Day One

Not a good start for my plan. I spent the morning reading several articles on freeroll Texas Hold'em strategy, but I had a little trouble making myself follow said strategy. Then again, they disagreed on how to play anyhow -- some articles recommend playing very tight at the beginning unless you have a premium hand, while several others recommend jamming hard and trying to accumulate chips rapidly. Unfortunately, I played a hybrid without much success.

At Full Tilt, I played in four turbo satellites in their "Race to the Main Event." Turbo tourneys have a rapidly increasing blind structure, resulting in a lot of all-in plays in the first few hands. In the first three I played, I drew A-K suited twice and got beat all-in both times -- once by an idiot who went all-in with 4-2 offsuit and caught two pairs. In the fourth tourney, I played fairly well, finishing 16th. The problem was that it only paid two places! However, I stuck to the tight plan a little better there, playing only 31% of the hands -- which is probably still a little too high. I have to learn not to play every Ace I'm dealt, and that two suited cards are not necessarily a hand worth calling with -- especially from early position.

This evening I played in a $50 freeroll at Carbon Poker and had somewhat encouraging results. A bad beat left me severely shortstacked when my A-Q suited got beat by a K-J offsuit. I raised from the button and a limper reraised all-in. I figured correctly that I had him beat at that point (about a 60-40 favorite) but he caught 2 pairs on the flop and I ended up finishing 437th out of 1500. It was my first tourney at Carbon Poker and I'm not sure what I think about the site. It's an attractive site with a clean layout, but I couldn't figure how how to make the stats show the things I'm used to. In general, I feel that I do best when I play about 33% of the hands, but Carbon only tells you how many hands you've won.

I'm going to try a couple more at Full Tilt and maybe one more at Carbon before hitting the sack, so I'll update you then.