it hit 5:00 I was already up $120.  I decided to take my winnings and leave early.

I sat down at the $2/$4 table and I figured I only played 10 hands and muck everything else preflop. Also, everytime I made it to the river, I won the hand, which means I won every showdown.  The key is that I was more willing to throw away bad hands.

If you every play low limit Hold'em, you know that the rake is very high.  The only way to beat the rake, is to win and not lose. One final note is that calling down the river is very expensive. If I bet every round, that means I'm putting at risk, $12 per hand.  If I can be aggressive and raise preflop and after the flop, I'd only spend $8 to know where I stand. Once the flop hits you should spend the money to find out where your at.  Many times I folded on the flop with top pair, when anyone was aggressive with me.  There's no reason to call off a stack of chips on top pair.