May

May turned out pretty well for me. Volume was pretty low because of the week of school and finals at the beginning of the month, as well as my week-long honeymoon to Hawaii at the end of the month (which was awesome).

I played a total of 13 tournaments, with a total buyin of $52.95. The good news is I obtained a 285.36% ROI over those tournaments. The bad news is that in order to do so I got another second place in a 4/180. For those keeping track, through 209 tournaments, I've gotten heads up a really strong 7 times. I've taken down just one of these though, so it's incredibly dissappointing. As a direct result of this fact, I have absolutely no confidence in my heads up game, but I'm having a hard time pinpointing my mistakes.

In the last episode of futility, I got heads up with a 2-1 chip lead. We were roughhly even through about 40 hands, and he kept open shoving or three-bet shoving about 15-20% of hands, and I just never had anything during those times. I took down a majority of the other pots (roughly 60-70% of total pots). Our first major pot was when he limped his button and I checked my option in the BB with T7s. I proceeded to flop a flush draw and open-ender, and triple barreled, whiffed, and he called down with j5o, for a flopped middle pair (4th pair on the river). I kept my cool even though I had just missed 21 outs twice, which is a positive change from my past. However, this gave him the advantage in chips. From there, the blinds starting going up and he kept shoving, now with a slightly higher percentage of hands. I never seemed to have a solid hand, but I finally raise/call A2s, only to be shown A7o. I flop a flush draw on a paird board, but we end up chopping. A few hands later, I raise/call A6s, he shows A7s, I flop a 6, he turns a 7, and we're done. He just never seemed to have anything when I did and always had me kicked when I was ready to show down. Whatever, I wasn't too upset with my play, though 1 for 7 is starting to really annoy me. I'll have to keep playing these, getting HU, and working on my game. I could also play some HU SNGs, but those never were very fun for me, so we'll see what I decide.

As far as cash games go, I ended up playing 519 hands of $10 NL 6-max, with $24.50 of profit, for a BB/100 of 23.6. Very strong, but not sustainable. I played really well, but also got pretty lucky.

So far in June I've played another 761 hands of the same cash games, and have only made $5.95, for a BB/100 of just 3.91. This is definately sustainable for me, but is on the low side of where I want to be for this limit. I think 8+ is readily achievable. I think I'm still playing much better than in the past, I've loosened up to be around 19/16, which is still pretty tight, but not as bad as I was (16/12). I still have a ways to go, but for this limit those stats aren't too bad, and they should be very profitable.

I'm also planning to start 6-tabling the cash soon, as I currently only 3 or 4 table. That should help my $/hr but might hurt my BB/100 slightly. We'll see how it works out, but I'd definately like to keep it above 7 (for the year I'm at 7.28 through 2.25k hands). I posted on facebook that I wanted to get 40k hands combined in tournaments and cash this summer, and I've fallen well behind the pace thanks to my vacation. I think if I start 6-tabling successfully this goal will not be too tough to attain, so I'm looking forward to putting in some time at the tables. I haven't felt this good about my game in general (other than heads up) essentially since I was ignorant of how bad I actually was.

As a parting note to show that the games are still good (and to gripe that I run bad), here is a hand from earlier this week.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

Button ($6.75)
Hero (SB) ($12.70)
BB ($5.25)
UTG ($5.80)
MP ($6.95)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, K
1 fold, MP calls $0.10, 1 fold, Hero bets $0.50, 1 fold, MP raises to $0.90, Hero raises to $9.60, MP calls $6.05 (All-In)

Flop: ($14) A, 10, 2 (2 players, 1 all-in)


Turn: ($14) J (2 players, 1 all-in)


River: ($14) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)


Total pot: $14 | Rake: $0.70


Results:

Hero had K, K (one pair, Kings).
MP had A, 2 (two pair, Aces and twos).
Outcome: MP won $13.30


For the record, that is a limp/min-3-bet/insta-call with A2s. I was so happy when I saw his hand. I used to get pissed off at this result, but this time I was just so happy that he just gave me equity preflop like that. Once this hand occured, and I thought about how I felt, I knew I had turned a corner in my poker career. I'm finally starting to distance myself emotionally from the results, which will no doubt be extremely crucial in my continued developement as a player.