The Month In Poker

I've got a few minutes here while I'm taking a break from scrubbing the kitchen, letting the sweat on my forehead dry, and I was looking back at my results for the month playing poker.

In cash games, I'm up $265 since May 28th.

In tournament play, I'm up $921 for the month. My actual tournament winnings are close to $1600, but subtracting out the buy-ins and dealer tokes, I've pocketed $900+. Not too shabby. And I was actually in a much more profitable position in my cash games until Wednesday, when I just couldn't catch a hand all afternoon.

The amazing thing is that I've played in nine tournaments this past month, I've made six final tables, got the final-table-bubble once, and cashed in five of them. Tossing out that first-one-voted-off-the-island showing a couple weeks back at Binion's, I have placed no worse than 11th place in any tournament I've gotten into. All of them have had no less than 24 players, and three of them had more than 100 entrants.

Clearly, there is much more work to do, but my game has come a long way in the past year. I'm much better than I used to be, but still, I have my lapses. My last two tournament knockouts have come because I was playing my hand, not my opponent, and just didn't think that they had the goods. I think that bothers me more than getting knocked out by having my pocket Kings and pocket Queens cracked by inferior hands. At least then I know I played properly and got my money in the pot when I had the best of it.

Anyhow, I just wanted to share that with my poker-freak readers, because results matter. When I play tournaments, I'm now to the point that I go in expecting to make the final table every time. My immediate goal is to actually win one, so it's tough for me to agree to any type of deal-making right now--I really want to see if I can win a live tournament. I've won dozens of online tourneys, but that's just easy--and pure luck most of them time. Live tournaments are a different animal altogether.

Once I finally get that first win under my belt, and get a few more bucks in the bankroll, I'm gonna start playing in some bigger tournaments. Grinding it out for $300 in four hours is ok, and playing for nine hours to get $600 ain't too bad either, but in addition to actually winning a tournament, my next goal is to hit a four-digit payday.

Mikey