Day 1

Or should I call it night 1 :D

It went so, so well...
I played 4 tables on Pokerstars. I chose the 4 tables with 8 players and biggest VPIP/average pot.
At start I was like -0.50 and was starting to think, maybe just maybe I'm still not ok to play. Hands don't come I'm started to feel tempted to limp marginal hands specially OOP and suddenly I was on 45/10 and the fish bells started to ring so I should probably stop. Instead of stopping, I connected my PsP and started to play some PES2009 while I was folding folding folding folding but this way at least I was avoiding the temptation to limp. Whenever I had a hand I committed my self to raise it as long as I had position.
I kept this discipline for some time and finally the hands started to come and I was able to apply some concepts I've been reading, specially about CBET and even some double barreling although this last one I'm taking it with moderation.

I ended up the session with a 7.42 winnings over 532 hands, that's almost 70BB's/100 hands like you can see in my spreadsheet.


After the session that lasted for a little bit less then 3 hours, I spent 30 minutes analyzing some hands.
On the winning side, I think I failed to extract value from some hands like AA, KK where after my inicial PFR of 4BBs + 1BB/limper everyone folded. I changed my aproach at this and started raising every good hand the same way. this made me loose some money when the flop didn't hit me but the very next time I had AA I was able to put 3 callers on 0.12c and 1 guy all in after the flop making me more money then I had lost on raises. Besides, whenever I had position I tried to CBET dry boards and a lot of times I was able to make the villains fold having better hands then mine. Another thing that's costing me some money is the failure to build pots, I have to study more about building pots even having pocket pairs.
n the loosing side, I only half-tilted one time loosing 1.38$ on a play I had paired a K with a good kicker. In this hand If I had payed attention to the baluga theorem, I would have saved my self more then 1$. Another leak I found is the limping...OMG the limping sometimes it's SO much stronger then me...I loose a pot I limp next. I don't play for 3 hands...limp next I see a Kx Ax UTG suited let's limp in and then...raised and folded. By my accounts If I hadn't limped so much I would have saved more then 1.5$.

Rinse and repeat

After the last downfall I took a week off the tables to read more and rethink my attitude towards poker.

Having a bankroll so small and not wanting to reinforce it, I can't play both cash and STT, more then that, 9$ it's not enough to STT not even to Pokerstars 1+0.20$.
Cash games are going to be the way to go.

Towards cash games, I understand that TAG is the way. Let's accept it, I don't know how to play poker well so the best way is to not put my self in difficult and tilty positions were one get's by limping hands like A2o and so.
I have been reading some basic stuff like WCGRider posts on 2p2 and I'm starting to understand some concepts like CBET, hand reading and stuff. I also read posts about pot odds, implied odds and reverse implied odds, although these concepts are still very very thin on me I'm finally starting to see some spots to use them.

So basically I'm going to play very tight, opening my range from early to late position try to be aggressive all the time I have a hand and force my self to fold everything that pot odds or implied odds tell me to fold (hard stuff here).

Here we go ... Rinse and Repeat!

Wakening

After a lot of reading and specially after re-reading some stuff I thought I had understood the first time but only now I can see that nothing about it was clear to me before, I decided to put up some goals.

I would raise by bankroll from 9$ to the sky!

I designed a plan, made a way to register my winnings, and started firing up tables.
This time things went good as I started to make money slowly but steady until a night were variance hit and being my bankroll so small ... well variance can't hit :D
That night I abused the number of tables I played, 9 was clearly too much for me at this point and worst than that, I wasn't able to maintain a TAG attitude witch is proved to be the best way to beat uNL. After that I had my JJ against QQ my QQ against KK and my KK against AA so my bankroll took a downfall witch allied to the STT's lost made me go back to were I started...9$

The beginings

Being a card games passionate, I had never played real poker until 4 month ago when a good friend of mine (Hi Ganfas do check his blog) introduced me to the game and to pokerstars.

Like millions of players around the world I made my first deposit went directly to 0.10/0.25 and well after a quick double up and thinking "OMG this is free money" I quickly lost the starting 10$ and I remember thinking...DAM how lucky could that guy be wining with a pair of Aces and all I needed was a 4 to make my 2356 straight...

After that I decided that maybe...just maybe 0.10/0.25 was too high for me so...I decided to put another 20 and go to 0.01/0.02. After some reading and thinking that most of the stuff made sense but when I got to the tables I just limped and limped and made hero calls like the biggest of fish so obviously downfall came yet again reducing my bankroll to 9$ and leading me to another pause, this time 2 month no playing just reading.

From zero to hero

Being someone that never made a blog, I'm not quite sure how one should start this things...Should I introduce my self? Should I just explain what's this about?

Well let's do a bit of both...First something about me.

Im a 33 years old , soon to be 34 I work with electronic transactions and credit card applications on the develpoment area. I'm married and I have two lovely daughters that I love above everything. My hobbies are playing with my kids, playing world of warcraft and now playing poker.
I'm in a process of moving to a new house were I will be neighbour of a good friend of mine that it's also starting in the poker world (Hi Johny boy...care to start you own blog?).

Soon I will post some pictures.