After work I didn’t feel like doing shit, so I sat down at the online poker tables on Bodog. If you’ve never tried out Bodog, you’re missing out on another great site. They have unlimited bonuses, which means you can keep depositing and always get a bonus. Sign up with referral code P213C5D and I’ll get a nice little bonus on top of yours. The tables are soft, the bonuses aren’t too hard to clear, and the software is pretty good. I’ve been playing there on and off for a few months and like it.

I played for 4 and a half hours or so and finally had a great night. $240+ added to the bankroll. I was playing three tables most of the time. One table of $1/2 6-max, one full table of $2/4, and a full table of $3/6. The $3/6 game was killer. I took $270 from that game, finished even in the $2/4, and lost $30 in the $1/2. I made some mistakes, but my limit hold’em game is finally coming back into form. I had some nasty suck outs hit against me and I also called down when I shouldn’t have a few times. I successfully pulled the stop-and-go a couple of times. The stop-and-go might be my favorite move to pull off. I like it a lot better than a simple check-raise, because I don’t slow play very often for fear of giving a free card. When someone raises me on the flop and I’m holding a monster it’s almost a sure thing they are going to come out firing again on the turn, so then the check-raise for the stop-and-go comes right back at ’em. Low limit players rarely see it coming.

It feels good to book a nice win again.

It’s been a rough month poker-wise. Since August 28th I have 23 numbers recorded for my poker play. Each number represents play at one site for that day. Of those 23, only 7 were positive with none over $150. All the rest were negative with several over $200 in the hole. Those are some rough days. I had been trying to beat the 6-max games at several different sites. I wasn’t faring too well if you couldn’t tell. For that month period it was nearly $1,400 in the hole for poker play. Good thing for deposit bonuses which totaled nearly $800 for that same period of play. So in reality I was down $600 for the past month. Not too bad when you look at it from a different angle.

Two weeks ago I bought the new iPod nano and one of the first things I did was start downloading some old episodes (back to around 38 or so) of the Card Club on Lord Admiral Radio podcast. Tomorrow I should finally catch up with Sunday’s podcast (episode 45). I’ve been playing the shows on my ride to and from work each day, which works out great. Listening to Sean, Brent, and everyone else involved in the shows has renewed my poker focus.

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Over the long holiday weekend I bonus whored Empire Poker for their quick 3 day reload and then Party Poker. I’m a sucker for the free $100 each site gave me. Or are the poker sites the suckers?

Playing 4 tables of $25 No-Limit 6-max it took about 5 hours to clear the Empire Poker bonus. I was up, down, up, and down again. With only a couple of hands left to clear my bonus I was up $20 and felt good. I was going to log my first winning session in a week. I cleared the required number of raked hands and played out my orbits, which I always do. I was still up about $20. On the 2nd to last hand I pick up KK. The board wasn’t scary at all and I ended up losing to a slow-played AA. It felt like a kick in the junk. So much for that winning session. I finished down $2.90 for the 5 hours, but still made about $20/hour because of the $100 bonus.

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It’s all Dr. Pauly‘s fault. I first read about the cheese balls on on his blog last Tuesday. Or is it Otis‘s fault? After all, he invented the holiday party Pauly was writing about. After reading about the cheese balls I got a craving. On Thursday of last week I finally broke down and picked up the 37.5 oz monster container from Sam’s Club. Let me tell you, those are some damn good cheese balls!

I finished off the container today and along with it went a $500 deposit that I made last week while eating the cheese balls and a $100 bonus I had earned during the same time. I swear, I didn’t have anything to do with the losses. The orange crunchy puffs of air brought about bad beats like I haven’t seen in a long time. Hands like AK were beat by A6, A3, and K3. Not on the flop either! Tonight the account which had the deposit finally hit zero. The last two hands went down like this…

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This morning and early afternoon I played poker for the first time in 2 weeks. In order to clear the latest $100 Empire bonus I opened up 4 tables of $25 6-max No-Limit. I made an early mistake when I flopped 2 pair against a flopped straight. It cost me a quick $20. After that haned I settled in and played my game. For an hour or more I was hovering about $15-20 ahead. I simply played the cards I was dealt.

Later into hour two I started to get some better hands, which all seemed to hold up. My AA went up against KK twice for nice pots. In another hand I flopped the nut straight with AQ. Another player also had AQ and one other had 2 pair. I went runner runner for the Q-high flush and took down the pot of over $100. I had forgotten how juicy the games are on the Party network.

In just over 3 hours of play I came out over $220 ahead and cleared more than half of the required raked hands for the bonus. Coming back from a week or two away from the poker tables always feels good.