InternationalTime to say goodnight!
This is it for the Chasing Chris Ferguson team. I can’t begin to thank PokerHack and MaxieCat for their efforts in staying with the project for a year.
Maxie performed an amazing feat - she never gave up. Even though her results did not show well on paper, I can’t help but wonder how many people out there have the same results but just won’t admit it or track it. Entertaining, witty, and innovative in figuring out her approach as a new player, she would do well as a player if she had ever made a small pittance and started to play live. So there, Maxie, think about it! The tournament scene is totally brutal as Yours Truly can tell you.
PokerHack had a very decent year in terms of showing -0- to $ can happen. She also shows us how difficult it is by tracking her play and results. And it is. She kept up a great showing even though she’s going through tremendous stress on health issues of her life mate, and traveling for medical reasons, crappy internet connections that boot you off while you’re playing, and a host of other issues that pop up. Great job on showing the world that you can pick up a bankroll and hang on to it, Hack! You can follow the Hack’s poker and life adventures here at Witches Brew Poker Stew!
As to me, what can I tell you? I’m always going to play poker. It’s what I do. I got lucky immediately to fade 10K players or so and get into the top 88 or 99 (can’t remember the amount required) and then play in a freeroll that paid $. I believe I started my bankroll with $1.30. I played in a Daniel Negreanu freeroll or a PokerPlayersAlliance freeroll and made another pittance, like $1.50 - or maybe I have the order reversed and I’m too damned lazy to go check the archives to see where/what/how. All I know is that I waded through thousands of players to get started. And I played tighter than a cow’s ass in fly time. Yah, I love that old saying too!
In the beginning, I seriously thought I’d be lucky to ever get a penny. When I had around $8.80 in my BR, I played in a $4.40 LH tournament and I believe I took 4th in it, it seriously jump started my BR - and again, I’m too damned lazy to go check the archives. I had almost $200 at that point, I think.
I played some 7 card stud 8 or better live, a teensy bit of low limit NLH and mostly played tournaments. I think I won a Razz and a 7 card stud tournament - all micro limit buy-ins on PokerStars. I placed in other NLH tournaments but nothing to jump up and sing about. At one point I had my BR up to over or right at $600. WOW! Hard to believe it now even thinking about it.
I’ve been beaten every way from Sunday that there is to be beat in poker this last year. And I’ve never RAN GOOD! Sure, let’s chalk it all up to bad play, that will work for most of you, but for those it doesn’t work for, you understand the frustration of taking a premium hand in a heads-up situation and your opponent is willing to kill their tournament life for 50K with Q-9H vs. K-K. And of course they hit, time after time - after time - after time, until you honestly think you’re going to go insane with it. That’s what happened to my BR of $600. I kept buying into micro tourneys and low buy-in tourneys, $2.20 here, $3.30 there. I tried 180 and 160 man Sit N Go’s (I think I won one of them - yah - I’m sure I won one of them) and I played a single table Sit N Go and won it but I never liked the feel of those games even tho I went back to the MTT Sit N Go’s and tried again.
There is so much gamble going on in the MTT tournaments that you have to walk on water to be able to do anything in them and the fucking Card Fairy has to be out getting laid in the Ozarks or somewhere that donkeys are fucking in order to be able to beat them.
For quite awhile I kept track of the bad beats, cherishing them, writing about them, thinking it over for a day or two, bitching in chat with the Hack about them as we both got our brains twisted and mashed, and then ripped out through our noses as we tried to win with the best starting hand in heads-up spots. I’ve watched them happen to everyone at my tables over this year of play…they happen all the time, every second of every day. The biggest problem is when they continue to happen to YOU, you begin to seriously focus on them and allow them to cripple you mentally. I finally gave up remembering or even thinking about them.
I’ve been up and down and played tons more freerolls because…obviously I went bust. I took every shot at the MDM frequent player points freerolls on PokerStars that I could, until I ran out of FPPs. I have 4 FPPs left now. I play a lot of poker. I’ve looked at a zillion hands and wish I had kept track of the # of tournaments I played in this last year. It has to be pretty damned astro-fucking-nomical.
One of the most fun tournaments I’ve played in and will continue to make sure I have funds in my PokerStars account to play in, is our bi-weekly PokerWorks HORSE tourney (and we have one happening tomorrow so be there - same time 21:00 EST - same password ‘donkeys’ - same price $5.50 - PokerStars private tournaments - ‘PokerWorks Family’).
What did I learn during the last year with this project? Poker is a bitch and then there’s the real world. You have to keep playing to see how the game comes out. I’d have to rob street people to stay alive if I relied on tournament poker for a living. I think tournaments are the most difficult to play because of the continual bleeding effect the increasing blinds and antes have on your chip stack - if you are a card magnet it might not bother you but once you hit the dead card zone, it’s brutal, you just sit and slowly watch your tournament life run down the drain and finally have to decide which bad hand you will make a stand with…eenie…meenie…minie…mo.
One thing I loved about this project is the interaction with readers and comments and getting to read thoughts from players that are doing the same thing.
As of this writing, I have spent the last week playing 1c-2c NLH, beginning with $1.31 in my BR, I’m now up to $8.38 and had 2 bad sessions where I lost my buy-in.
Saying Goodnight on Chasing Chris isn’t a horrible thing, you can still find me playing and writing on my blog Table Tango. So, my friends, time to say goodnight!
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November 15th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Well Linda, we all gave it our best shot! We had some fun, leaned some things and shared a lot of laughs. I am sure than none of us are done with this gig whether we are blogging on it or not! Thanks for all the kudos, the motivation and advice as well as the opportunity to join in!