Poker :: Back in black

OK, last month was pretty f*ck*d up. Lots of work, then another leg injury cause of overuse caused me to lay in bed for one week. Thus social activity was pretty dull with no new dates, no crazyness, well, lets just call it "real life variance" :) Did not play any poker at all for 3 weeks. However in last few days started moving chips forth and back once again. I had one live session 5handed which went for 8 hours until 3am, and 4 hours six tabling $50 cash tables on PokerStars for $10/hour rate. Got few pretty sick beats but luckily was able to pull it back into black :) Plan for the rest of the year is to keep that puny SilverVIP status on PStars (roughly ~3000 hands so that is another 8 hours of sixtabling) without decreasing the bankroll. Omg and it is Christmass approaching, need to go out to buy presents for everyone right now...

By the way, the winnings that I withdrew from PartyPoker account I'm going to invest into two SEB highest risk funds, and am expecting 30% increase over the 2007 :)

Poker :: Reevaluating things

So October is over and it seems I got the flow finally :) Some statistics from my uber poker excel sheet:

* the set goals were achieved by ~140%
* 4 losing sessions (total of 8 buyins) , good improvement from ~10+ losing sessions on previous months
* mostly grinding $50 tables, totaling 60 hours for a $17 / hour average rate
* assuming its 300 hands / hour (4 tables * 75 hands), it makes 11,3 BB / 100 hands

I am having some free time issues at the moment, so I wouldn't like to set steep goals for November. Crucial thing would be to move up to $100 tables and start feeling comfortable there. If I don't do anything stupid, my current bankroll should be sufficient for that. Official goal for November is 150% growth comparing with actual October result.

On the side note, I got a sallary raise recently, so majority of my income still comes from working in the banking domain. Moving up to $200 should solve this so I could start working just for fun and for some additional pocket money finaly. It is called Vegas dream, isn't it? ;)

Oh yes, and I'm on final year of Masters studies aswell :) Did I mention the free time issues? ;)

Fun :: La Music Awards ' 06

Jagshemash! Since there isn't anything interesting happening nowadays, here I'm posting few pics from one realy awesome party two weeks ago. It was a traditional 'yearly' event for our (IT) and one another (definitely more sexy) - Finance - department. Everyone who took part in this event was assigned to one of the five teams (one month in advance), which competed for the so called 'best team' prize.

Contemporary gangsta woman

The whole event started with 3hour long "treasure hunting" tasks. By completing these tasks teams were able to find out the exact location of the party (waaaayyyyy outside the city). Then, after all the teams successfully gathered at the place, both physically and mentally challenging exercises followed for the 'points', which, ironically, determined the best music team:) Take into account the industrial amounts of booze we consumed during "treasure hunting" part and even the easiest exercises, such as "drink 50cl of brandy then crawl backwards 15meters", start to look f**ing impossible;)

Yet another hot member
of "Sexually Extreme Blondes" team

Later into the night each team had to perform their live song, and also to demonstrate the music clip (the 'homework' part). After that the 'points' were summed up. All the winners and losers in different categories were announced, and the live performance of an infamous rock band "Shut the light" marked the start of the real partying. More music, more drinking, more dancing, less clothing, blah blah yada yada, you know, from dusk till dawn :)

Performance of my team "2.30am"
(i'm on the <----)

Despite of virtually nonexistant singing and choreography skills, we still did manage to win the most coveted prize for the "best live performed song" :) Our choice was a stadium-type song with good (good = loud:) beat, three repeating chords, custom lyrics and .. it was great i think :) K.I.S.S. - keep it simple, stupid - approach worked out perfect once again.

"Snail's Gang", the winners in the best outfit category
("sporty" chavs and chavettes ;)

Since majority of this blog's readers (two out of three that I'm aware off;) comment on lack of girl pics and therefore lack of relevant content on the site, this last pic is just for you, whiners :) pm me for a full size version ;)

Fun :: Autumn leaves

How often do I look, but do not see?
How often do I listen, but do not hear?
How often do I make love, yet do not love?

Life is getting bitter...

Stop listening for once!! Did you HEAR what I said? Life is getting BETTER =)

(click for BIG;)

Sorry for bullsh*t, cant help myself sometimes ;) Try going outside and kicking some fallen leaves instead of reading stupid blogs to understand what is all this about :)

Poker :: Justinville poker night

Show pictures or it didnt happen! So here are some screenies from our last weekend's friendly game. We played some usual 6handed SnG. By now most of the players know that fullhouse is better than flush and that two pair doesnt beat straight.

Nature morte

It is me in this photo (two hands:) finishing the chilli meal while everyone else is taking a smoke break in the balcony. Healthy way of living for the win! As you can see, the blinds have just risen to 20/40. The white-and-black-brick-resembling device on the southern end of the table is our tourney clock. The orangeish fluid in the glasses is Campari + grapefruit juice + icecubes, pretty welcome change to the usual 0.5 liter of Ballantine's per head :)

Chips

Blues are worth 50 each, so its 300/600 level already. Our tourney structure allows maximum luck combination ;) The knocked out players have to serve the ones still in the game (coffee / drinks / foot massage etc ;) so busting in the early levels could hurt some of the egos indeed!

Headz up

Basically its just what the title says :) Me in the far background, dealer on the left, villain on "this side" of the photo.

Woot, ace rag!

With blinds 500/1000 and 9000 chips in play total, its party time, allin pretty much every hand. Sorry, but A2 still no good vs ATs :)

Joy of the suckout

It's over because its 4am and 34s hit runner runner straight vs T7s flopped top pair:) Till the next time, take care:)

Poker :: October checkpoint

I'm on a roll. With less than 30 hours played the set goals for October have already been ahieved. Now I'm grinding the $50 tables with occasional shot at $100 with good success. If things go well and I'll manage to shut down the inborn donkiness of myself, early November I might go up to the $100 as the default limit even. Good to see that this little poker experiment is starting to pay off the time and money invested :)

Fun :: Gogo Absolute

Tjenare from Sthlm =) I'm down here with a week-long bussiness trip, meeting some very cool as well as some very funny AND unprofessional colleagues. Everything is great except the damn expensive beer and terrible food which we're getting for lunch in those self catering cantines. Hotel breakfast and evening meal (my fav was steak made from argentinian black cow meat) makes up for that though :) On the last night double checked the location of Sthlm international casino, which I found out was only two blocks away from my hotel, hoorray :) This time I did not play anything since there was plenty of what to do anyway and taking a break from poker is rly good sometimes.

Coolest and coolest place to get a drink ;)

WoW :: Bye bye mr troll pie

This is what I grinded down to... Full epic troll hunter with something 650 agility unbuffed, best of BWL, most AQ40, and one Naxx item :)

Since my life is getting strangely free of long term injuries nowadays (probably I should blame quitting the pro-sports for it;) , sitting daylongs in front of the PC became the least desirable option. So I quitted WoW raiding, got my guild rank demoted, and now am wondering if I should give a shot to the upcoming expansion set. Damn, right now I can think of 101 better ways to spend 500 hours which would be needed for that =)

Wakkawakka [Transcendence], Kor'gall EU

Poker :: In pigs we thrust

I created a PartyPoker.com account to see what is the world like outside PokerStars.com. What I found there is that $0.10/0.25 on Party is even more soft than PokerStars (can you believe this?:) It took 12 hours to get used to interface and not get broke while betting random amounts with that god-knows-how-it-works-slider, but during those 12 hours I also managed to go up and cashout my first ever B. Franklin :) Woohoo, so that would cover my PokerStars.com deposit, and made my goal for September complete - playing at $0.10/$0.25 and cashing a lil.

I also played one tournament, $5 rebuy $15k Gtd on Party, where I finished pretty deep - 65th out of 1300+ , for a little profit (I did buyin for $46 in total cause of early gambooling, and then got back $54 for my performance:), but dissapointingly busted out with 67o vs A3o trying to steal the BB from SB. I was pretty much shortstacked at that point, but not yet totaly desperate for sure. If my JJ would've worked a lil better before that, I might have had a real shot to final table or top3 even...

Since the end of September is drawing near, here are the goals for October - double up the bankroll and start playing $0.25/$0.50, cashout at least 2 x Franklin.

Poker :: Slowly but surely

Yo, got a bit lazy last month about updating. Did a lot of travelling, so was /afk most of this time, and did not play too much poker. And ye, i'll add the screenshot of my WoW toon too. Soonish:P
Few thoughts about "patience" in poker. There are two different kinds of patience - first one is short term patience, and more or less can be defined as playing TAG style. Rush thou must not, as Yoda would say. Avoid tilting, dont play J8s, and basically stick to solid poker. Its the easy part and most ( or at least many ) players do that.
The other patience is long term, and after getting broke twice and making some conclusions, I think this second kind of patience is even more important and harder to develop. It is about staying at current limits until you REALLY have the bankroll ( regardless the skill ) to move up so you can feel completely comfortable and be ready to take 4-5 bad beats at the next limit.
So finally after grinding my teeth off and overcoming vast amounts of donkiness and runner-runner outdraws at the 0.05/0.10, yesterday I moved up to 0.10/0.25, and won half a buyin there. So it was a true weee-session and confidence builder =)

Emptiness :: Sad But True

Work is like an Orgy, if you don't do it, someone else will.
Fate is like Rape, if you can't fight it, learn to enjoy it.
Hope is like Fantasizing, if you can't do it, at least think of it.
Learning is like Prostitution, you have to put in money and effort.
Life is like Masturbation, you can only depend on your 2 bare hands.

Fun :: Tilting 'n' Wiping

Everything is cool :)

* Poker is going downhill strongly, looks like I'm gonna finish August in red (a.k.a. "losing month"). So I'm taking a break from it and am playing only some occasional tourneys from time to time just for fun. When I get back that winner's instinct, I'll give it a shot again of course.

* To fill in some sleepless nights I reinstalled the WorldOfWarcraft (WoW) and am playing on my lvl60 full tier2 hunter (622 agility unbuffed, beat this :o) So at least in this activity I'm quite ahead of TillerMan :) To speak in poker terms, it looks like he is playing somewhere at $1/$2 stakes guessing from the looks of his mage and nub user interface ;) Just for info, my char is WakkaWakka on EU Kor'gal server. A troll.

<... ill try to extract 3D model and paste it in here ... >

* Last weekend I did that "lost in space" thing - I went on a three day long roadtrip with only a vague idea where or why I'm going. It turned out to be very fun, and included a birthday party, stoopid country festival, orienteering race (2 courses in 1 day, totaling for 2hours10mins of pure pain), overnighting in a random stationary trainwagon on a lake shore, visiting Chernobyl type nuclear plant, almost drowning with my car while driving through a bog and few other great things.

* As for Saturday 3k time trials, still havent done a single one :(

Poker :: success or suck-sess?

Yo, this will be a whine-post. And at the end you will find the dumbest hand I ever ever played in cash games.

I haven't cashed out in 10 SNGs in a row. Now some of them I just played bad. And these were all-ins preflop in quite late stages of SNG (on the bubble or just before the bubble):
Me with QQ calls an allin of A7. Ace on the river.
Me with 88 puts allin shortstack with 77. 7 hits the flop.
Me with KK puts allin shortstack with 23. 23x on the flop.
Me with A8 pushes allin and gets called by big stack T8. Im terrified cause I knew T would river, and it did.
AA vs QQ - lost
AA vs KQ - lost
...list continues...
Crap, how can one play following some strategy or tactics or whatever, when at the end of the day 5 out of my 6 pocket aces lost headsup allin preflop?
Good thing I didnt went tilting though this time, so my bankroll had suffered a big hit but is not totaly crippled.

Now the dumbest funny hand. Happened in cash games.

I am in the big blind with JJ. We have 3 limpers, button raises to 4BB, small blind folds, I reraise 10BB, one limper calls, button calls.
Flop K92 (one spade). I bet out 8BB, limper calls, button reraises allin. I fold, limper calls.
Turn - J of spades. I start banging my head to the wall.
River - rag of spades. Limper shows 94spades and takes down the pot (>3 full buyins), button shows KQ.

Now beat that :)

PS in the evening there was a big storm outside, with thunder and stuff, and one of the lightnings broke the alarm system of my house so it started blocking the DSL line thus cutting me off the internet and puting an end to my suffering =)

Poker :: quote of the day

No limit hold'em tournaments are 98% boredom and 2% of pure terror.

Poker :: subtotal for July

Third month of poker experiment is over. Half of it I spent "in the wild" (read - 'with no internet conectivity') hence fewer playtime. I think its ok month, since I increased my bankroll 2.5 times and am slighltly above where I was at the end of May.

Cash game level : NL $0.25/$0.50
Hourly rate: $4.8

Tournament level : $5 regulars or SNGs
Hourly rate: $1.6
ROI: 129%

For the next month I'll try to keep to as strict bankroll management as possible to prevent crazy downswings which happened in June.

Fun :: Budweiser owned sports

Now when I got my conciousnes back... Coming back to sports regime isnt that easy after all. Y'day we had project kick off (a.k.a. project team "blending") party. For such an occassion clients offered us a duel against fresh barrel of Budweiser, straight from the Czechoslovakia. Heads up. We made it in total 76 glases of beer, averaging 4 liters per head (not a bad figure for a job-type meeting) completely owning the barrel. Now when everyone in the team got motivation boost, its time to get back to work.

The only girl of the party :)

Poker :: after the break

Because of holiday in Switzerland I had complete absence of poker for 13 days, so I wondered how it will go after I come back. And it went good.
First I took down 9ppl $5 Sit&Go. In July this was my sixth tournament of this type, 3 times I came second, and finally I won one (about 200% of ROI so far:) This win was particularly sweet since I was down to 300 chips in 25/50 level, and managed to double up few times, then got heads up with 3k vs 10.5k. From there I chipped up with no risks up to 8k, eventualy wining it.
Then I entered $11 regular tourney (~550 ppl) in which I was pretty much card dead. I busted out in 150th with AJs vs QJs allin preflop - flop came 89T...
Since it was getting late, and the next day was my first work day after the holiday, I fired up few cash tables "to win the tourney buyin back", and quickly donked one full buyin with two pair vs obvious flopped straight. From there I took it in a normal tight/aggressive manner, and won two full buyins back.
All in all it was $5 / hour rate for the evening so am slowly building the bankroll back towards $0.50/$1.00 HL NL level and the bit more reasonable $15 hourly rate...

Sports :: Swiss O Week

For the last two weeks I was off to Switzerland, Zermatt, for a Swiss O Week competition. Since I felt pretty weak and not prepared well enough, I entered HAL group (men long distance) which is one step below the Elite (top) group, which I used to race in when I did train seriously. The field was pretty tough, 110 ppl in total, and after 6 days of racing and giving my best I took... 74th place :)
Im pretty content with my performance though, because I did not do any big mistakes in a completely unfamiliar type of terrain - very steep, rocky, open with no trees, and my physical preparation surely would not allow me to achieve any better standing.
All in all, 6 competition days and all the resting days used for climbing up the mountains (trips starting at 2200m altitude and finishing at icy lakes at 3250m altitude, also climbing to Breithorn which is 4164m if I'm not mistaken) made up 10 consecutive days of pure training in total, which is a huge boost to my overal fitness level.
I had to do so many re-re-re-tellings of the stories about the trip, disco that finished with the walk in the graveyard, pokemon (a.k.a. small, smiling and waving Japaneseans) trains etc etc so wont repeat myself hudreth time again in here... ;)
Here are few pics from the series "climbing the lady mountain step by step".

Nearing the top


Better not step off the track


Last 20 meters


Woot (me in PS cap:)


Glance to the right (Zermatt)


Glance to the left (Italy)


Next Saturday I'm planning to take 3km trial test to see where I'm at. My goal for the first trial in the planned series is 11'30, but I'll be happy with anything below 12'00.

Poker :: quote of the day

Heads up poker is analogous to a fuck you competition, in which the combatants take it in turns to yell "fuck you!" in increasingly loud voices until somebody runs out of chips.

Poker :: final table, finally

Yesterday was the first Sunday in ages when I didnt have to worry about any deadlines, or works not done, so I knew in advance (before I got out of bed at 1pm), that this day is gonna be a complete-waste-of-time-fest. And waste I did. 30min poker, 1hour sunbathing (+32 outside), 30min poker, eating something, drinking chilly Freixenet that was left from previous night dinner etc... At one point I was about to do some sports even, but thought that would be against the plan of the day (waste'em) , so played more poker instead.
I fired up another $4.4 180man S&G in the evening. The start was very smooth, without any jeopardizing or coinflip situations, and at the first break I was in slight chiplead with 70 players left. At that point the hand grew cold and I just sat there without playing any pots, stealing occasional blind here or there, but not increasing my stack whatsoever. With 25 players left I was noticeably below the average, so when I got QQ under the gun, and got reraised by the button, I pushed, and he flipped AA. I said "gg", and started packing my toys, but I hit my two outer on the river and doubled up. The very next hand I doubled up again with AJ vs AQ on ace-jack flop, and suddenly I was top3 in chips with 18players. I took it solid from there and got to heads-up.

I was determined to win this one, since this was my third HU in this tournament, and the two times before I was happy with second place so back then I pushed any hand and got beat. This time HU went well over 30mins, but Lady Luck turned her ugly rear on me yet again. Most of the time I was about 5:2 to 2:1 ahead, and twice got the opponent all-in with better chances - first time with 63 vs 84 on a A32 flop (4 hit the river), second time QJs vs 78s on a Axx random flop (8 fell on turn). Despite loosing the heads-up I was happy with my play, and so was my batered bankroll with $144.00 for a 2nd. And im definetily NOT playing $0.50/1.00 yet :)
See you at the next final table :)

Poker :: another donkey night at PStars

After "the big letdown" (see previous poker post) , I decided to focus on tournaments, and do cashrings as a side activity only. So tonight I played another 4 tournaments ( 2 x $4.4 180man S&Gs, regular $2.2 and $3.3+R ) for a single hillarious cashout of $3.84 in $2.2, where I did finish 50ish out of 800 field. The S&Gs both started pretty well, but both finished with some totally unnecessary ego confrontation all-ins. Im quite happy with my play though, except those last pushes for coinflip when being ~5 places off the money. I know that my goal is the top3, but with current state of my bankroll (nonexistant:) I should take care to rake in a bit more 'easy money' i think.
The $3.3+R tourney was really fun and painfull at the same time because 80% of the tournament i was among bottom 20% in chips, yet still was constantly drifting through the field towards the money. I got busted with KQs (hearts - i never fold marriage;) vs 77 and finished in 234/1100 place with 198 paid.
That being said, balance for the night is something -$20, gg bubble.

Sports :: Quick Jukola recap

• Friday 4pm. Excusing from work, getting onto our minivan and departing from Vilnius. Equiping 4 beers.
• 9pm. We're lost in Latveria, driving down (with sun on our right), when Finland should be on the top (down / top - relative to the map:) Out of beer long long time ago.
• 11pm. We cross Estonian border.
• Saturday 1am. We reach our overnight point at some random Estonian village. Someone from our team knows the host.


Liettauen Lerpat posing to the Helsinki's paparazzi


• 3am. Finishing eating cakes & tea the host baked for us. Going to sleep.
• 5am. Getting up and departing for Tallin.
• 8.10am. Missing our ferry to Helsinki by about 1minute.
• 10am. We got on the next ferry. Met a very chatty lady with pink samsonite.
• 3pm. Reaching the competition area. +30C, just missing women relay start.


Ladies had to take it hot ( +32C :)


• 7pm. Watching women relay finish and prizegiving ceremony. I was totaly surprised that so many top level women orienteers are so good looking:)
• 11pm. Men competition start.
• Sunday 1am. Going to sleep before my leg.
• 1am-5am. Cant sleep with ppl rushing around.


Train of lights and the first exchange


Ahmm... yes, first exchange


• 5am. Getting up and getting ready to race.


Its me woken up at 5am to get ready to race :)


• 6am-7.20am. I'm on the course !!! :)
  

Finnish terrain - rocks'n'cliffs'n'hills'n'swamps

• 11am. Our team finishes.
• 3pm-4pm. Strolling around Helsinki, too tired to notice anything good.
• Monday 12am. Crossing Lithuanian border.
• 12.10am. Police stops us for driving too fast (100km/h with 50km/h allowed). Driver told them some bs and they let us go. Phew.
• 4am. Back home.
• 10am. Back at work. 2 hours late only :)

Sports :: Jukola relays

Well, since I dont have much what to write about, and not wanting to appear as a low-stakes-lots-of-hours hopeless poker player a.k.a. moron, here's another column, called "Sports", in which I'm gonna ramble about... sports ( bingo! :)

Most of it will be orienteering related, since this is the latest sport that I felt in "true love" with, and I can argue all night long that it is the best sport for your body and mind:) I was doing orienteering quite seriously (300-400km / month in training) for the past three years, except the last year, which I didnt do any sports at all. Now i'm planning a come back and this blog will be something to keep myself motivated maybe.

Before orienteering I was doing light athletics and was so-so in short distances (800m in 2:08) and high jump (175cm, at that time it was well above my eye level), and before that I was doing chess for 4years, and swimming for 2months when I was kid, but since I was semidrowning all the time I only developed swimming-pool-phobia :)

But back to orienteering. Recently I went to Jukola relays in Finland. This is the arguably biggest relay event in the world, this year 1300+ men and 900+ women teams lined up at the start, so in total there was 15k+ competitors (7 ppl in men team, and 4ppl in women team).
I didnt take part in any selection races, so I didnt make it to "best" pure-lithuanian team, that called themselves "Liettuan Lerpat" (in Finnish word 'lerpat' means "man after errection" or smth like that). Our team comprised only from amateurs, who just wanted to take part in Jukola, or to get away from home for a weekend. Most of us werent any good at orienteering, some (including me) never had ran in a finnish terrain ever before. But there's always a first time as they say.
The men competition started at 11pm, at dusk. 2nd leg and the beginning of the 3rd leg where during the dark, and after that the sun was set and one ran in daylight again. I ran the 5th leg (out of 7). Our team wasnt doing perfect (as expected), so it was already 6am in the morning when I started. I ran 1h 17min and pushed the team from 392th to the 363th. It wasnt perfect race though, not only that I wasnt fast (one cant be without any training), but I also did one bad mistake of 7minutes or so, so /slap myself, cause I could have finished in top 350. When I was on the last part of the course, the pro teams (fighting for the top spots) were finishing the WHOLE race, so I saw quite a lot of world class pros running by past me (walking:), which was nice. It would be even nicer, if I had strenght to run like them, but you cant expect champagne out of the water tap. All in all our team finished in 418th place, losing ~4.5hours to the winning team (their time was 8h 18min). It aint too bad, cause we still managed to beat 2/3 of the field.

Poker :: how did it start

For those of you that don't know a lot about me, here's the quick version. I'm a 23 yr old IT project manager from Vilnius, Lithuania who also happens to spend a lot of time playing online poker. Yup, thats Rizen's opening sentence in his poker blog. My goal for the next six months is to improve my game at the same pace as Rizen did :) No figures, no numbers, I'll just know if I achieved it or not.
I started poker quite accidentally. I was on a bussiness trip last February. While in hotel my colleague used to play "Magic: the Gathering Online" all night long on his laptop. Watching that is exciting, but only for the first 15mins. Internet connection and my laptop was too crappy to play WorldOfWarcraft (my previous online activity:), so I switched to TV, and there was EPT Barcelona final table going on. After watching Boublie win the event and rake in 0.5m3 (cubic metres) of Euros, I went to PStars, and created the account. Playmoney limit holdem was my first "normal" poker game, and by the 4am I already knew that for some reason A-5 is a straight, and that *surprise surprise* full house beats flush! I even chipped up to 2000 starting with the initial 1000:)
By the beginning of May i had read about 6 poker books (including Sklansky's ToP, both Harrington's volumes), and had 350k in playmoney, so it was about time to invest $50 "to see how it goes". Slowly building bankroll and confidence, I moved up limits faster than my bankroll would allow. Primarily focusing on cashrings, I also made a few final tables in the 180man $4.4 S&G's. I have read somewhere, that the traditional poker player undergoes defined evolution:

• Level1. Donkey poker.
• Level2. Uber tight poker.
• If doing well in lvl2, one starts feeling invincible and there goes
• Level3. Beast poker. Overly aggressive and overplaying bad hands far too often, thus losing money at impressive hourly rates. Leads to permanent lvl1 or lvl4.
• Level4. Good poker. Say hello to WSOP, EPT etc.

By mid June I did break trough to the infamous third level I guess. Having 25% of my bankroll in the play all the time, i moved up to $0.50/1.00 NL Holdem, and soonish after I won the biggest pot so far - my KK held up vs QQ and 45s flush draw in a three-way-all-in for a nice $273. With the poker future clear and bright, I closed all the tables and sat down to write part of my masters thesis (im both full-time employee, and full-time student at the moment:) After 3 days and two nights of nonstop writing to meet the deadline I was finally done, and felt like playing some poker for 1 hour before going to sleep. It was a very bad idea since after first two bad beats (my QQ cracked by 78s on a 7xx flop, river 8, and stuff like this) I went on a MEGA tilt blowing 80% of my bankroll in a matter of two hours, then some more the next day. So after the first two months of poker playing im exactly at the same point where I was after the first two weeks - with bankroll just over $150. But when going gets tough, the tough get going. Hopefully:)