Cash rooms

SnG account: $277 (down $10)
Ring account: $111 (up $1)

I had a two hour session playing cash rooms and learned a few things which should help me out in future games.

First and foremost is to try and play in 6-handed rooms or less. This presents me with a bit of a problem as the sites I play in only offer 10 handed rooms at 0.5/0.10 and 0.12/0.25. I played in a couple of rooms that got to 8/9/10 players and didn't do well - in one I went broke. I find myself being quite a tight player pre-flop and then loosening up post-flop, particularly in ring games (SnG games look after themselves as the rising blinds usually sort out the loose players). But with no pressure in ring games I find people raising all the time and when I have stuff like A 10 and K J (hand that's that I would happily raise 5 or lower handed) with the potential of four people plus in the pot I tend to shy away. It's really inhibiting; I feel I have no room to breath in full cash rooms.

So after a poor start I changed tactics and started nipping in and out of rooms. I would find a room with two or three players in with $2/4/6, play a couple of cycles and then move on. Because I had $10 and because the rooms were small I could bully when I needed to and pick off silly plays by short stacks when I had the cards. $5 there, $7 there, $3 in that room. True they were all small gains but I was doing that for about half an hour.

I ended the day playing in a $25 room. Earlier on I hit trip queens and someone went all in with pocket jacks. I got $12 from that. Then, just as I was finishing the session I found myself with 6 9 in the big blind. One limper and the flop was A69. I put in a bet of about $1, he raised to $2, I raised to $5 and he went all in. He'd been slightly wild previously and I wasn't putting him on a set as he would surely have raised with 99s or AAs (possibly not 66s but he called utg so was there any point in limping in with his 66s to see them outdraw with possibly 2/3 people in the pot? Unless he was trapping). I decided to call (for about $17 in total) and he flipped over A6. I've played that hand in my head a couple of time to see if I played it wrong. Maybe I could have avoided the all in call. It was cruel to find myself up against the better two pair I thought though.

In total I was about $4 up from the cash room session. I also played a $7 mtt and got nowhere. In 78 minutes of play my best hand was AK.

Not many profits to speak of at the moment but I still think I'm doing a good job of minimising losses while I try higher stakes.