I haven’t posted a blog in over a year, I find this hard to believe until I look back on the past year of my life. I don’t think I’ve played serious poker since the spring of 2010. Since that time, I’ve gone back to school to pursue a degree in Accounting. I studied for 6 months to become an Enrolled Agent which I passed in January of this year. I also became ill in February which lasted for 5 months and still lingers with the occasional bad day. My husband and I also bought an RV and we’ve spent this summer doing a little traveling. Of course on top of all this black Friday happened and I was denied my online poker life.
Living in New Hampshire, I count on online poker to fill in the gaps between my trips to play live poker. Up here our only live poker is charity poker or traveling to Connecticut to Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun. Once I made the decision to go back to school, I relied more on online poker. Pokerstars obliged with starting up the women’s poker league. This gave me a scheduled game to play each night of the week and playing against many of the same players each night. Beyond the nightly tournament prize there were monthly prizes for top finishers in the league. The league started in August and continued through the end of the year. Each month I made the leaderboard with a few months coming in the top ten. I also made the yearly leaderboard and because of all this was able to build my bankroll up from $70 to over $500. They stopped the league at the end of the year and didn’t start it up again until I was already sick. I didn’t play poker for over two months while I was sick and had just started back to playing when black friday happened.
Like everyone, I received my money back from Pokerstars but never received a dime back from Fulltilt. It wasn’t a ton of money but it was enough for 6 buy-ins at a live tournament I like to play. I then didn’t play online for a couple of months. I finally asked a friend to transfer me some money on Carbon Poker where I tried grinding it away at the $.11 6 player sngs. I finally got sick of this and asked for a bigger bankroll to be transferred so I could try $1 tournaments instead. I’ve been grinding it away at the $1 double your money stts and have built my bankroll up a few dollars. It is slow work but it is getting my poker game back in to shape.
Since I do not want this blog to be ten pages long I will move forward to what happened at Foxwoods last week. I took my mother there for the day so she could play video poker. She is getting on in years so I don’t leave her side anymore and play video poker alongside her. Luck shined down on us this day and I hit a royal flush on a quarter machine where I was playing the standard 5 quarter max bet but was also playing 1 extra quarter for a bonus of X times pay. When I hit the royal, my bonus was at 5x pay so I won $5000 which I split with my mother. To make a long story short, most of the money went to bills but I set aside a few hundred for poker at The Poker Room in Hampton Falls, NH. It is charity based but I don’t find the rake to be any worse than Foxwoods so when I don’t feel like traveling to Foxwoods I head there.
Sunday, my husband and I went to play in their 1pm tournament. It is a $50 buy-in, you start with 12k in chips, and features 20 minute rounds and there was 172 players with 18 being payed and $1800+ for first. We both played and neither of us cashed unfortunately. I have no bad beat stories to tell, but did run in to some weird bad luck. I started off on a roll with flopping a set of queens twice to gather some chips but then as the tournament got to the half way point my luck was changing. I had AA twice and got no callers to my small raise preflop (2 1/2 times the bb). I had KK twice. The first time I raised 2 1/2 times the bb UTG. Next guy calls and woman after him double raises. She has been a very active player so I put her on AK, AQ, maybe QQ or JJ at the most. A couple more people call her raise so I bump it up to isolate. Everyone folds but her who smooth calls. This put my senses on high alert. The flop came with an Ace and I continue bet a small enough bet that I can fold if needed. She bumps up my bet by 5 times. I quick fold my KK face up and she turns over AA.
My second KK hand happened to be my out hand. I was at a new table but had seen about 5 or 6 hands. This one guy sitting two to my left seemed to be in every hand so far. I’d seen him call all-ins with A8 and AJ and A9. He seemed like a loose cannon. So I look down at KK utg (this should have been my omen ha) and raise 3 times the big blind. Guy next to me calls and loose guy raises me. I’ve seen him bully the other girl at the table so I put him on Ace crap. It comes around to me and I count out my chips and see that if I fold I’m left with just over 8 times the big blind so I move in over the top of him. He snap calls with his AA and I’m out.
Hubby went out about 12 before the money, he had no real hands all day and struggled to last that long. I was very impressed with his play and knew if he’d gotten any cards he’d have made the money. I tried a $40 stt after and went out on the bubble. I never saw a pocket pair, never got a straight, and the only flush I had a guy rivered a boat to beat me. I’m not going to cry and complain…my first day back at live poker was successful mentally and that is what mattered to me at the end of the day.
Welcome back to the land of poker!