Week 1

After a week I’m showing some definite progress. I’ve just completed a thousand hands and I’m showing a profit of $20. I’m seeing 30% of flops and raising before the flop 7% of the time. After a few hundred hands I tightened up my starting hand requirements. In particular I stopped playing unsuited 2 card Jack or higher hands out of position, with the realisation that I’m not going to win very much money with top pair so-so kicker after the flop. I also stopped always completing the small blind in an unraised pot. Although the pot odds seem good you’re going to be out of position for the rest of the hand. I’ll only complete if my starting hand is in some way connected e.g. 2 gap connectors. I realise that seeing 30% of flops is quite loose but I’m comfortable playing that many hands at this level. I’ve been quite good at building big pots with good hands and by tightening up on starting hands I’ve minimized the number of loosing hands I play. The result has been a profit in the region of 50BB/100 hands, well above my target of 15BB/100.

Absolute Poker has very kindly put $10 into my account which I haven’t used in some time, as a means of luring me back to their poker room. With my cash game profits, this has taken my bankroll from an initial $40 to over $70 in the first week. My next target is $100, when I’ll be moving up a level to 0.02/0.05, $5 STTs and $1 MTTs. I haven’t played a single STT as part of the challenge – I’ve been concentrating on cash games, but I intend to play a few over the next week, using the cash Absolute have kindly contributed. I haven’t played MTTs either – I deliberately organised my bankroll strategy so that I needed to move up a level to play MTTs – I needed the break. But it’ll be nice to play the occasional big tournament (big as in field size, not buy-in).

The last week of playing cash games has returned me to basic, ABC poker, rarely bluffing and only building a big pot with good hands. Although the level is very low it’s reassuring to be showing a good profit. Long may it last!