Still Grinding, Not Experimenting Yet
The recent Party double-bonus has me still grinding, vice starting my experiment at NL. I want to focus on a single table when I start at NL. Maybe two. But, I need 2,000 raked hands at Party in ten days, so 4-tabling limit holdem seems the thing to do right now.
Actually, Party gave me 3 bonuses. The day before the recent double reload they gave me $75 for not playing for a while. $75 in my account that I had to work off at 10X. No deposit required. I started working at the $1/2 tables and got lit up for 30 BB right away, losing holding jacks full and a flopped nut straight. Then I hit the two reloads so that I had some cash in my account, and went to the NL $25 tables to play a little circus style. Had my QQ busted twice - by A8o and A3o - all in pre-flop. AKs lost to AQo, and I limped from EP, pushed on the flop with both AA and KK and ran into flopped flushes both times. I won a couple of time, too, and finished the $75 chase down $74.62. Thanks for the 38 cents, Party!
Saturday I played a $5+.50 SNG at UB. Took second. I also played a bit of Prima NL. I never finished that Stan James chase. I only need a few dozen more raked hands there for the $100, so I thought I'd try to finish that off. I had a couple of good hands right away, went up about $25, and decded to quit while I was ahead. I need to bank some wins to get my mojo back.
Last night I started to work on the first $100 reload at Party. I ground out about 400 hands at $1/2 limit. Led off with a nice rush, and got up about 20BB. QQ holding up 3 times was nice. As time wore on , though, the fish broke me. Got KK thrice in about 5 minutes (4-tabling) won one small pot and lost two nice ones. Got my AA cracked by a reasonable flush draw. And I check-raised, then called down a LAG with a marginal hand, and he finally had the goods. I finished the session down 7 BB. Grrrrr.
It was annoying to go from well up to a little down, but in general the play at the tables I was at was much poorer than I have seen elsewhere of late. One of my KK hands there were 4 of us capping it pre-flop. My premium hands were getting lots of action, the fish were just unordinarily lucky. I felt very comfortable that I could easily beat those tables, so I am not dreading going back tonight. Hopefully the cards will fall more considerately for me when I do.