The first full week.

I am only getting worse. I spent most of my free time over the last week grinding on cake poker. Too make matters worse, I spent that time grinding micro limits. I would like to think that all this "time" potentially wasted will pay off one day. As I said, I started off with my original deposit of $300. So far I am way ahead of schedule.

Although, I have been winning, the week has been wholly frustrating. Pretty much everyday that I played this week was the same. I would open up my tables and within 20 minutes I would be down $40-$60 or 2-3 buyins. And just like all those times at Commerce I was having to play from behind to just break even for the day.

From around Tuesday-Wednesday I had a 5000 hand break-even stretch. I have read numerous accounts online of players talking about their 20K-30K hand break-even streaks and 5K was pretty brutal. After that, things started to pick up and toward the end of the week I went on a 3K hand break-even streak.

Several things have come up during my time playing on the cake network. Like I have already known from before, I have a really hard time making a lay down online. Live, lay-downs are so easy to make but online I am such a calling station. I have cost myself a ton of money just in the last week with hands where I made a call on the river when I would have normally just laid it down. I have started getting a little bit better but I still have a ton of room for improvement. Today, I laid down a set of Kings when the flush card came on the turn and the river brought a 4 card straight. I have been calling that river bet a lot lately but today I found a way throw my hand away. What I have to remember is that the players that I am playing with are quite terrible and really bad players aren't capable of making good bluffs so I have to remember that from now on when I play.

Another problem that I have encountered is that some of the regulars are getting to know me and some have figured me out. As a result I have become real nitty about my table selection as there are a few players on the site who I really would rather not play with. So whenever I log in and am choosing my tables, I try to go for a table that has no names that I recognize or in some cases has the fewest that I recognize. There really aren't any good players but a few average players. That makes the games pretty easy pickings which works for me.

I once again experimented with adding on a 4th table and this time I was finally able to make it work. So I am now 4 tabling which means I am getting in about 400 hands per hour and adding a whole lot more rake and hopefully winnings.

At my highest which was earlier today my account was all the way up to $1070 but I ended the session at $1055. I took a break for a while and was going to put in one last effort to see if I could get my account to over $1100 to start the week. Instead what greeted me was a brutal shot of variance. I played about 60 hands and didn't win a single pot. Instead everyone hit everything against me and I couldn't win a hand to save my life. I was quite disgusted and quit my session after losing 3.5 buy-ins. Right now my account is sitting at $981 and thats where it will end for the week.

As of right now I have cleared $170 of my original deposit bonus and have another $130 left to clear. I cannot wait to finish clearing the bonus because it is affecting the amount of rake-back that I am taking in. If the period ended right now I would have an extra $105.12 in my account which is my rake-back. If there was no bonus involved, my rake-back would be $166.23 which makes a big difference in how much money I am taking in.

At this point, I have put in 19470 hands which is an astounding amount. The number is actually higher because the site hasn't updated my last two sit downs which should add another 1000 hands which should add another $8-$10 to my rake-back total.

The swings alone from playing online are way crazier then playing live which is something I thought I would never say after playing at Commerce. I have never had major upswings and downswings then the way I do online. Earlier today when I was playing I think I ran the best I have ever run while playing cards. Everything was hitting like I couldn't believe and getting paid off simultaneous. When I didn't hit, they missed as well and I would take it down on the bet with my standard continuation bet.

With that said I think it is mandatory to have at least 40 buy-ins per your level of play. I think if you are multi-tabling online then the standard 20 buy-ins is obsolete as a result of the swings. Not only, that but the money doesn't mean a damn thing to me when I have a ton of buy-ins and I play a lot better when the money doesn't mean much to me.

So my new number that I am shooting for is $2000 for my bankroll. I have no expectation as to when that number will be reached but I hope that by the time the rake-back hits my account which I estimate to be around $500 that my account will be at $2000. Only then will I start to play $50NL regularly. I may even wait until I get to $2500 if I reach $2000 quicker then expected. It's only been a week and I have already made it to $1100 including rake-back so hopefully I will reach $2000 in another 10 days or so.