I'm Back!

After a little absence from the blog, I'm back and better than ever. Actually, I'm exactly the same as ever, but I'm feeling optimistic so let's pretend. Let me get the bad news out of the way and mention that last week was another losing one. Thanks to a couple of bonuses I got from Empire I still ended up a loser, but not nearly as big of one. My Internet connection was acting up all last week, and then it totally farted out on me over the weekend. I finally got it fixed yesterday, but I haven't played any poker since Saturday. Thanks to the regular disconnections that plagued me all week, my Poker Tracker stats are all screwed up, which is annoying, but it would be way too time consuming to try and go back and fix them. I think I've got everything back together, so things should be working fine this week.

Last week was my first week playing on Empire, and even though I had a losing week, I feel pretty good about playing there. I started off playing some $100 buy-in no limit, which is what I always played at Pacific. I found the games to be very tight compared to Pacific. It seemed that everyone was multi-tabling and therefore not too antsy to play marginal hands. That's one of the good things about Pacific only letting you play one table. People would become impatient and put money in with pretty weak hands. I found myself becoming a little too impatient due to the lack of action last week, and ended up losing about $120 in nine hours of play at that level.

I also dabbled in the $100 NL 6-max tables, which I'd heard good things about. I was reluctant to play 6-max because shorthanded play is not really suited to the way I like to play, but after trying it out it was definitely better than the regular games. Plenty of action, and bad players were pretty easy to find. I'll probably be hitting up these games regularly, and may make 6-max my main game. I only played one session, losing a tiny bit, but there's a lot of potential there.

The majority of last week I played three tables of 2/4 Limit. Once I got used to multi-tabling I really liked it. Fortunately, I have a giant monitor so I can fit four tables on my screen at once with no overlap. Without being able to see everything at once, having to click from table to table would be maddening, I'm sure. I didn't think I would like the robotic style that you have to play when you've got that many tables going at once, but it was actually more exciting than folding for a half-hour waiting for a big hand like I regularly had to do at Pacific. Besides, I don't consider myself that good at hand reading or out-thinking people. It seems like I'm always making the wrong move when I'm forced to make a tough decision. Playing low limit, you pretty much just go by the odds and take advantage of the players who don't know them. The most frustrating thing I experienced playing limit was the crazy swings. I'd play for half an hour and be up $70, and then twenty minutes later I'd be down $40 from where I started. It seems wilder than no limit somehow.

I did finally tell my parents what I was up to. My mom called me and mentioned something about my car being in my driveway every time she drove by. (They live like four blocks away from me, so every time they go to or from their house they pass mine.) She didn't act like it was that big of a deal, really. She called me again a couple of days ago and said that she told my dad. She said she was going to let me tell him, but he said something to her about my car being home all the time, so she went ahead. I haven't talked to him, but that doesn't really mean anything. I guess he's alright with it.

Well, I've done this for three weeks now and I'm down money, so that certainly sucks. Can't pay the bills like that. I don't know if I overestimated my ability or if I've just had a bad couple of weeks or what. For some reason I feel optimistic about this week. I haven't played in a couple days and I feel rested up and ready to go. Hopefully I can get back on track.

Wiggie
wiggie@pokergreed.com