Kamrann's Poker Experiment:
An Early Double Up - (Oct 12th - 27th)

Cash games: 53 hours, +$2114, $40/hr
Online: NLHE $0.10/0.25 - $0.25/0.50; PLO $0.10/0.25; LHE $2/4 - $3/6
Live: PLHE �0.25/0.50 - �1/2

SNGs: 19 hours, 171 played, +$579, $30/hr
$10+1 - $20+2

MTTs: 64 hours, 55 played, +$434, $7/hr
$5 - $215 (Larger ones by satellite)

Total: 136 hours, +$3044, $22/hr

For the most part, the first two weeks have been as expected: lots of hours, slow-going, often frustrating. Thankfully though, the bankroll has been moving in the right direction. My sleep patterns however have not. It's getting on towards Winter and here in London the number of hours of daylight is reducing rapidly. With the cash games at my local club starting late and running through the night, and the time difference between here and America meaning the real action doesn't get going online until around midnight, I have seen very little sun over these last two weeks. Combined with considerable time staring at computer monitors, this doesn't result in the most healthy lifestyle and I'm definitely feeling the effects. Being tired is not going to help my game, so I'll have to do something about it, possibly restrict the number of times I play into the early (or late) hours of the morning each week. This is without a doubt the first major effect on lifestyle of playing for a living to hit me, and it's not a good one. Advantages of the 9-5 routine already becoming apparent! Anyway, back to the poker...

My records show 136 hours of poker over these first 16 days, or the equivalent of working full-time but without a weekend. Also, these figures don't include the couple of hours traveling for each visit to my local card room, so I think I can fairly say that I've been putting the effort in. As planned I played a wide variety of games, switching whenever I was getting bored or frustrated. I made the decision in advance that while multi-tabling was going to be an important aspect of my play, I would stick to just one type of game at a time. This makes results tracking easier, and also reduces confusion and mistakes which could be caused by, for example, playing a deep stacked NL ring game and a late stage multi-table tournament simultaneously.

Almost half of the hours played were in MTTs, which yielded a much lower hourly rate than my cash game and SNG play. This is unsurprising, since I played a number of low buyin, large field tournaments, and whilst making the money on a number of occasions I never got the break needed to land one of the top payout's. With the variance inherent in MTTs this could easily continue to happen for a while, so with growth of the bankroll a priority I will endeavor to put more hours into SNGs in the next week or two. Ideally in the long run when the bankroll is sufficient, larger buyin MTTs will become my main focus.

The vast majority of the profit so far made came in a single session of live pot-limit hold'em ring game play. I headed down to my local club with the intention of sitting in the �50 max buyin game, blinds of �0.50-�1.00. Unfortunately though the only game running was a �50 minimum sit down with blinds of �1-�2. This is the biggest regular game at the club, and with players often sitting down with �300 or more and an optional �5 straddle, it is considerably more than twice as big as the game I had intended playing in. However, a quick scan of the players seated showed it to be one of the weakest looking games I'd ever seen in there; it was six handed at the time and not one of them knew how to play. The game was also playing smaller than usual, with less money on the table and no straddling. I decided that this was too much of an opportunity to pass up, chose the best seat and sat down with �220. At the time this was about one 7th of my bankroll, obviously more than should ideally be taken into any one game, however my online profit in the small games had been very steady, so I allowed myself this one buyin - I would not pull up anymore and if I lost it I would put in extra hours online until I had made it back. I sat for two hours as card dead as can be, watching as the money moved back and forth around me, and the worst poker player I have ever seen called a �75 pot bet on the river with ten high. Despite making a good call on the river with QJ on a AAQxx board, I found myself down to �120 and sitting in an ever tougher game, relatively speaking. As such I was considering heading home when I hit my fist hand of the night, flopping a set of 8's after checking my big blind. Luckily someone else had flopped a smaller set, and called my all in bet when the fourth 8 hit the river. I was back up to around �275, and from this point never looked back.

In a 5-way raised pot I see a flop of 2c5s6c holding 7c8c. The solid preflop raiser leads out and is called in 3 spots before it reaches me. I quickly move in for �300. I put the raiser on an overpair and feel certain he will lay it down in the face of this much action. I'm representing a set but of course am in decent shape against pretty much any hand if called. He folds instantly, there is then a long dwell up before the next guy folds and the two others then pass quickly. I flip up my cards, something I don't often do but figure in a cash game where I have a tight image it may get me more action later on. The dweller had folded AcQc, the only hand which can possibly call and has me strangled. This shows the importance of my read of the raiser being capable of laying down an overpair (he had jacks), since if he hadn't the nut flush draw would have certainly called too and I'd have been drawing almost dead. From here I win a few more medium sized pots, then limp under the gun with AA only to see the entire table call along. At this point I'm almost done with the hand, however on seeing a flop of A44 I quickly change my mind. Check-call, check-call, check-raise, an overplayed bare 4 and an unfortunate turned flush caught in the middle, and I finish up for the night with �1140 in front of me, a profit of around US$1600. Maybe some people would say I shouldn't have sat in the game given my bankroll, but I felt I would pass up too much by refusing it and was not risking going broke by playing. Regardless, it worked out well.

The challenge now is to be disciplined enough to continue putting in the hours in the small games and not step up too quickly. My bankroll is still extremely small and bad runs are certainly waiting down the line. I failed this challenge somewhat last night by buying into two $100+ MTTs online. Luckily I scraped into the money in both for a very small profit, but this does not change the fact that I should have been more patient. $20 SNGs here I come.

Bankroll: $5,044

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