Crazy poker game

I just played a game of No Limit Texas Hold Em.
The buy in was $1 +$0.25, so it wasn’t high stakes. There were 18 players.

As per normal, I started folding hands early. I do that for two reasons, firstly to dodge the crazy hands people usually play early on, but also to present a tight table image to those who take notice.

But I won a couple hands early, I think my first raise with AQ stole the blinds, my next winning hand I won by betting on the flop.

I quickly found myself in 3rd place of 15, and was content to sit and fold my way to final table. But I kept getting hands.
Not monster hands, like AA through TT or AK suited or anything, but things like… Ks5s on the Big blind, and hitting the nut flush draw on the flop, and the flush on the turn.

Also, once we were getting low handed, I noticed that the player on my left was sitting out, so I capitalised on that. Instead of 6 handed, we were 5 handed, and I adjusted accordingly, raising with hands like A8o second to act, or limping on the button with 75, etc to go heads up with big blind.

But I kept hitting straights and such, and I knocked a few people out.
Then I stole some pots, and then I hit a few more hands, and so on.
Next thing I knew I had about 9000 in chips, we were playing “five” handed (four handed and my player to the left sitting out) so I was playing and raising and winning almost every hand.

Then when I knocked out two more players, we were put into the final table, I had about 12000 in chips.
Nobody else had more than 2000.
And I folded quite a few hands, but I will wager nobody noticed any of those, because my raises pre flop were always pot sized, and I could do it with any two cards – and often did so.
KJo was an easy raise, and I could bet into aces on the board.
Even when I was paying people, I didn’t notice a dent. But when I won, I cleaned up.

And I was winning a lot.
The final heads up I had nearly 23000, and the next guy had just over 4000.

And then, even though we muscled for several hands, he kept drawing out on me.
Soon he had 7000, and 9000, and then we were nearly even – about 15 to 11.

I kept setting up plays, which he would fall for, and then win by luck.
On one hand, he outplayed me, for me to double him up, leaving me with 7.5K
I hit two pair on the flop, and he hit a four outer on the river to knock me out.

So even though I was a monster stack the entire game, I still managed to come in at second place.
Poker can be a weird game.

I play poker online at full tilt. I mostly play fake poker for play money.
I have around 500,000 play dollars to gamble with, and I buy in to sit n gos for 10,000.
Managing a bank roll means that you can spend up to 5% of your bank roll on a single table. However, full tilt only offers sit n gos for 10,000 or then you can jump up to 100,000 buy in.
It’s a huge leap, and currently it is slow work improving with 10K sit n go tables, with slow prizes. I’d need a million or two before justifying the larger game. And this will take months and months to achieve – if at all!
So when I get 550K I take a gamble and play a 100K game. If I lose, I’m down to 450K and its easy to get back to my 500K benchmark. If I win… I have some room to maneuvre. I came second one time recently when doing this, but lost the next few games to bring me back where I started.

The best I’ve had this bank roll was actually 2 million, about a year or two ago. Foolishly, it seems, I spent 1 million of that trying to convert play money to real money. I missed out both times. The game was a buy in of 500,000 play money, and the reward is the top $40 get a few US dollars. I tried buying in when the numbers seemed low, but there was always last minute spikes of a few hundred players. It seemed to make just enough of a difference.

As my first blog outlines, I once tried my luck with real cash, but US$5 didn’t go far. It left me with 40 cents that I couldn’t find anywhere to spend.

It was my birthday recently. A friend whom I relay poker hands to made a deposit into my account for US$15.
Excitedly, I stepped back into the realm of gambling for cash.
I was a little dismayed at first, as I lost (usually on the bubble) my early games. I was down to about $7 before I started to win!
Getting it back to $15 felt good, but getting it to $30 felt better. I actually played a couple larger $1 games and made the cash, winning one for $17. I played a $2 shoot out and came second there.
The highest my bank roll has seen so far is $35, which almost justifies playing regular $2 games.
So I tried a couple. And lost. Still at around $29 dollars, I tried a couple very large $1 games, with $1600 up for first place. The top 1080 players make their cash back or more.
Yep, got knocked out each time.
I’ve dropped down to the $1 games again, because I’m back down to $21.31.
I’m still ahead based on the original deposit, but I’ve just lost $14 straight.

It’s kinda depressing.

I’m having trouble navigating players who just get lucky more often than I do. These games tend to be “all in” affairs, where if you wanna take a stab you have to be prepared to go all in.
Playing poker like that is much like a lottery. Well, a lottery where only 9 players can enter, and someone wins it all each and every time.
So it’s slightly better odds than a lottery, but the problem is if you lose (as you often will) you’re felted.

I guess I’m not bad at dodging bullets, seeing as I’ve actually done OK, but it will be nice if I can ever get out of these low entry no limit games.