First!

Sorry, it is lame but off the top of my head I couldn't think of a better subject title for this post...

This is intended as a journal of my poker experiences. I have been playing for money for about half a year now with limited success. Currently my net profit is about $50 (though it is negative if you also count the money I spent on poker books...).

I mostly play sit-n-go's. I have played at multiple sites but now mostly play at Pacific, which offer tournaments with very low buy-ins. I do not intend to deposit more money (ever), so I am trying to build up a bankroll. Therefore I mostly play $2.50 tournaments. I have played a lot of $5 tournaments in the past but have found that it was too expensive for me: a few consecutive losses would severely hurt my bankroll.

Last week I received Harrington's first two books and started reading the first one. I cannot recommend this book highly enough! I really thought that I knew a bit about poker by now, but it is clear to me now that I am really still a beginner. So it is good that I am not risking more money (in fact, at the moment I am only risking previous winnings).

Since I started reading this book I have won 3 SNGs, though I have also had a sequence of six losses in between. My last loss was quite stupid: with four players left, I got 99 on the button and went all-in (I was shortstacked). I got called by AT and lost the race. Can happen, you might say, but I did still have a stack of about 2000 vs a big blind of (I think) 300. And what is much worse, when I replayed this hand in PokerOffice, I realized that the player ahead of me (he was the one who turned out to have AT) had actually raised to 900. I cannot explain how I missed that during the game, this is pretty basic.

Had I noticed the raise, I most likely would have folded, expecting at most about a 50% chance of winning this hand. I still had a small amount of time before being forced to make a stand, I think. Probably the problem was that when I saw my hand, I immediately decided to go all-in on it, and simply ignored what happened until it was my turn to bid.

Anyway, my goal is now to reach a bankroll of $75, after which I plan to switch back to $5 tournaments again. Finally, about the title of this blog: I guess I consider myself to be practicing (as in: training) poker. And of course I have heard about the book The Theory of Poker, though I have not actually read that one yet, shame on me.

Comments are of course welcome!