Why Start a Blog...

...What is the purpose of this blog...Read on and you just might learn something....

As of late I've been playing a lot of online poker...A LOT. However I seem to be on the worst downswing of downswings. I recently went out in the low 8900's during Full Tilt Poker's Mini FTOP event #20 ($12+$1 Buy-in) with AA (the best hand in NLHE) by someone who called me with 33. Low and behold he turned a set...for those of you who might not know what that odds of this are just imagine, 9 players, 2 cards each = 18 cards. 52 cards in a deck - 18 cards already out = 34. There are only 2 other 3s left in the deck meaning there are 32 cards for me and 2 cards (outs) for him making me a 16-1 favorite...need I say more. Not to mention I've lost with AA 4 times in row prior to that, (Granted 7-2 off suit will beat AA about 20% of the time, but 5 out of 5 times is just unacceptable). You can imagine how upset (on tilt) I was after this devastating loss, none the less I took my wonderful girlfriend's (which by the way has recently started playing poker under my tutelage) advice and took a break from poker until the next event, the FTOPS Main event ($50+$2 Buy-in) with a $500,000.00 Guarantee!

Guarantees are just that, regardless of how many people enter the tournament a prize pool of 500k is guaranteed. Usually the guarantee is met, but the purpose of them, if you are lucky, is to get into 1 where the guarantee is not met so you get better odds of a return on you money also known as ROI (Return on Investment). Say for example there is a $1 dollar tournament with a $10,000 guarantee (Full Tilt Poker runs these everyday) and say 1000 people sign up (which is rarely ever the case) well in any other tournament the prize pool would be $1000 (1000 players $1 each) where 1st place would get somewhere along the lines of $300.00 With the 10k guarantee you'd get around $3,000.00 for beating out the same field of opponents.

So why the blog? I'll tell you why...I love the game of poker. No matter how many bad beats I receive I keep coming back to it, the reason, well...because I love poker and everything it stands for. Poker is competition at its finest; it's just you vs your opponent and truly at the end of the day it doesn't matter what the size of your stack is vs his/hers (BTW woman are better bluffers than men at poker), or even what cards you get, it comes down to skill (90% of the time). Where else can you see $100,000.00 exchange hands in a mater of seconds (see the Durrrr challenge on Full Tilt, amazing stuff, it's exhilarating just watching because when they put all the money in the middle you can't help but ask "WTF are they holding that they just committed some much money into the pot?!"). There is a sense of satisfaction when you downright just outplay a person, when you have the nuts (best possible hand) and you're opponent bets into you because you've masked the strength of the monster you are holding so well; even when you lose you will be satisfied, these are called monster lay-downs (when you fold top 2 pair because you feel you opponent has the nuts and you have a case of what is known as 2nd bestssss) and were right in doing. You'll feel proud because you know that had it been anyone else they would of bet the house, kids, wife and farm and they would of lost it all...

Furthermore I will explain a lot of the terminology that I use (as I have done) and break dow n odds (as I have done as well) with the hopes that if anyone is or does start following than maybe you can learn something too. You might even drop me a thank you note of sorts if this information helps you make any money at all. No person should be playing poker at a high stakes of mid-stake level if you don't feel comfortable writing a book for others to learn from (FSB guys, if you are reading this, this is my book... :-D, Chapter 1); I hope to one day play at those stakes...consistently. Lastly, when you teach you learn. Have you ever asked yourself how it is that you chem professor seems to have memorized the atomic weights of every single element? The answer - because he has been teaching the damn subject for over 7 years and he can't help but learn the in's and out's; I too hope to learn the in's and out's of poker in this manner. This blog will track my progress as I learn more and mature as a poker player.

Lastly, I've decided to issue myself a challenge and this will be my way of tracking said challenge. There is a certain online poker player by the name Boku87 who is attempting to turn $5 into $100,000 in a years time. While I realize the amount of grinding (work put into playing hours) to accomplish this feat is not one I am willing to put in (school, work, social life aka spend time with the Mrs. are too important to me atm) I do feel I need to start somewhere, by grinding it out for six months I hope to obtain a bank roll of $2000.00 when starting out with only $5. It may not seem like much but I hope to engrave the principles of Bank Roll Management and variance (more on this later) deep within my brain so I never forget them, and for this I will be a better poker player.

For those of you that are wondering, I lost the Main Event with KK vs AQos, which isn't as bad as the previous beat being that the guy was a 3-7 underdog this time (30% of the time he will hit the ace) so unfortunately I am still broke...for now...