1st Post

Well, this is the first post of my online poker blog. I figure that someday I'll be able to look back on here and see how clueless and naive I must have truly been. I'll give some background about me first. I have been playing poker for about 2 years now. I started on the Prima network using Royal Vegas' ten free dollars promotion. One specific hand I remember I caught my nut straight on the turn, which also brought a 3 flush to the board. Villain CHECKED after me, so I knew he didn't have the flush. I bet ~$3 and he raised me all in for about $5 more (my whole BR!). I instacalled and he flipped over the nut flush. That hand truly made me aware of how cool and interesting the game was. I searched google for poker forum and found 2+2, which is still the only poker forum I post on. I got another free $10 from 7sultans poker and it was pure grinding. I remember I would play .05/.10 cent 6handed NL tables and there would always be this "AlaskanQueen" person and she would always have atleast $12 at the table. What a badass I thought. I remember when the $1 dollar pots were huge. A $2 win on the day for an hour of playing was well worth it. I joined a $5 MTT tourney at about 5AM in the morning one day when I wasn't tired and couldn't go to bed. About 60 joined and in retrospect, I now know that I had no clue what I was doing. What I remember was that I was almost out when I got AA twice in a row and doubled up twice in a row. I ended up winning $60 that tourney and being ecstatic. I then continued moving up stakes till I had $400 in my roll. After receving doubts from everyone around me of whether online poker was actually real, I received my first check in the mail for $234 dollars. I left $130 in a neteller account.

I signed up for Pacific poker and sat down at a $50 NL table with $32. A few allins later I had won atleast $150 dollars on the night and was all uphill from there. I also signed up for a bonus where I got $75 for playing at pacific fro ma guy named "badger", so that was huge. I guess I kinda got lucky right in the beginning, but hey- that's life.

So I played limit ring till Jan '06 with moderate success but was hitting a roadblock at 3/6. During January, I started talking to bigballzpoker on 2+2 about SnGs and he got me hooked on them. After 4 months of the $16 and $27 tourneys on stars I made about $2200 for an ROI of about 15% which is alright. After going on a 1% ROI streak after my last 300 tourneys I decided to take a little break. I bought in for a 1/2 NL game and won a few hundred. I bought in for another and won a few more. My first night of 1/2NL I won $800. I was instantly hooked. So at the beginning of May I start going into the game of No Limit. I play mostly 1/2NL and have recently gone into the NL400 games. I was running at 9BB/100 for about 4k hands and I knew I would come down, but I never predicted it would come down like it has the past few days. Here are some of my fav hands.

KK vs AJ all in on a Jxx flop
KK vs TT all in on a xxx flop
Set vs Flush draw
Top two vs 3bet allin straight draw
My set over his set = split
My weakly played AA gets run over
AA vs A9 on 9xx flop
My AA vs a horribly played 86o

I'm sure I missed alot of hands here, but these hands are what a downswing is made of baby. I think I'm going to stay at 1/2 for just a little bit more, read NLTAP, and just build my BR a little more and gain some confidence.

-kevin