Introduction..

Im not sure why this occurred to me but I realized I was narrating my goals and progress in poker in my head constantly and at some point it clicked with me that no one was listening. I remembered reading in Cardplayer that some players have a blog and so I took a quick look into it and here I am.

Here are the quick details of me and my poker background.

Im a 26 year old male who lives with his girlfriend and two friends from high school in Warwick, RI. January 1st she and I will be moving out to an apartment in Federal Hill in Providence, RI.

Ive been playing poker for 2 years. I first got interested while watching celebrity poker on bravo while laid off from work one winter. I soon started playing for free on partypoker. A little while in I found out that all of my close friends watched and played poker on one level or another and I had no idea. I started playing locally at the Eastern Poker Tour and a few bars around town. Over the last two years I can honestly say my game has entirely changed.. I see newer people play a certain way and completely see my self 3 months.. 6 months.. a year ago and know how to exploit it.. and the fact that I can see that constantly makes me want to get better and better because I know there are tables full of people who see how Im playing and know how to get my chips from me.

Moving on..

I live in Rhode Island so the closest casino to me is Foxwoods. I remember my first time playing at the 1/2 NL table with $100 from my tax return. (I should say here and now that although I consider myself pretty successful at life in that middle class sort of way, I grew up very poor and once things got better I never figured out how to ask for things or spend money on myself or risk money oddly enough. As Ill be talking about later I even dont gamble with "my" money) I lost all that after about an hour on some silly hand or another. I remember not caring and thinking "ok.. this was a lesson and I need to remember it". The actual hand and how it is played is completely out of my immediate memory but I know whatever transpired is lodged in some file of what to look out for as all poker players develop.

My main games for the bulk of my playing time were tournaments.. Ive played a lot of SnGs online.. hosted some $10 tournaments at my house and played at nightly tournaments at bars. I picked up a book early on that gave me a foundation for starting hands and that served me well for a good while.

A few times I would go to Foxwoods and not have the $100 to potentially loose at 1/2 so i would sit with $40 at 2/4 limit on the advice of my friend Mike. After several loosing sessions and then the stereotypical loss of AA versus 72 suited I realized I do not understand this game..

A major step in my poker playing occurred in August of 2007 when my girlfriend and I took a vacation to Vegas. It was my first time there and I had enough money budgeted to blow while there that I was able to sit at many tables and not feel nervous that I had x amount of dollars on the line. I did well at some games.. I took one huge bad beat for my tournament life at the Mirage $60 tournament (I check raised the entire way from the flop to the river with a BB special full house only for the other guy to catch a jack on the river and get a bigger boat) and I just straight out blew $250 at NL 1/3 (weird limit) with AQ (lost to AK) and another hand that escapes me now.. But what clicked with me was that I got comfortable with chips coming and chips going.. money won and lost. I didnt get sweats tossing $20 in the pot with top pair and kicker even though someone MIGHT have 2 pair.

I came back from vegas with a fresh outlook and a good attitude toward my game which was quickly squashed in a week or two while i lost half my bankroll on bodog on some NL games and the only thing that was keeping it afloat was my SnG results... after that I decided to take some time off until I cooled out and didnt feel bad about what I lost and read up. It was at that time I joined the 2+2 forums and bought a book on Limit. I had been reading online and in cardplayer that limit was the most profitable game and although i didnt understand it.. I wanted to be a consistently successful poker player.

And that ladies and gentlemen.. Is the purpose of this blog. To chronicle my poker progress with specific attention to limit hold 'em. Im going to post this and start a new post that is more specific to those goals.