July: Chasing 20K

July has finally come and gone and am I quite relieved it is over. I ran so bad most of the month in cash games and took a loss overall for the month. The games go up and down. Some weeks the games are really good and are potentially profitable and other weeks the games are full of regulars who know my style all too well. The last couple weeks have been the latter and it worries me. If new players never come then the games will dry up. I do not think it will happen but it is a fear I have.

Fortunately, I decided to go back into tournaments. Something that I thought I would never do. I ran the exact opposite in tournaments then I did in cash games. For one, I probably won 75% of my all-ins. The other big thing was I sucked out more times then I am usually allowed. I am not sure if those suckouts are what caused my hot run or if I am really playing this well.

Before I go into any details, go to my ballin sharkscope graph. It has everything except for FPP satellites and gold card tournaments which is another $2000. Search DrBadBeat and put in Cake as the site.

I didn't play in as many MTT's as I would have liked last week but I managed to make two more final tables.

If it weren't for those two final tables, the week would have been a lot worse.

I lost on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday in the cash games. The first 3 days were very small losses with Wednesday being a very small win. On Friday I was down $800 playing cash games, STT, and MTT. It was the first time that all 3 forms weren't working for me. At the end of the night I found myself going deep in the $5 rebuys. I ended up making the final table and got to 3 handed. There was one player who seemed decent and a guy who was horrible. I was basically waiting for the bad player to make a mistake and was pretty much playing for second since the chipleader had such a big lead.

The fish finally made his mistake and pushed all in with A 9 and got called by the chipleader who had A 10. A nine came on the flop and the fish doubled up. I got knocked out a few minutes later and that little 3 outer cost me about $300. I cashed for $656 and came up $200 total for Friday.

I didn't play much Saturday and broke even.

On Sunday I made about $200 in cash games and another couple hundred in STT's. I went deep again in the $5 rebuys and was short-stacked with 30 players left. When there were 18 left, I was in 16th and probably wasn't going to make the final table.

I somehow sneaked my way onto the final table and came in as the 8th place stack. I would have been thrilled to take 7th in this tournament since I was very short-stacked. I maneuvered my way around and made all the right plays and was able to exploit a fish for a lot of chips over the course of the final table. I finally took the chiplead when there were 3 left. The other two players were huge fish according to sharkscope and the tourney was mine to lose. I knocked out fish number 1 and took a big chiplead into heads up play. I ran well and took it down when my Q Q outlasted the villains A K. All in on the turn.

My first MTT win in quite some time. That little score was good for $1294. On the day I came up over $1600.

I have continued my winning ways each day this week and just like that July was my second best month ever playing poker.

Update: I wrote this yesterday and took a loss on the last day of the month. I dropped about $250 and didn't run very good. It didn't help that twice during my session my computer crashed and I was playing STT's which screwed me over big time.

I was a small loser in cash games and came up about $3400 in MTT's and STT's. I made another $1400 in rakeback and another $813 in tournament tickets. I have two tickets left and have yet to cash in any of the other tournaments that I played in.

I am really proud of the way I played in the tournaments. Of the five final tables that I have made I finished in the top 5 in all of them. I took 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 5th.

I do not see myself playing as much cash in the future especially if the games keep being sour.

This is where I stand going into August.

Current Bankroll: $12147.57 for a profit of $4477

Although it may be unattainable I am shooting for 20K by the end of the month.

I have not made any decisions yet, but I am contemplating moving back over to Stars. If it happens I will probably go back and forth between both sites but will be playing on stars for the tourneys. This is a harder decision then it ought to be but I owe stars about $600 and I am not sure if I am willing to take responsibility for that debt.

Update #2: Cake recently upped the guarantees for the tournaments that I have tickets for and my tickets are no longer good. I emailed them for the third time about this situation and they just credited my account with $218. Score.