Preflop

Today marks the start of my online poker career! And this blog is to record my thoughts and experiences as I start on the long, arduous road to gambling addiction.
I've started this as a kind of sister blog to my friend Steve's own poker blog - Cash Game Poker. I thought it be fun to record my own seventy-five cent wins alongside Steve's $2,000 pots!

So, my career has got off to a fairly modest start so far. I played No Limit Texas Hold'em on the lowest stake tables available ($0.02 / $0.04 blinds) for a couple of hours this morning and then maybe fours hours this afternoon. Checked out a grand total of $2.70 ahead!
That final figure kinda disguises how much my chip pile went up and down throughout - I've not quite locked down my play style yet, so I lost a lot of money (relatively speaking, obviously) chasing hands that I should have known I wasn't going to win. At one point I'd doubled my initial buy-in on a couple of decent hands, only to throw all of it away in one horribly mishandled hand.

I've only played Limit before online, so it's taking a little while to learn how to judge how much to raise in which circumstances, and what another player's raise amounts are likely to indicate. That, along with being a bit overcautious, meant I was selling my good hands a bit too cheaply.

One hand that until very recently I didn't appreciate the value of, but turned out to be a lifesaver today, is the mid-value pocket pair. I made most of my chips from taking a chance when there was no preflop raises to see the flop and really lucked out with a [9,9] and later a [5,5] that both flopped to a set, then rivered to a full house, then a [6,6] than flopped to a set, then rivered to 4-of-a-kind. I think the beauty is that people aren't expecting you to be holding those value cards as a pair so it catches them of guard.

Anyway, I've rambled far too much. I'll try and be more concise next time around...

This month's profits: $2.70