Another fork...

I've decided to change my poker focus once again. To be honest, LHE has not been treating me very nice and it definitely isn't my best game. In fact, check out my earnings over the last month on the right. This represents 60 hours of poker, probably 40 of that being limit play. The variance sucks, and I think I'll have a much better earn rate at something else.

You know that big run I had on Thursday? Well, I gave it all back and was down $90 before I caught some cards and got $30 back. My cards weren't great and they definitely weren't holding up, but going back to the old post, I was still overplaying unpaired cards and small pairs, plus I had one case where I paid off a flush draw big time. I expect I could have avoided losing $30-$40 of the $60 that I dropped. Oh well.

So, I've decided to switch back to NL for a little while, primarily on Stars or possibly on FCP. The bonus earn rate is low (maybe $2/hr) but I have a much bigger edge at 6-max NL than two tables of limit. I'm not going to abandon limit -- I'll also start up a $200 bonus on Eurobet and two-table $2-$4 to clear it. That's about 20 hours of play, but it expires after 90 days so I can always do it in small chunks if I like. And, of course, if Party has another bonus, I can do limit or NL there to clear it within the week.

Wade, Thuan, and I are heading to Artichoke Joe's tomorrow night for the Sunday rebuy tournament -- unlimited rebuys, but I'm going play relatively tight and only allow myself one rebuy -- so my maximum buy-in should be $150. Yes, that's more than 10% of my bankroll, but I figure its a one-time thing until my bankroll gets larger. I'm really looking forward to it.

In preparation I played a 45 player $10+1 SNG on Stars and took 4th. I didn't suffer any bad beats or cold decks until we were in the money, so I'll be the first to say I was pretty lucky. Probably the hand of the tourney (other than flopping a set and doubling up early after his straight and flush draw bricked out) was with 7 players left right after we got in the money. I had about 2400 after posting the 800 big blind. Button doubled the big blind, and I pushed with 23 of diamonds. My thinking at the time was the huge pot odds (~1600 from blinds and antes + his 2400 = a little less than 2:1) I was getting, and I knew my short stack would get no respect for an all-in raise later. Well, the flop gave me a gutshot straight flush draw, and the turn gave me a straight leaving him drawing dead with A9o. I think he was a little suprised, but I believe I made the right move. Actually, in hindsight, I was probably about even with odds vs pot odds if he didn't have a pair, but the value from almost tripling up was worth it. After that, I didn't get too many hands but stole enough to get fourth when my A5s on the button ran into pocket rockets in the small blind.

It was definitely nice to get back to NLHE and tournaments. It was also nice to have an easy tournament with no bad beats knocking me out :) After tomorrow night I might take a few days off (or play triple-draw or something) and get back to NLHE next week -- I'm actually kinda excited!