Natural Born Gambler

This is a gambler. He is a gambler who plays poker but a gambler nonetheless. Notice how the poker players respond to him. If you play poker, do not be this type of player; he is exactly what the good players feed off. He talks about being a 'feel' player and mixing it up. I feel sorry for him because he has a problem.

His hypothetical shows that he has no real understanding of the game. As he states it, easy push. As it's restated that the lone Ten of Hearts is the nuts, I still push. Why? Because HU I am not folding because I fear one card and because I would never gamble my entire personal wealth, not even my entire roll.

If he's for real, I hope he gets the help he needs.

All that said, I am playing outside my roll, and thus my risk of ruin is higher than it should be. I have about 8 buy-ins for 25NL instead of the recommended 15. I really don't see this being a problem since I'm essentially nut-camping. This is only profitable because the play and the players at this level are, for the most part, totally awful and pay me off whenever I do have a monster hand. I think 'counterplay' is good upto 200NL on this site, if not beyond. So while I am gambling beyond my roll, I think my risk of ruin is small to nil.

As such, I will move to 50NL without an adequate BR when I hit $350 by depositing $100 and using that as my 50NL roll. If I bust that $100, then I don't move up until I hit $650.

KQo, folded to the 3rd flush card on the turn (had middle pair). Would have rivered a 3rd King. JJ, raised from button, I call and I'm looking at an overpair to the board, heart flush draw (I had the Jack of Hearts). Someone puts in a 1/3 pot bet, PFR folds, and I really, really think about calling. I think it was close so I folded. Flop bettor shows 22, a set. River was a Jack. Results wise, I made the right decision there. The river card is just a tease. If that set had been slowplayed, giving me a free turn card then a reasonable bet, I'd have rivered him. So results wise for him, fast playing was the way to go. However, if both the turn and the river were a blank he wins more from me. Good job he doesn't know that :) My counterplay (limping JJ, calling the raise) allowed me to get away from this.

Then I get 55, I call a $1 raise. Person who lost to the set goes all-in behind me. I think this is an aggro donkey move to pick up the dead money. I can see him tilting and doing this with any two cards. But I'm not confident enough of this to risk a full buy-in. If I was SS, that's an easy call.

Set hunting isn't going well, almost all my losses this session come from calling PFRs with PP. The rest are blinds and limps. I think I'll find I'm down a good $10 when I quit in an orbit.

Oh, cancel that. Just lost $6 with the idiot end of a straight out of the BB. Obviously 62o is a great hand, kudos for limping with that because if somebody does make the wheel you beat them. Genius. 67s, I can take but hitting 4 perfect cards that's a little too much luck. I called his raise on the river because I thought we were splitting. Bollocks.

That makes it a -$15 session instead of a more reasonable -$9. Oh well, that's poker.

Given my current winrate, it might be longer than I anticipated before I move up, even with a shortcut. Week so far:

sun, 1120-1210, 0h 50m, +20, 25n
sun, 1340-1515, 1h 30m, -3, 25n
sun, 1800-1830, 0h 30m, -9, 25n
sun, 2030-2115, 0h 45m, +37, 25n
mon, 1210-1400, 2h 00m, -2, 25n
mon, 1710-1810, 1h 00m, -10, 25n
mon, 2100-2125, 0h 25m, +9, 25n
tue, 1930-2030, 1h 00m, -15, 25n

Call it 8hrs for +$29, $3.63/h. That's really not a great sample size to work with. I don't have PT so working out BB/100 is impossible, unless we assume all hands seen rather than all hands played (I don't know if that's how it's figured anyway) which 1-tabling works out to 12BB/100. AFAIK, that's good but my sample size is so tiny it really means nothing. However, going off of that playing 1 hr per night during the week, 2 hrs per day at the weekend, that's 4.5 weeks to move up. Sounds quite reasonable, even to the point of being slow. Perhaps $300 (3 wks) should be my 'shot point'. I'll see how the rest of this week pans out first.