I played that night and I won a tournament 1st place, felt very good, by the next day I triple up that money playing sit and goes. I was feeling good I had enough to start again my bad strike was over finally, then everything changed, I started getting a couple of bad beats, then I got on tilt, playing wayyyyyy over my bankroll I was playing 114$ sit and goes and everything went south. I LOST IT ALL AGAIN, wow sucks big time, I lost my head, stop caring that was the result. I made so many mistakes I feel so bad as a player, I've got to do something about it, I can't tilt no more, I didn't have the problem with tilting before so I dont know what is wrong, I read some good advise from Daniel N, he was talking about how he started and how he attached himself to some strick schedule rules,  no matter the result win or loose he would stop playing at certain time, he would play only so many hours, and it worked out for him, I think I will try that. This was just a quick update. For now I will leave.

I have taken a few days off poker, I truly have not felt like playing at all. The truth is that I have tried to play thinking to much about the money, instead of thinking in playing my "A" game, so I ended up playing for a while just wanting to sit and watch TV shows and forget all about poker, plus on top of that a full time job is very energy consuming, my stamina and endurance are really low because of so many months with no rest at all. Last couple days I started to read a lot, just about any kind of information that I could find out there online, in some of the poker magazine, actually anything at all related to poker and what it really is implied in there, I have been spending tons of work time on it, but hey I don't get paid by hour or commission, I get paid salary I do my job and try to get the most I can to get myself in place and come back. I've been very competitive and I know I'm good at the game and can beat it. One interesting thing I have read is how tough the game is getting, how many of the top pros are complaining, indeed the game is getting very tough, difficult to beat, but the ones that are going to keep beating the game are the ones that stay ahead of the learning curve, do the opposite of what players do. Also, and this I have been wanting to do for a long time but I have had not the drive to do is to start getting really into Omaha, that game is very beatable because many many people play really bad, specially online. I am still working in winning a tournament and get my bankroll to the point where I can get back to my aggressive game with the correct bankroll management. I have not been able to hit anything but I feel really good about my game and I know I will hit very soon. I will be playing tonight, let's see what happens.

Multi Table Tournamnets (MTT), one of the greatest feelings in poker is to get to the final table of a huge MTT tournament with like 2000 or 3000 entrants, and why not even make it to first place. Last night I am watching a friend play a MTT of like 3000 entrants, he had been playing for like 3 hours, he was already in the money and had a very healthy stack of 45k chips, average was something like 25k chips and the blinds were 600/1200 at the time of the event I will be telling next. So my friend had been playing very solid poker, I really liked how he was playing and had dominated the table, I though he was going to get really far in this particular tournament. He busted out this guy that was alway trying to play a hand with him and another guy came in with something like 50k in chips, he was virtually raising every other pot and with in a few minutes he had a stack of 120k, a couple of minutes later, from early position the villian raises to 4500 that's when my friend tells me that he has pocket dueces and he goes and calls the 4500, every body folds and they go to the flop. The flop comes something like 4x7x9x, it looked like a flop that did not hit anybody at all, the villian bets something like 3000 and my friend raises him to 9000 chips, the villian thinks for a second and calls, the Turn comes an Ace, the villian bets again and my friend calls, the river comes a complete blank that does not complete any draws or anything and the villian bets 4000 chips into a pot of 30k and my friend calls with his 22 loosing over 75% of his stack to the villian. So what happened? Why did he got involved so badly in this hand? Why didnt he get away? Well lets go and break this hand down to see what happened,

First the villian raises from early position to 4500, he had been opening a fairly big amount of pots from any position so I don't believe he had a premiun hand every time. So my friend goes ahead and calls, this is not a bad call, my friend is getting position over the guy and wants to see a flop to see what is the texture of it, there are 3 possible options for this hand preflop:
1. He could have folded to the raise. It would not have been a bad play but I probably would have not folded because the villian had been opening way to many pots, but still is not a bad play if you are being conservative deep in a tournament.

2. Because my friend was in position he could have 3bet the villian trying to represent a big hand, see if he could take that pot down there or if any case take down in the flop, there is 85% chances no body flops anything so my friend had a good change of making the villian fold.

3. Just flat call and see what comes in the flop to outplay the villian, not a bad play either, it will save you some chips against the preflop 3bet in case the villian had a big hand and puts you all in preflop which you can't call.

So my friend calls and the flop comes relatively inocent, the villian bets something like 3000. Now, what options do we have?

1. Call, this is pretty much not an option, it would be considered a bad play, even if the villian did not hit the flop, why would you call? just try to hit a 2 outer in the turn or river?

2. Fold, is you are planing in folding the flop to a favorable flop if the villian bets (which he was going to, because he was being very aggressive), why to call preflop in the first place?, So a fold would be a  bad move for this flop stating that you incorrectly play the hand preflop.

3. 3bet the flop, which is what my friend did, but there was a little problem in my friends re raise, the villian bets 3000 and my friend raises to 9000, not enough to make the villian fold if he had two over cards, 4500+4500 = 9000 100x9= 900 600+1200=1800 9000+1800+900=11700 that was what there was preflop plus a 3000 bet from the villian that is 14700 now a reraise of my friend to 9000 that is 23700, the villian had to call 6000 to win 23700 not a good enough raise to force him out of the hand, so my friend's best option was to either push or make a BIG reraise if he truly believe the villian did not have anything.

Now the turn comes an Ace, and the villian comes and bets again, at this point my friend had to give up the hand already, he had bleeded some chips but not to bad.

And the river the villian bets 4000 chips, an extremely small bet for a pot of over 30k, he was just doing a block bet to avoid an all in bluff in the river, so my friend calls and looses a huge pot.

This kind of scenarios happens ALL the time and way to frecuently in MTTs, after several hours of play we want the tournament to finish, we get tired and we want to force the action, basically we just give up at the end, this is a HUGE mistake, we are loosing money tons of money by just giving up, and that is what divides great tournament players and bad or average players, great tournament players dont only can read good, bluff good and collect chips, they just never give up, while they still have some chips they never give up and keep trying to win, this mentallity in the long run will maximise our winnings. This was a very interesting hand, it made me realize that once we sit in a tournament we can not give up, we are forced to play, we have to concetrate, take a few seconds to think what is it that you want to acomplish in  a particular hand, or with a particular oponent, take a few seconds to think what is the right amount to bet and WHY are you betting or reraise, this will help us not make so many mistakes and keep us focus on the game and in the long run maximise our profit.

I have not written anything in the blog in a long time. After the big fealure of the WCOOP I have not been wanting to play any cards at all, I have just been wanting to lay in bed and watch some TV shows, I have played only a few tournaments a week probably like 3 or 4 tournaments a week, I have also been playing a little of omaha HI. Now for the past week I have been back to studying my game a lot and reading plenty of information, been looking for some good articles to read, there has been some good articles from "Rizen" (great player by the way) that I have liked and have lifted me up. Also it is very interesting how more and more online pros that used to beat the game constantly a year ago now they cant even beat the game, the game is getting very tough to beat, people in general are trying to improve their game and there is tons of information out there for this to be acomplished, now what can we do about this? Well like they have been saying "we have to keep outselves ahead of the learning curve", we have to come with new ideas, we have to find out what is it that ppl are doing and we have to come up with a plan to beat that. For example I have been seeing a lot of resteals and 3bets out there, so what can we do about it? well maybe we can 4bet to be ahead of people, or try to steal much more less frecuently from late position so we are always ahead. Another thing that I am noticing is that omaha is gaining popularity online, and that is a good thing, there is not much information for omaha out there, and there are some pretty bad players, it is a game with massive amounts of action and can be beat, I myself have been playing some omaha with some pretty nice results. Im going to be working on my game in omaha and playing some big MTT. I really like the stars $50+5, the level of play is not great and the payout is pretty good. For now I am going to be writing more frecuently here in the blog posting some hands and writing what I think about the game, this is beneficial for me because it will force me to put my mind on the game which has been very difficult for me lately.

33.33%. That is what I have accomplish so far from my goals, I have completed step 4 and won the tournament giving me a boost of an extra 530$, I have also purchased a brand new monitor 22'' wide screen, this is giving me the opportunity of playing lots of tables at the same time, I won the tournament on Friday and by Sunday night I had played a good 3000 hands, unfortunately I did not complete any step 6 and I wasted almost 200$ of my bankroll, but I highly doubt I will feel felt, my plan is set up not to fail, and I have been sticking to it, now the biggest problem that I am seeing is defenetly the timing, I have 16 days to complete at least one step 1 and from that day I have another 16 days to complete the second Step 6, the good news is that I am playing up to 6 tables at a time, so results should be seeing a lot faster too.

After continuesly loosing due to several bad beats, I would keep playing and still would get knocked out by a bad beat, its been a couple of weeks since the last post, so here we go again, todays blog update it's pretty simple, I just got a new monitor wide screen, it lets me play multi tables in a very comfortable way, so I went and Played several Step 1 at the same time getting a 75% winning rate on them. Unfortunately I got some bad beats and I only got one ticket for step 4 which I am playing later on today. We will see what happens, I really hope to win this one so I can take a little breath and move to the phase 2.

After winning two Step1 I went and played Steps2, the very first one I won, which got me a ticket to the Step3, There were some Interesting hands, one of the first hands I got was AA which I got all in preflopagainstKK, what a cold deck but my Aces held and that was it. Then I have 88 guy raises I call flop x8x and got my money in with the best, guy shows KK and I win.

After so many tries and two huge mistakes with my original bankroll of 100$ I have put another 30$ and this time try to play my best and do things right once and for all.

I started with this plan on July 24th 2008, Bankroll $100, from which I started playing Step1 for $7.50. From these 100$ bankroll I made two big mistakes. ( Like I have always done taking unnecessary risks). I played a 33$ MTT from which my QQ were sucked out by 88. Then I played a heads up match of 20+1$ which I got sucked out my A10 against K10, so I lost a total of 54$ which is a good 54% of my bankroll lol. From the rest I got 2 times to Step 6 originally I just wanted to go from Step1 to Step6 and get only one Step6 prize (5200$) and play the main event of the WCOOP.