Intro: Who I am and why I'm here

I've finally done it; I have done what I've thought about doing for probably two years now. I am now officially part of the blogosphere. It seems fitting that I am getting in on this fad years after it became popular and is now being surpassed by new and better things (ie. twitter), since thats basically the way I am with other trends: I see people doing something that looks cool, I hem and haw about whether or not I should do it for months if not years and I eventually decide to go with it after people have started forgetting about it. Indecisiveness FTW

So, I guess I should introduce myself to all those readers that dont already know me. Its pretty simple: I'm a steel-town girl on a saturday night looking for the fight of her life. Wait...no. My name is Dave, I'm going to be a junior at Washington University in St. Louis studying psychology. When I'm not at school I live in a suburb of Boston, where I've lived for most of my life. I am a avid sports fan and cant get enough of the celts, sawx and pats. Right now, I am really into poker. I devote a lot of my time to playing, watching and reading about poker, which has probably overtaken sports as my main interest of late.

The next thing you're probably wondering (right now you=me since I'm probably going to be the only person reading this for a while) is "What's this blog all about?" There's a pretty simple answer: poker. This blog will mainly function as a medium for me to talk about hands, discuss strategy and update all of the loyal readers about how my progress is going into my foray into the world of online poker. Hopefully, writing my thoughts down about pker will allow me to think about my play more objectively and abstractly, which will possibly improve my ability as a player. The blog also functions as a place where I can whine about bad beats, brag about big days and berate other players for being the donkeys they are.

My journey through poker is like that of many others: it involves multiple deposits, big ups and downs and a bunch of tilt.

I started playing poker, like many others, just after the Moneymaker boom of 2003. I saw the episodes of WSOP coverage on ESPN and was pretty hooked. Like 90% of America, I thought I obtained a pretty good understanding of the game from just watching the big hands of the '03 WSOP. My friends and I started playing pretty regularly 3-handed, with no chips, we would just write our stack size down on a sticky note and talley as we went along. After playing this way for a couple of weeks, I learned of a tournament being set up by a fellow classmate of mine. The buy in was 10 dollars, 27 people entered and we crammed into the living room and kitchen of the host. I ended up running well and getting lucky and chopped first place for a little less than $110.

At this point, I thought I was god's gift to poker, aside from one other kid in town that was obviously good (and is now a high stakes MTT reg) I figured I was clearly the best player and could dominate any home game you could throw at me. That year I played sparingly in home games on weekends and such probably making a few bucks here and there, but generally playing like an absolute donk. That summer, I played somewhat more often and eventually found a different group of kids that played poker more regularly. My new and some old poker friends got together pretty regularly as the summer went on and started playing multiple times a week during my senior year of high school. Playing more and more got me progressively more hooked to poker; I loved the different aspects of poker, the reading, bluffing and mainly the ability to win money by playing a game.

By the time senior year of high school was wrapping up, I had become totally engrossed in the game. I started participating in forums, duscussing hands with friends and started tivo-ing all the poker I could get my hands on. But from what I can now tell, I was still pretty bad at poker.That summer my poker crew started playing nightly and some of my friends got into the world of online poker. I watched in awe as my friends would play in 20-30 dollar SnGs and win or lose much more than I made the whole week playing poker in home games. Since my parents werent big on the whole "giving my information out on the internet" thing, I didnt think I should risk the grounding by creating an account. But once I was 1000 miles away at college, what could they do? So I created an account on Full Tilt.

Through freshman year of college I still had the poker itch and it was only made worse by the fact that someone on my floor had made 2000 bucks playing HU SnGs (which he promptly lost 1 week later, he wasnt very good but he was rich enough to afford it). I made my first deposit on Full Tilt and played tournaments and SnGs donkishly until i lost my whole roll. I then made another deposit, and then another. All the while, I continued to read forums and watch WSOP coverage. I finally did something of note when I won a 181-man 10 dollar tournament for $436. This was a huge deal for me since I was basically stagnant at $200. I then built that money up some, then tried HU NL and lost a big chunk of my roll (this will become a theme). I took out $200 and tried building up my profit, which I did until that summer. I played more that summer and into sophomore year. I played a bunch of HU SnGs but wasnt really profiting all that much. I also found that losing HU SnGs to donks tilted me to no end so after tilting off a portion of my roll on SnGs outside my bankroll I decided to switch to cash exclusively. I played 10NL and became a winner there, beat 25NL and beat 50NL with a couple of tourney scores along the way bringing my BR up to 4k and beyond. Along the way, I signed up for DeucesCracked to help my cash game and it undeniably was a huge factor in my ability to move up.

This brings me to now. The past few weeks I have been playing some 6max 100NL, HU 50NL and 100NL. Which up until last night were going well. Last night I proceeded to play some HU 100NL and played an epicly long buyin that resulted in me dropping 11 buy ins (that hurts to type). I tilted some and definitely didnt play well. Im now back down to around 3k and will try to grind back up playing 6max 50NL and maybe some HU 50NL and will try to watch some DC videos to keep my game on.

Wow this got long quick. Hope everyone enjoyed reading and keep raking in those pots!

Dave