mahdrof45-year-old poker enthusiast from Canada
My last blog post had me still going up but getting a lot of bad beats and giving me the feeling that I was swimming against the current. Right after that blog post things started to change and with my roll at $1125 I sat down at a NL50 table and started to feel my way around. At first not much was happening but after a while I hit on this hand:
888 Hand #631255823: Hold Em No Pot Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2014/11/26 22:04:26 ET
Table 'Geneva' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: A ($89.64 in chips)
Seat 2: B ($50.00 in chips)
Seat 3: C ($50.00 in chips)
Seat 4: D ($53.95 in chips)
Seat 5: E ($15.25 in chips)
Seat 6: F ($50.00 in chips)
Seat 7: mahdrof ($62.86 in chips)
Seat 8: H ($49.87 in chips)
Seat 9: I ($50.50 in chips)
B: posts small blind $0.25
C: posts big blind $0.50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to mahdrof [6c 9c]
D: folds
E: folds
F: folds
mahdrof: raises to $1.75
H: folds
I: calls
A: folds
B: folds
C: calls
*** FLOP *** [Qc Kc 9h]
C: checks
mahdrof: bets $4.12
I: calls
C: raises to $13.74
mahdrof: calls
I: calls
*** TURN *** [Qc Kc 9h] 
C: bets $34.51 and is all-in
mahdrof: raises to $47.37 and is all-in
I: calls with $35.01 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [Qc Kc 9h] 
*** SHOW DOWN ***
mahdrof: shows [Ac Kc Qc 9C 6c] (a flush, Ace high)
I: shows [Ac Kc Qc 8C 7c] (a flush, Ace high)
C: shows [Ah Kh Kc Qh Qc] (two pairs, Kings and Queens)
Mahdrof collected $159.61 from pot
Admittedly I was getting a little tired when this hand played out and I was getting close to shutting down. Although a decent amount of money to lose if I got stacked, with 22 BI at this level I was comfortable in taking the chance, especially since I know player "I" very well and when I called the turn on the shove by player "C" I was 80% certain he was calling as well. Now I was within striking distance of my goal, and sure enough by the end of the night I was up $186 and I put in the withdrawal request for $250. By the time the money was changed into Canadian dollars the total was $270 so I withdrew that and got ready to do some food shopping. I decided to help out two local food banks, the first of which is in our own town and the second is in the next town where my kids go to school. Every year their school does a food drive at this time of the year, and several times we have been caught unprepared and unable (or forgetting) to send them to school with food stuffs. Not this year. It felt good doing this, and the people at the food bank were certainly appreciative.
"Karma" as Marqis put it seemed to be in my corner and I continued to be in the good graces of variance. Sunday morning I sat down at two PLO25 (HI) tables and within five minutes I had won an all-in on one table and won a triple-up all-in at the other. One of my best moments however happened on Saturday morning. After playing a solidly profitable two hours and a bit on another site, I opened up the 888 poker site and what did I see? A NL200 table with an empty seat and not a reg in site! I felt a surge of excitement as I thought about sitting down at that table, but then I thought carefully about it and went over the mental checklist that I go through before I sit down at any session:
How good do I feel? Pretty good, but normally after a two hour session I need a small break to regain my focus.
Are there any distractions? Yes, everybody is up at this point, my wife and daughter are getting ready to go to a church function, soon my son needs to get ready for his basketball game, my wife started a load of laundry that I will be hanging up, and I have a pot of chicken soup that I have started making.
How much am I ready to lose if things go badly? With my roll sitting at $1125 (keep in mind that this is before my big day on Sunday), if I would get stacked I would be well below $1000 which would not be good mentally, plus I would not have time to put in a grind session to try and get it back. I would be seriously peeved at myself.
So still wanting to play and move forward to my blog goals I found a nice easy full ring NL30 table. The players were predictable and the action easy, and while I accomplished some other task and lugged the laptop around I picked up $10 without breaking too much of a sweat. Over the years readers of my previous blog on BRM will attest that I have tilted away some sweet bankrolls, and hopefully I have learned to overcome this poker rage. For me what has works best is what I described above, taking a minute or two to think about my state of mind, how much I am willing to lose before shutting down, and table selection, table selection, table selection.
These days I would rather drop down several levels to find a juicy table than hack it out with regs and go nowhere or down.
So that's it for now. My roll on 888 sits at $1250 and I have resumed working towards my goal of $2000, my graph shows total profits from the start of my blog challenge. Having this challenge on a public forum is really bringing out the best in my so far, with only two losing days and a few where I was too busy/tired to play serious poker. GL on the felt mobbitts!
