Cash Games and SnGs

Started Tuesday off playing some NL [and accidentally LHE] at a few sites. Namely played at Bodog, Cake, Lock, PDC Poker and PokerStars. The plan was to try to cover the day's buy-in of SnGs.

Bodog: Always very loose in their NL games. I played NL10 and scored a small pot early, but it became apparent that there was a huge fish at the table. You know the player. He calls a raise with utter garbage, flops bottom pair, donk bets, get's raised then pushes only to be called by an overpair. He luckboxes a two pair or better and stacks the player. So my strategy is simple. Compliment the player then get him to eventually double me up. Well I get whacked a few times [never stacked] and do a $5 rebuy to get me to about $9.80. I'm still lying in wait when I land a set of 8s and double through him. I could have stayed longer , but was happy with my slight $2.65 profit. With the major fish leaving, it made my exodus that much more easy.

PokerStars: Well this was a riot....When I was originally deciding what to do< i was angling towards playing LHE. But the smaller sites have virtually no LHE traffic. Problem is, once I decided to play NL, I forgot to switch tabs at PokerStars. So I opened up a "NL 10" table. I was wondering, why the heck can I buy-in for $1,000? It made no sense. And I was clueless until I flopped a set of Js and realized I could raise to 10 cents.....I stuck with it and despite getting as far down as 30 BBs, managed to finish at -$0.07.

Lock Poker: I played a real short session here, logging in a double up on hand 19. I definitely could have stayed longer and had thought of doing so, but wanted to play a bit higher since the Merge network is starting to increase traffic dramatically. I decided on playing some NL10, but am not rolled near enough at Lock to do so. So I moved to another Merge site, PDC Poker, and opened a NL10 table.

PDC Poker: Well a few small beats at NL10 and I'm not too optimistic on my move. I do manage to turn a small $0.35 profit in 180 hands right at the end of the session. I do like Merge. I'm going to have to play here more often. The biggest reason is that I have 35% rakeback at Lock and 33% at Poker Host. Other than that, my only rakeback deal is through Cake Poker.

Cake Poker: I really have no clue why I run so bad playing NL4 here. I get stacked twice by some really horrid bad luck, having gotten in well ahead only to see some weird runners crush me. So, down 2 buy-ins, what does the smart player do? They don't move up to NL10 chasing losses like me.....But it turns out well. Flopping straights vs AA and getting in on the flop will do that.

Cash games: +$8.55. That's not a horrible haul for the stakes. I do need to spend more time playing cash games online, both LHE and NL.

The usual session mix of Multi-SnGs: Two $1/90 KOs on Stars and two $1/90s on Full Tilt. I manage 3 KOs between the two KOs, finishing 16th and 25th. I manage a 9th place final table finish and a 26th at Full Tilt. Buy-ins cost $5 and I made $3, so a -40% ROI on the day.

+$6.55 overall however. It's better than a stick in the eye.