Computer internet down

My internet connection went down for about a week. Actually it was fine during the day but around 8 PM or so my internet connection starts to slow down to a crawl and then comes to a halt until the next morning around 8 or 9 AM it gets connected again. This went on for a week until finally somebody took a look at it.

My poker bank account is at .19 cents. Ha ha. But I'm back in the game doing tournaments and some fast action at a 6-person table Texas Hold'em where I seem to win quite well and consistently sometimes doubling and tripling my initial chips stack starting at .40 cents.

At any rate, I'm back in the game and will update when I can.


Patience my grasshopper.

Cash Win Update 3

I did very well tonight playing against 5000 players in Absolute Poker no cash (free) NL Texas Hold 'em and took 3rd place which netted me a free cash win of $10.49. Also, since I placed in the top 5 I'll be able to play in this Sunday's $1000 Absolute Poker Challenge.

My net cash right now is at $10.95. Will look for more 0.50 to $1.00 Poker tourneys. And maybe one or two $2.00 tourney ones throughout this week. Need to keep my spending low while I continue to try and accumulate more extra cash. It has been one month now. The toughest part of getting some cash win without spending one dime is to play against those 3000 to 5000 players during those Texas Hold 'em freeroll tourneys. This has been my best win to date placing 3rd out of exactly 5000 players.


Mystery Poker Man

Update on poker wins

Played in some 15 or 20 tourney games since the last time I blogged last week about my win. I managed to get into between 100th and 350th place several times against some 3000 to 5000 players. Now I managed to place 27th which earned me fifty cents. Whoohoo!

Ok. Since the last win I played four 0.25 cents games and didn't get anywhere. But after today I got a little something to try again at those cash games.

Total cash in bank: 0.83 cents.

Next cash game: 0.50 to enter.

Cash payouts? Don't know yet.

I'll let you know.

Patience grasshopper.


A Mystery Poker Man's Update....

I did pretty well on the 0.50 cent NL Texas Hold e'm game. There were 142 players. Started at 3 AM in the morning. I figured I'd take the opportunity with less players around so early in the morning. The game took me 3 hours and 50 minutes to play til I busted out. I came in 5th place. The cash payout was $4.19. My account balance is now at $4.52. I will now decide to continue with either the 0.25, 0.50 or $1.00 game. Need to be mindful of stretching out my cash wins as much as possible and weigh it against the listed payouts.

So far so good 28 days into this "zero cash" poker challenge.


More Update...

Instead of .50 games I played four $1.00 games. I busted out in all four of them. Back to those freeroll tourneys again.

Phil Hellmuth....don't like him?

I like reading Bluff magazine. In fact I rank it as one my favorite poker magazine to read. Especially when I go out to eat lunch at my favorite chinese restaurant. But last week when I went to a grocery store to look for the latest Bluff magazine I spotted it and quickly grabbed it without giving much thought about the content on the front cover and bought it. I then went to my favorite chinese restaurant for an hour of relaxation did I noticed the garish grin of Phil Hellmuth holding his past WSOP bracelets including his recent 11th one.

Ok. Good. He's good at poker. So what. I don't care for his bratty attitude. I don't care for him stroking his ego by staring into his mirror saying "You're the best! You're the best!" and repeating to himself that great things will happen to him. And his "blackbelt poker" video? Please, don't even try buying that video with a title like that. And I wonder if it's his subconscious desire on wanting to be a black belt martial artist while growing up as a skinny kid? Probably can't even punch his way out of a wet paper bag.

Wax on..wax off. Wax on...wax off. Wax on...wax off.

Pretty much what all good poker players do at the table with their repetitive motion on checking the cards and throwing them away.

Check cards. Throw away. Check cards. Throw away. Check cards. Throw away.

And the one last thing I didn't like about the front cover of Bluff mag with Phil Hellmuth grinning away? His gawd off yellow-stained teeth! Check it out. I'm serious. Take a look at the magazine itself and see the garish color. I wonder why the editors of Bluff didn't have the foresight to at least air brush his teeth to be a bit more whiter? Why didn't they do that?

Oh yeah, maybe they secretly do not like Phil Hellmuth, too. And they left that garish, yellow stained teeth grinning away like a bad Cheshire cat on the front cover of Bluff magazine for the world to see.

Congrats, Phil.

Remember to brush your teeth the next time.

My First Cash Win

Well, that didn't take long. After breaking the 100th place yesterday by placing 68th place, today I managed to get to 17th place after playing against 4502 players playing Absolute Poker online freeroll. That win netted me with $1.16 into my AP account.

I had a K7 suited hearts. I made the call. The flop came up with two hearts and king club. I went all in. I busted when a jack came up on the river and lost to a fellow with a KJ hole card.

My move was a good one but with my remaining 120k chips in the all in it wasn't enough to scare other poker players who had much more chips than I had.

Now, the next move is figure out which cash game to play. The .25 one or the $1.00 poker game?

Decisions. Decisions.

But I decided to go with the .25 poker game "$10K 100 seat guaranteed qualifier" for today. The NL poker Texas Hold e'm will start in about 1 hour and 30 minutes. Not sure what the total prize pool looks like with all the extra rebuys. Playing this .25 game will give me four shots at this in the hope to get some extra cash and move forward.

Patience my grasshopper.

Absolute "Zero Cash" Poker

Well, I am certainly getting better at playing against 2000, 3000, 4000 or even 5000 people at NL Hold 'em (or any other poker games) online tables. Last night I played on Absolute Poker Texas Hold 'em NL freeroll. About 4800 people registered and after about 4 hours of playing I managed to get down to 68th place with 63th place being the start of a cash payout, albeit a very small one. But it was my goal to finally break the "100 barrier" with 99 people left at the tables. I've been consistently getting close to the 100 mark and now I've gone below that. A matter of time til I start adding cash to my account for free. And it's also a matter of me improving my bankroll managment as well and when to bluff, call, raise or all-in. I'm doing the same thing like Chris "Jesus" Ferguson's challenge of starting at zero ca$h.

I'm almost a year into an experiment on Full Tilt Poker. I'm attempting to turn $0 into a $10,000 bankroll. With no money to start with, I had no choice but to start out playing Freerolls. Starting out, I'd often manage to win a dollar or two, but I'd quickly get busted and have to start over again. It took some time but, after awhile, I was eventually able to graduate to games that required an actual buy-in.

Even today, people don't believe it's really me when I sit down at Full Tilt's small stakes games. They ask what I'm doing down here, and often tell me stories about how they turned $5 into $500 or $100 into $1,000. Usually, these stories end with the person telling me that they went broke. There's no surprise there. These folks tried to quickly build a bankroll by gambling. They'd play in a game that was beyond their bankroll and, if they happened to win, they'd move up to a higher limit and risk it all one more time. Inevitably, they'd lose a few big hands and go broke.

So, I know I can get some cash game going. I just need stay consistent with my own rules and have been doing so but I've gotten reckless one too many times. But if you have gone past after the first break, then you are probably on the right track doing something right. Or just plain lucky. I realize that my own rules is working well and so I need to stick by it much more consistently. It may take 5 hours just to earn fifty cents to start off with. And it may sound like a small earning, which it is, but by being diligent with my own strict rules it should actually help me when I finally get into small cash games. From there once I hit my stride I could actually see nice jumps but I am prepared for setbacks. It's all a part of the learning process that began in 2002 for me.

My own freeroll challenge starting at zero cash began on August 4, 2007. We'll see how well I do one year from now. Right now, I'm going to play two freerolls poker at the same time to increase my odds of winning some cash to start out with.

Mystery Poker Man Blog

Welcome readers!

This blog is designed to help me improve my poker game whether it's Texas Hold 'em, Seven Card, Omaha, HORSE or even Razz. This will be a place where I can chronicle my day to day or week to week poker play as I learn and advance my way through mostly online poker and live felt poker. As my blog title indicate, I won't reveal who I am but in time (or unless somebody else figures it out) I make myself know. And who knows when that'll take place. Maybe never.

Heh heh.....

Am I a professional poker player? Wouldn't that be the one lofty aim for all poker players? Let me tell you that I won poker playing 7 card stud winning one of Reno's progressive pot with my first ever clubs Royal flush against an 80 year old lady's full house. That was in 2002. Lately I have been playing more online than doing the actual felt action. And just to make things more challenging for me read my Absolute "Zero Cash" Poker challenge I have set for myself. Or maybe I'm lying to you just to throw you off and I'm not a professional poker player?

Heh heh...

I've decided not to put any money into the online poker choosing instead to start from 0$ and play those freeroll poker tournaments that cost nothing to play except your time, skill and patience.

I play mostly in Full Tilt poker and Absolute Poker. On occassion I play Pokerstars.net if they have any freerolls for me to play in. Also, I have one gold ticket in one online poker game for a stake in a tournament where last time they had non-cash prizes such as a 52 inch high def television which was probably worth around $2500 or so. Prizes went all the way down to 9th place, I think, giving out iPods. Whoopee. I'll be hanging on to that ticket for cash games.

My best so far in chip lead was placing 54th place with 103,000 chips against 2700 players but made the fatal mistake and wrong move on going all in with three players on the table didn't expect the 3rd player to go all in surpassing in amount my own chip. I was forced to play since I was already pot committed at the time in Absolute Poker. I ended up in 111 th place (yesterday I ended up in 102 nd place but already had a short stack by then in Absolute Poker). All I needed was to get into place enough to earn me a few dollars as a start and build on that. I think it's more challenging this way to force yourself to earn cash games by playing it more seriously rather than to have money drain from your own wallet. This way my poker skills will simply get better as time goes on.

Keep watching this blog while I continue to play online poker (and some felt work) chronicling my plays and thoughts.

See ya.

Mystery Poker Man!