First Setback

Beginning Bankroll: $8.22

I know I've promised to record my results on this site each day that I play on PokerStars using my Zip to Chips bankroll. Alas, I did play the last couple of days (Sunday and Monday), but circumstances kept me from having adequate time to blog when I completed play. But here's a quick update of each day's play.

On Sunday I entered one NLHE sit-n-go (SNG) tournament--$1.10 entry fee--and played for a while in a cash game. In the SNG I finished 17th out of 45 entrants, short of the money. (It paid 7 places.) In the cash game ($.01 and $.02 blinds) I turned my $1.00 buy-in into a whopping $1.04! I can tell you're impressed. (With my sarcasm if not my results.) So Sunday was my first negative day in this bankroll-growing experiment. 'Twas bound to happen, and no doubt will happen again. Even the top players don't win every session they play.

By the way, I crashed and burned in the SNG when, in the small blind, the action was folded around to me and I had pocket kings. So I shoved all-in. Imagine my dismay (and pure, animal hatred for the poker gods) when the big blind called and turned over American Airlines. Since I had him (or her--hard to tell by screen names) covered, that didn't knock me out, but it did cripple me pretty good.

On Monday I returned to the plus side of the ledger after playing two single-table (9-handed) NLHE SNGs. These had $1.20 entry fees each. I bombed out in 7th in the first one, then redeemed myself in the second by taking second place. So for the day I wound up ahead by another whopping 30 cents.

All in all, I think I played pretty well, making the right decisions for the most part. Maybe sometimes I did (and still do) play a bit too tight, and too passively at others, but survival is job one in this grand experiment. I do hate bankroll "variance", so I'm sure that leads to my tight and occasionally passive play. But as long as the bankroll continues to grow more often than it slips back, I'll be happy. Especially in its current micro state.

I do have some free time this afternoon, but I'm going to pass on playing today because my work schedule has been a little wacky lately and I've had a couple of short nights of sleep. Today, for instance, I worked from 12:30 a.m. 'til noon, CST, after getting only about 4 hours of sleep last night. So I'm just too tired to expect to play optimally. (Remember, I'm an over-the-road truck driver--for now, anyway, 'til this bankroll grows enough that I can live on the profits I will be making at the higher stakes games. ;-) How's that for confidence?)

Hopefully I'll have more time in the coming days to devote to the care and feeding of my bankroll so you'll have plenty of exciting results to read about here. Feel free to write in (via the site's comments feature). Tell me some of your "favorite" bad beat stories, suffered and inflicted.

Thanks for checking up on me today, and good luck at the tables.

Ending Bankroll: $7.46