ShoveOrFold’s Blog

So okay, I am approaching the end of my freshman year here at college. It has been a good year, but my one letdown was the amount of poker I played throughout the year.  I had hoped to play about 5x the volume I put it, but school took up a lot of my time, so I was unable to put in the hands.

I have exams the next 3 days, and then I am done! So basically, 3 days of no sleep in a row should be fun. I don’t want to talk too much about school since most people won’t care. I want to play a lot this summer, but I will be taking summer school, research, volunteer at a hospital, paramedic work, and a lot of other stuff. Hopefully I can still manage to put in some sick volume.

My goals might seem unattainable since I am only playin 100nl at the moment, but I have goals of making 7.5K$+ this summer. With my busy schedule, it might be really hard, but if I can keep stay focused, I truly believe I can reach this figure.

I plan to play mainly 6max cash at 100nl-200nl (maybe higher if i do well). But I will also be playing a lot of FR, HU, MTTs, and STT SNGs, and HU SNGs.  I will try to upload as many graphs as I can, and once I go back home, i might post a video i recorded of me playing HU at 50nl last month.

Well i got to go now, wish me luck on my tests!

Nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon so I figured I’d start my blog.

For those who don’t know me, I am an 18 yr old student at UCLA who has been grinding micro stakes since I turned 18. Here is my thread of my journey if anyone is interested: http://www.pokertrikz.com/forums/poker-brags-beats/888-my-poker-journey-build-bankroll.html . If you do not want to read through countless posts, just read this blog entry and you will get a good idea where I am today.

Like many people, I deposited 100$ at cake poker when i turned 18. This was a lot of money to me, but it didn’t matter to me. I was 100 percent certain that I would be a winner. My first day went pretty well, but after a couple hundred hands, I was getting bad beat like crazy. I was playing underrolled (Didn’t know it at the time). I was at the 10nl tables, and a few suckouts later, my roll was dwindling. Some how during the next couple weeks i successfully busto’d my roll. I hated online poker at this point.

After a  couple weeks of browswing forums and swearing to quit poker, I noticed that I had generated 7.11 in Rakeback. I took my roll to the .02/.04 tables and started truly grinding. In another few weeks I was able to build my roll up and a friend was able to help me move my roll from cake to stars. I liked the rakeback at cake, but I wanted to play the .01/.02 games.  At these games I was playing very well and was able to move up in no time.

5NL is where I started to truly learn the game more. I spent time posting in forums, watching videos, and talking poker with friends. I don’t remember the exact dates (too lazy to check the thread), but I was able to beat 5NL for a pretty good rate. After 1-2 months I had cleared my stars bonus and had build my roll at 5NL to 150.

At this point, I decided to move my roll to the new site “Cardspike”. Here I had another 150$ in bonus to clear with 33$ rakeback. Cardspike was on the Cake network and I dove into the 10nl games that I was getting killed at few months prior. I began KILLING these games. Over 9000 hands I won at 40bb/100 and was quickly rolled for 20nl.

At 20nl I ran  into another road block. These games were a bit harder and I was playing too many tables. I was breaking even for a long stretch of hands, but I was content with the rakeback and bonuses. I roughly played 20,000 hands at 20nl and broke even, but made a couple hundred off rakeback.

Once I cleared my bonus, I was ready to move to another site, afterall I was a bonus whore. I withdrew 730$ that I had and deposited 600$ onto FTP. This was at around the beginning of January 2009. I jumped into the 25nl games and dabbed around Fullring and 6max. I got some coaching for fullring, but that didn’t work out too well. I was winning, but I hated these boring full ring games. So I got back to 6max and I was beating these games pretty well. I’ve had a couple higher stakes friends of mine help me and i started learning the game with greater detail. In no time I was killing these games. I was finally rolled for 50nl and I promptly moved up.

I began playing these games and I was outplaying my opponents constantly. February was a sick month. I was playing very well, but I was running terribly and finally understood what it meant to run bad. Over 40k hands in February I ran 20 buyins below expectation and got coolered a bunch. I started to really question my game, but I got help from my friend and he assured me I was playing good poker.  Towards the end of February I constantly kept playing and was able to grind up a nice profit despite running horribly. I made a couple hundred dollars and felt very comfortable at this limit. I withdrew a couple hundred dollars to buy a new monitor and other things, and continued to grind.

Today, I am still playing the 50nl games. I am rolled for 100nl, but I am going to stay at 50nl for a little while until I get a little more comfortable playing for some decent size money.  I remember when i first started playing the 100$ initial deposit seemed like so much to me, and now I am sitting at multiple tables with these kinds of stacks. I’ll continue to update my blog and hopefully I can move up quickly.
Signing out,

ShoveOrFold