A Taste of Alligator Blood

After all the time I've put in so far I feel like I need some more advice about my play. Unfortunately I don't have easy access to any professional poker players. All I have to go on are poker forums, books, and my own judgment. The rush of wins I had was just phenomenal. Right now I'm just trying to break my losing streak. After I had my rush of wins I've been on a see-saw rollercoaster of winning and losing that's costing me 4 dollars per hour. I'm still up overall to the tune of $462, but that's after 114 hours of work. I'm not sure what an hourly rate is supposed to be at for .25/.50 NL play but I figure I can do better than that. I've pretty much perfected my pre and post flop strategy, but need to focus more on the players I'm playing. I've written a ton of notes on several people but I feel that maybe I'm not writing down the right things. Also I'm not sure what to do during the period when I'm getting absolutly no cards for a long time, then I pick up a hand, raise, and win the blinds. It seems that once you're on a cold streak of cards and you're waiting for something people pick up on that but at the same time if I were to try to get fancy with my play during that time I run into big hands.

Besides my play I'm also faced with another dilema. This past week I lost my job at the theater because I was being dumb with an idiotic management. Regal Cinemas can go fornicate themselves with an iron stick! Anyway, I still have my day job at the machine shop, but that only pays for my bills. The theater job basically paid for my food, gas, and leftover money to put into savings and poker. The good news is that I have enough money saved up to feed me for about a month until I need another job. If I include my poker money, that extends it a couple more months. Finding employment in California is damn near impossible. I had to job hunt 3 months just to land that lame job at the theater which only paid 8/hr AND was part time! Then the job at the machine shop I got only because one of the managers at the theater works there as well and referred me.

What I'm going to do for now is play a lot of poker online and see what I can squeeze out per month. My only hope is that I can pay for the rest of my expenses as well as build my bankroll. I might have to move up to the .50/1 NL tables but I'm afraid that $1,000 is just not enough at that stage of play. I would have the money if I transfered some of my savings to my poker account, but I don't know if I should risk it. I do have a credit card for backup, but I'm trying not to even consider that as an option. After I lost my job I thought that while I'm playing poker it might cause me to crack under pressure and start playing scared. I'm proud of myself that that hasn't been the result. When I'm at the tables I only concentrate on the game; nothing else. Of course once I'm done playing I start to worry about not having enough money and such but I'm glad I can detach all that at the tables.

It's kind of strange, now that I have a lot more free time, I don't know what to do with it. So far I've just been using it to play poker but I also take time to relax and it's kind of nice for a change. Anyway, I'll post up another update on my poker status in my next post hopefully with a conclusion on one of many decisions that face me regarding the stakes I'll be playing.