February review

In February I have played almost 4k hands at the 4NL tables, winning $38 (24 BB/100) which was a great result. After picking up $2 in a short session at 10NL, I'm up $40 for the month.

The last couple of months I went from a break-even player to a winning player: after my first 18k hands I was down $28 (-3.7 BB/100), the next 15k hands resulted in a profit of $134 (22 BB/100). Combined I'm at 7.9 BB/100 at the 4NL after 34k hands and I feel I could take a shot at 10NL. In March, I will still mostly play 4NL though, because I'm aiming to reach 10 BB/100 before I move up to 10NL.

Last night was a good start: up $15 in almost 600 hands.
One hand stood out for me:
I had a maniac on my right, who was playing at something like 75/45/inf.
HE was raising and reraising constantly and often people just folded. One guy called him and the maniac won a big pot and was at $12.
I had been in a couple of pots with him, but I hadn't flopped anything or he was pushing me off my hands (twice I had top pair but a very crappy kicker). Up until then I didn't like my hand enough to put the chips in the middle and I knew I had the perfect position and just had to wait for a strong hand.

So a couple of hands later it gets folded to the maniac, who open-raises to 4BB, I call with KJo and both the blinds call as well.
The flop comes 6c5cJh and the blinds check. The maniac checks as well. Because I was willing to take a risk in order to have a shot at his stack, I decided to check as well (normally I would bet here about 99% of the time).
With the drawheavy board, I'm pretty confident I have the best hand at this point.
Turn is a Ts and again both blinds check.
The maniac bets 2/3 of the pot and I throw in a decent raise...
And again he tries to push me off by shoving it. Even though I only had top pair
with a decent kicker, I had to make the call and he showed K9o and gets stacked.
Four hands later, he dumps the rest of his stack and leaves.


Sayonara!