Bankroll Building

Profit: As much as $50

In the last three weeks or so I have felt on top on my game.

Variance probably has something to do with it. I probably am running good, but when it's like this you always prefer to think that you're playing well. And I am playing very well.

I know I'm playing very well because I'm always getting my money in good and I can only remember getting stacked once during the last couple of weeks when I overplayed top pair/King kicker after being influenced by some pokerace stats that were not working properly. Other than that, my money has been going in good and I only lose a portion of my stack when I get a bad beat.

Perhaps it's the volume of hands I'm playing at, or the simple fact that I've played so many hands. Either way I seem to know exactly where I am in 95% of the hands I played at the moment. I've been playing small-pot poker making small raises and information bets pre-flop and on the flop to keep the pots small. Then, on the turn and river, I capitalise on mistakes with perfectly weighted value bets and deceptive weak bets that disguise the strength of my hands.

Again, through the sheer volume of hands played I can fold KKs when an A flops and I get raised and not be bothered about it at all. I can fold straights to flushes, I can fold flushes to full boats. I can fold overpairs to seemingly innocuous boards. Ignore the cards, variance and such forth, my situational reading has improved tremendously over the last month or so. My session discipline is getting better and better too. With the benefit of a large screen to play on, I can comfortably four table now. It stops me getting bored and prevents from making flashy, unnecessary moves. And because I get into more situations it makes those hard laydowns easier to stomach because I know it's likely I'll find a better spot in 5/10/15 minutes' time.

Bankroll management, as ever, is great. The problem this year is that I've withdrawn from the accounts and not reinvested back into poker. This has left the bankroll hovering around $4o0 so I've found it difficult to convince myself to take shots. Since August, however, I've kept the bankroll circulating around different accounts and it's now swelled to around $750 in total (spread across about five sites).

I'm still testing the waters of various sites and have found:

Full Tilt to be pretty good because there are always tables to be found and the software is excellent. The rake is harsh however.

Pokerstars to be completely pointless at microstakes.

888 (pacific) to be a lovely fish pond in the evenings

Betfair to be pretty juicy (but the software still makes my macbook fan go wild).

Carbon Poker to be lacking enough players and delivering earlier bad beats.

PKR to be very juicy, I doubled up within five hands of playing on the start, but the software to be insufferable.

I'm going to continue to look for site and will eventually consolidate my bankroll into my favourite sites and start to look at permanently going up to higher game level.

Despite (what I considered) to be three solid months of bad beats, I'm running at about 15-17% ROI on sngs and a 6-10BB per 100 hands rate on cash rooms. From what I read elsewhere, the very fact I beat the rake at microstakes is good going.

I think it might be fair to say that after two years of playing poker at a very casual level, I know the basics and can hold my own.