Back from a great vacation

In short: France was sunny, warm, fun and relaxing. I had a great time with my family, spent a lot of time having fun with the boys in the pool and I even got around to read two pokerbooks and watch a lot of poker videos on my Ipod.

Back to playing now and after a month of July, I was eager to do better this month.
So far it's going ok: I played about 3000 hands at the 4NL tables on Partypoker and I'm up $15 there. I also want to build a bankroll on PokerStars so I deposited $15 and after some 1500 hands that's up $12.

Results could have been better: one misclick costed me $4 and I also misread a board (because I was involved in a hand on all 4 tables), thinking I had a straight when I didn't, which cost me another $3. I managed to not tilt though :)

Played a fun hand where I raise preflop with 99 and get one caller. I flop quads, make a halfpot bet to make it look like a cbet and my caller decides to pull a bluff for almost his entire stack on me.

I reviewed some of my sessions and I still make too many donkcalls even though I'm getting better at avoiding those.

In order to play more disciplined I decided to use some chips. I put 3 stacks of 3 chips in front of me: the reds are for bluffs, so I limit myself to 3 bluffs in about 500 hands. The blues are for calling down suspicious bets, like if I have a decent hand like at least TPTK and the villain bets into me or makes a play that doesn't make sense. Calling those hands all the time is what makes me loose money, but folding every time seems a big leak too. Finally, the blacks chips are for (costly) mistakes, so whenever I make a big mistake, I put one chip aside. When all three are gone, the session is over.

I will try this the next couple of sessions and see how it works out, but it seems like a good idea.

I decided to play a few multi-table SNG's as well and I did ok: 5th out of 27, 12th out of 45 and 20 out of 27 doesn't seems all that bad, considering I never play MTT's or SNG's. I might play a few more of them on PokerStars cause it's good practice and I nice change from grinding the cash-tables.

'till next time!

Astafas

May the cards be with you