SwingSwingSwing's Poker Journey

So that's me climbed out of the hole in the $5 HU SNGs, back in profit at last.

My final opponent of that session was quite tough. I Sharkscoped him at the start of the tournie and saw a very impressive HU graph, a virtually straight line of rising profit. I lost a lot of chips early when I tried to run a stupid check raise bluff when I hit bottom pair on an AQ6 board. Stupid board to do it on and I had to fold to his all in reraise.

A few hands later, still at 10/20 blinds, he min raised his button and I pushed with TT. He called with A9 which I thought was a bit loose, and I doubled up.

My opponent did a good job of picking away at me for the 20 or so hands, pushing quite a few preflop and picking up small unclaimed pots when he didn't. I was dealt a pair of queens in the small blind. My opponent pushed preflop and obviously I called. He had KT and so I was a 70/30 favourite. The flop brought a ten but I was still an 81% favourite.....until another ten hit on the turn.

I messed up badly with TT on the button a short while later. I limped hoping that he would raise. But he checked. The flop came J85 and I bet, he called. We both checked the turn. Another J fell on the river and my opponent bet almost full pot. I just didn't see him having a Jack and playing it so passively on the flop, so I called. He had J5 for the full house and his passive play on the flop was because he had a monster. Doh.

I was down to around 700 chips and the blinds were up to 25/50 so it was getting near to push/fold time. I pushed with KTo and got called with K9o and doubled up, bringing things nearly level.

Flopping trip eights helped me get back into the lead and a passively played top pair got me some more chips when my opponent thought he could value bet his pair of fours on the river.

The knockout hand was nice. I pushed first in with K9s. He called with AJo. I hit a 9 on the flop and then made runner runner quads which was very nice indeed.

Bloggerment last Sunday - blegh. Made the final table but my short stacked push with K5s was not a match for a pair of threes despite having a gazillion outs on the flop.

Yesterday, I was browsing my Heads Up SNG results and realised that I achieved a milestone, namely the 500 tournament mark. A good time for stats updated, I thought.

So the scores on the doors are.......insert drumroll here........

Played: 503
ITM%: 55.7%
ROI%: 3.0%

This includes all my heads up SNGs, even the ones I played waaaaay back when I was definitely clueless about the whole HU thingy. I suppose I have to be pleased that I'm positive and that I have a good chance of being a winning player, even if it's a barely winning player.

One of the problems of being a barely winning player with a small ROI is that my winnings are very sensitive to variance. As little as 50 games ago, my winnings were in the red. My HEM EV graph was also in the red so I was definitely going through a bad run. It was scary just how little time it took for the winnings to evaporate. The bad run passed, however, and I'm back in profit.

Another thing that pleased me is that I'm in profit at every buyin I've played from the $2.15s up to the $10.50s.

So, what's my plan going forward?

My plan is to continue to play the $5.25s until I'm up $75-$100 dollars and then perhaps have a proper go at the $10.50s. Of course, I'll carry on with the HU education, namely watching HU videos and reading the 2+2 Heads Up forum. And I'll be putting extra effort into monitoring my emotional state while playing to ensure that I don't tilt away money.