I realize it's been a while since I gave a weekly update. I've been sufficiently busy and taking some time off of playing a whole lot of poker. After some great success two months ago without a single losing session in two weeks, I suffered two straight weeks without a single winning session. At that point, I decided to take some time off, and concentrate on playing more tournaments and fewer cash games. This strategy proved to be just the break I needed.
It would be natural to assume that after suffering such a long string of
losses that I would want to take some time off to regroup; and that's exactly
what I did. For the next two weeks, I didn't play a single cash game, and
concentrated exclusively on playing Omaha Hi/Lo tournaments. After the two weeks
were over, and I had huge successes in the tournaments, I stepped back into the
cash games. The rest certainly paid off, because the cash game play has been
very profitable in the last 7 days.
Poker Stars Tournaments:
PokerStars appears to be trying to pick up a bunch of Party Poker's leftovers by having a whole host of new Omaha Hi/Lo tournaments. There is now a nightly $5+Rebuy tournament at 10:30 PM PST. This tournament used to run only on Friday nights, but now appears to be running nightly. It also appears that this tournament has been replacing the 3 or 4-time weekly $20 Hi/Lo tournament that typically runs at either 9:15 PM or 10:15 PM. This tournament is both fun, and challenging. It's fun to play the rebuy tournament because you can play like a madman during the first hour (during rebuys), and then at the end of the first hour, you can add-on an extra $2000 chips for $5. This makes it a lot of fun. The challenge is weeding through the bad players. The good players typically rise to the top, and indeed, I've cashed in this tournament twice before. Even though I didn't cash in this tournament in the past few weeks ("past few weeks" is the operative phrase here -- be sure to look out for next week's results), I did cash in some others.
| 21st Place | 261 Players | Poker Stars | 11/06/2006 | $18 |
| 13th Place | 171 Players | Poker Stars | 10/30/2006 | $69 |
Poker Stars Cash Games:
After laying off of the cash games for two weeks, I stepped back into them. This time instead of exclusively playing HORSE (a mixed game of Holdem, Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, Stud Hi, and Stud Hi/Lo), I played a mixture of $5/10 Omaha Hi/lo, $5/10 HORSE, $10/20 Omaha Hi/Lo and $10/20 HORSE.
In almost all of these games, I was profitable. Not surprisingly, playing Omaha Hi/Lo proved to be my bread and butter. Overall, I was up $600 in the cash games in the last week -- which is a refreshing result after taking two straight weeks of beatings.
Full Tilt Tournament Results:
I had even better success in the Full Tilt tournaments, than the Poker Stars tournaments. Even though these tournaments were only a $24 buy-in, I cashed in my first two, and first three of four. Though the winnings were modest, it was important to know that my tournament game strategy is universal, and will play very well at other sites as well.
| 9th Place | 173 Players | Full Tilt Poker | 11/08/2006 | $93 |
| 13th Place | 133 Players | Full Tilt Poker | 11/06/2006 | $39 |
| 14th Place | 133 Players | Full Tilt Poker | 10/30/2006 | $39 |
Summary:
In the past two weeks, I played in eight tournaments. I cashed in five of 8, and made $600 in the cash games. Next week, look forward to an even bigger win in the tournaments -- as I had a very big finish in one of them!