Cash Outs are slow on Cake unless you had E wallet express which I signed up for today, but the games canot be juicier.  Today, I was in a pot with another semi-agressive player that raised to $14.  I was in the big blind and called with pocket sixes.  The flop came down A 4 2.  There was no flush possibiity.  In this situation, it is a matter of feel.  Against a very good opponent in a 5/10 or 10/20 NL game, I probably check and fold here because I did not hit the set I was looking for.  But at the lower limit, it is a matter of feel and many times what you should do is not be scared of the Ace.  Just the opposite, your opponent is very well likely to have raised with a pocket pair like nines or jacks in this scenario and it is possible that your opponent is scared of the ace too.  Overall, it makes it a 50/50 scenario so far, so the continuation bet here is not really a profitable move.  But now, you have to factor in the other range of hands that a player like this in a shorthanded game could have raised with.  Hands like A7 suited, A 9, A 10 and even AJ are often raising hands for aggressive online players.  In this case, my opponent is probably wondering why I bet out at this pot unless I had the ace with maybe a better kicker and hoped to get a call from an ace with a weaker kicker.  I could do the same thing here by checking and calling and then making a bet on the turn to take it down.  When you factor in the other hands that people tend to raise with when most people have already folded and it is coming around to the blinds, then the continuation bet there is profitable.  You are using that Ace that hit the flop to your advantage.  In this hand I made a bet of 25$ and my opponent folded.  This hand was somehow the key to my session. 

   It gave me a feel for the table and let me know I was on my game.   A few hands later at my other table, I caught pocket sixes against Ace King.  Two kings flopped but I also hit a six and took down a big pot.  Today, I made a little over $250 in an hour and a half of play before lunchtime.  Tonight I will play another small session and tomorrow I will take Thanksgiving off.  I am definitely a professional popker player, and I have made plans to upgrade my computer technology, I have invested in Poker Edge which is pretty awesome, and I am making the trip to Mohegan Sun to play live there.  I will play $2/5 NL there on Saturday and Sunday.  I need to make adjustments from online play but that should not be difficult given my experience has mostly been live.  I refuse to be one of those people who has been through the criminal justice system for some BS and cannot live a decent life after all of that.  Too many peoples' lives are destroyed by the system which does not allow one to expunge a record if it is a felony.  Well, poker does not require background checks and no one cares about your past as long as you are ethical with your game and you treat people with decency and respect.  Poker is serious to me and for those out there who think it is all fun and games, look at my situation.  This game is my lifesaver.  Where else could I have made almost $4000 in a month playing the equivalent of one and half weeks of work in a nine to five.  Right now, I am in bankroll increasing mode so I cannot play too long at a time which tends to bring variance into play way more than I can afford.  But I am done with looking for a job in this state or any other.  If the authorities and the probation officers want me to work, then let them find me a job.  But you can bet your bottom dollar, I will have my lap top with me.  I am moving in January to Michigan, to live with my wife.  I know that there are casinos in Detroit and in other parts of Michigan but I havent yet checked if there is Poker.  Either way, I know that once I have enough of a bankroll, I will make my way back to Vegas on occasional trips.  Enough looking back.  There was a time once when I made $95,000 per month in a business that I built from the ground up using money management, pure guts, deception and a bunch of other skills that poker also requires of the successful player.  I am not just thinking about poker as a player but as a business, where my play is a major part of that business.  I will likely find other ways to make money from poker besides playing.  I know that within a year, my poker business and play will bet me at least $12000 to $15000 per month, enough to live on and save up to open up a beatiful private practice for my wife when she becomes a lawyer.  Now I know why my play this week has been so much more profitable and steady.  It is because I am no longer thinking about alternatives and respecting the game like it should be respected.  I was this way once when I played regularly at Foxwoods and it worked well for my game.  I just know that when enough cards are dealt and time goes on and I can nurse my bankroll, I will certainly absolutely one hundred percent get the edge and the best of it in the long run.  So lets shuffle up and deal.

    Scouting out loose agressive players online is not that difficult.  The problem sometimes is that you are not the only one that is doing so and when you sit down at a table against such a player, there are already six other rock solid players who are doing the same.  It becomes a race to get into a pot with such a player and in a full ring game that is not easy.

   Today, I received some bad news.  Actually, not receiving any news at all was the bad part.  I was supposed to hear back already about a real estate job opportunity but after leaving three messages with the person who was supposed to set up the interview, I received no reply.  I am being played and I hate it.  After this, I went outside for a walk in a poor mood and was convinced that today might not be such a good day to play poker with the mood I was in.  I was supposed to take three more days off this month and today looked promising.  When I got home I logged on to see what was going on at the poker site.  As I thought, the action was sparse at the $2/4 NLHE tables.  There was a guy still playing 5 tables since yesterday afternoon.  He was a solid player who I was able to bluff out of a bunch of pots the day before, but I knew that he was a winning player and I was not looking to sit at a table just to play him.  Besides, he had monster stacks at almost all the other tables.  The more time I spent scoping the tables the more I realized that nothing would bring back my good mood from yesterday than a little bit of poker action.  I was convinced that I was not going to bring any emotion into the game.  Then I found a new game with just three players, two of whom I had played before.  They were your classic European loose aggressive players (in this case they were Germans) who relished playing bit pots and shoving a lot preflop.  You know, the type that play a lot of tournaments and take some of that tournament style over to a cash game.  One of them was a regular on the site who actually did not do too badly in the games, although I remember stacking him about a couple of weeks ago with a river full house which also made him the nut flush. 

   This was an opportunity that I could not pass up, a short handed game against such opposition.  My first instinct was to observe the game before sitting down, in fact I was trying to see if any collusion was taking place since they were both punishing the other player at the table with a lot of that raise reraise crap that colluders love to play.  After a few minutes of observation I was satisfied that there was no collusion so I bought in for the $400.  I also bought into a 6 max $2/4 with $400 following my plan as I have laid it down this month.  The other table did not really produce any action after half an hour and I was down about $25.  No big deal.  In the meantime, the two Germans were starting to hurt me a bit and I was down to about $280 at the table.  Then, I got all of my chips in against a short stack with $80 with pocket jacks against his A 10.  Nothing hit for him and I was up over $360.  Then i was dealt pocket queens in the small blind, there was a raise and a call of that raise.  There was already $46 in the pot when I decided to reraise to $97 and no one called.  I was convinced that no one had a better hand in that spot and the way they were alol playing almost every pot for a raise.  Then came the hand that I was looking for.  I was dealt pocket Kings and was first to act.  I knew that my loose aggressive player was very likely to raise the pot so instead of raising myself, I just limped.  I know that this is a dangerous play, but I was almost certain that I would get an opportunity to reraise.  As it turns out, my loose German raised the pot to $16.  Another player called the $16, but I did not read this as strength as much as his perception that the German was raising a lot and I felt that the call of the raise was likely to have been made with a hand like KJ suited or tens or even Q 10 suited.  If this player had a premium hand he would have reraised.  Then the action came around to me.  And this is where I had several choices.  I could call his bet and take a flop, but that would force me into a three way pot.  That is out of the questionl.  I could also raise to something like $80. I know that my German is calling, but I dont want him to try to outplay me in this pot and then shove when the flop comes.  I shoved all in with over $400.  This might sound like overplaying the hand but online, I think that this type of big bet is what you need to do to make money.  Any other type of bet will not get the value you need from this hand.  After all, if I raise to $80 and he calls and misses the flop, I dont stand to make a bigger pot.  I know that I am in good shape here, and if he has Aces, then good luck to him and I just have to pay him off.  As I thought, he called my shove with AQ off, and I took down a big pot, scoring a better than $400 win for the day, only after one hour of play.  Not bad for someone who did not want to play at all.  There are situations where a shove is not a bad idea because it tends to induce players like the loose German to shove with hands like AQ or even AK when they are terrible behind big premium hands.  Even if it is AK against QQ, ill take it as it will get the best of my opponent by a small percentage over the long haul.  The German played the hand like he was in a tournament.  I hope to find more players like him.

  I just deposited on Poker Stars and will play there tonight a little bit to see how the action is over there.  I remember a few years ago that the games were the tightest of all the online sites, but that was when Party Poker was still in business in the US.  I am sure that some of those players not only went to FTP but also parked themeselves on the POkerstars site.

       There is nothing better than settling into a comfort zone when playing poker.  Today, I decided to leave the house, go to my favorite cafe and log on to play poker in a different environment.  The change of pace was refreshing and I was pretty content to be where I was.  A nice fall day, dressed in comfortable clothing eating and drinking in a coffee shop and playing poker while you see all the true grinders passing by in suits and reporting to their stupid bosses.  Sometimes I wonder if really want to get a legitimate 9 to 5.  I have been too used to owning my business.  I just don't know how to be subordinate to anyone.  When it comes to poker, the business is my own and I do it whenever and wherever I want to.  I always have the final say. 

    Today, I seem to have fallen once again into something that I hope does not turn into a pattern.  As was the case yesterday, I lost my first $400 buy in before I could gain any traction.  Unlike yesterday, however, where I seemed to have made some bad moves, today it was a case of getting my money in in pretty good spots but still getting caught.  For example, I was in middle position with Q 10 offsuit and called for $4 dollars.  Then a pretty agressive player from the big blind made it $18 to go.  The action was folded around to me and I called.  I was not really getting anywhere in the game and after a series of ups and downs I had a stack of about $310.  This was definitely not a situation in which I needed to get desperate.  The flop came down Q J 9 with two clubs.  I flopped top pair and an open ended straight draw to boot.  I like my hand here and I want to play it agressively against my opponent even if he has aces.  The other reason I called the preflop raise is because I was going to have position on  this very agressive player.  I mean this guy raised to $20 in another hand with 5-7 of hearts and caught runner runner to make a straight.  He had me outchipped in this pot.  Immediately he leads out and bets strong on the flop with a $30 bet.  I dont know what is was but something told me that I was still good in this positionl.  In fact, I put him on Ace King, although I wasn't sure if it was suited in Clubs.  I reraised him to $100, at this point I am willing to put the rest of my chips in.  He goes all in and I call and he turns over the AK of clubs.  He has two overs, a possible inside straight draw and a flush draw.  So here was a situation where even though I was good on the flop, the chances of me getting out drawn were huge and he was actually a small favorite to win the hand.  His outs are 3 remaining 10s.  Three remaining aces.  The King of clubs is the only king he can get since I would make a straight with a non club King and beat him.  And then you have to count all the other clubs left in the deck. The turn was a nine of spades pairing the board.  So far so good, but the river was a five of clubs and I was beat.  I guess one crtitique I can make of myself in this hand is that I should not have played an all in pot with him.  In my estimation he would have played this hand the same way with A K off.  I wonder if I can fold my hand in these situations to look for a better spot.  Maybe with only $310 in front of me it was the wrong time to call $18 raises with Q 10 off.  Yeah, that is it, but it is not easy for my type of player.  Oh well it was only one buy in but I need to take that seriously with a short bankroll. 

  Then I bought into two $2/4 NL games for $400 each and somehow playing on two screens did wonders for my game.  The lost buy in was a distant memory as I took down the first good pot on one of the screens when my JJ beat an opponents Tens that put an extra $150 in my stack.  For the next few hours I had ups and downs, getting up as much as $80 and erasing the first buy in loss and at times coming down to minus $250 for the day.  Yet, I was playing well and it was a matter of time.  It was like the 450th hand of the day and I was only down about sisxty dollars on the day when I played a hand against a player who bluffed at a pot all in with AK and I had pocket Quuens with a flush draw on low flop.  With that pot, I scored a $208 win for the day and I was content to call it quits.  together with yesterday, I have earned approximately $600 playing $2/4 NL and my bankroll continues to build.  I am definitely getting comfortable at $2/4 and the types of players one comes across on the Cake Network.  There are lots of aggressive European players on the site that like to mix up their play, and I realized that pocket pairs are huge against these opponents more so than suited connectors.  Another 2-3 months and I more than likely will move up and play $3/6 once in a while.  But for now, the $2/4 game looks beatable.  What encourages me the most is that when you take my last few sessions together, all of my bluffs have actually resulted in a net profit.  That means that I am bluffing optimally and I hope that this does not change.  I often gague the caliber of my play by looking at whether or not my bluffs are leaving me a profit by looking at my last 100 bluff plays, including continuation bets.  I keep nots of this, in fact those are the only notes that I keep.  Otherwise, there is no way for a player to know if he or she is bluffing too much or too little. 

  I think this post will help those playing the game who want to think about poker in a professional and practical way.  It is about money and expectations, something that I need to start considering during this first month back from the abyss of jail.  

I spoke to my wife today about Poker.  It was a pretty interesting conversation.  She wants me to leave New York and join her in Grand Rapids Michigan where she is a first year law student.  Yup, maybe another felonious attorney in training LOL., where she believes I can just stay home and make enough money for us playing poker.   It is such a big deal when your desire to play poker is reinforced by the encouragement of a loved one.  Nothing improves ones game more. I am not happy being far away from her.  Yesterday, she came to NY for one day before she had to fly down to the Dominican Republic to see our two kids who are with their grandmother.  My family is scattered thanks to an overzealous NY district attorneys office which just arrested our Bagel King, the owner of H and H Bagels which are the best in the world bar none.  I mean no one is immune to being locked up in this city or this country.  What ever happened to going after the terrorists.  Oh I forgot, we now employ them in the US army as therapists so they can shoot down a bunch of our brave men and women.  What a country this has become.  I just read a bunch of info on the Gaming Regulations that take effect on December 1, 2009.  Basically, the Poker lobby, to the extent there is one, together with a few Congressman is asking for a one year delay in the Gaming Law which affects banks and payment processors more than the poker sties, from Tim Geirthner.  In fairness to Geithner, I really doubt that he is interested in burdening financial institutions and payment processors with the job of policing poker transactions, as well as other gaming transactions.  But he has been so ineffecttive I doubt that he will have the guts to go ahead and delay implementation of the Gaming Law.  Here is how I see it, being a former attorney who knows a little bit about financial shenanigans.  The December 1, 2009 deadline is a bunch of crap.  Some banks, like TD and others that I have heard about, are going to use this as an excuse to freeze accounts and pad their reserves.  Yes, they will do that, they are criminals, and I know something about crime, having being convicted of one myself.  There will be many other financial institutions that will simply continue to turn a blind eye to the new regulation, at least in the foreseeable future.  My take on this is that check cashers will do good business with online players for the next few months.  Eventually, I see online poker finally finding its place in the US and that leads me to think that very few poker sites will leave this market, unless the site is already in financial trouble and will look for an excuse to steal US accounts.  I bet you that will happen in one or two instances. 

   My wife told me to formulate a plan so that I can keep myself disciplined in playing poker.  Essentially, we talked about this months play.  Out of the 22 days in this month, I played about 18 of those days, taking some time off every now and then.  Out of 18 sessions, which have lasted about 4 hours on average, I have posted 16 winning sessions, and two losing sessions, one small and one large which was over 1500.  Yet, my largest winning session covered that as it was around $1600.  Canceling out that variance, I pretty much arrive at a profit of $2800.  Actually, I should factor in some other costs that bring down the profit to about $2500.  That is not bad at all.  I played for 64 hours online and made $2800.  In the beginning it was mostly $1/2 NL or PLO and lately it has been mostly $2/4 variations of the same games.  That is  a rate of $39 dollars per hour.  Now, I expect to play another 4 days for the rest of the month so my average monthly days of online play will be 22.  I really think that eight days off in the month from poker is absolutely necessary.  That translates to 4 weekends, even though the days off will be on different days.  So I will play another 16 hours.  At $39 per hour, and being content with my play so far, I am looking to win another $624 this month, which is a little over $150 per remaining sessions.  As this calculation indicates, I am not looking to do anything crazy in the remaining days in this month.  So I can expect to make $3124 this month.  If I continue this way consistently, this means I can make about $37,000 during the year.  Now, for the most part, I have played one or two tables at a time, but really mostly one.  Today, I gave three tables a shot and it actually worked pretty well.  So what is my plan for the year to make more money.  Well, here it is.  Four hours is not a lot.  I believe that I can play around 5.5 hours per day without burining myself out and without tilting.  This amount of time will allow me to recover in a session, but also, when I am running well, to keep milking that good run, which I have been cutting off a bit to make sure that my bankroll builds.  My plan is to consistently play two tables at once and never less at the $2/4 level.  Essentially, my desire is to make $20 per hour (that is not much and can be done by playing very solidly) at each table.  That means that I can make $40 per hour.  At 5.5 hours that means I can make nearly $220 per day.  That is $4840 per month and $50,080 per year.  All this from making $20 per hour at a 2/4 game.  It is simple.  My wife and I need about $3200 per month to live well in Grand Rapids.  That is $38,000.  Together with myt current bankroll, plus an extra $12000, I will have a $15000 bankroll at the end of the year.  That is more than enough for me to do one of two things.  Add a third game to the mix, or move up one of my games to $3/6 and make an additional $10 per hour from all my play.  That will allow me to make another $14,575 in the following year on top of the 50K..  It helps to write out a plan, because it puts things in perspective.  The next time I am tempted to take a dumb shot or call a bet I should not, I will remember that as long as I protect my bankroll and see a lot of hands, I will make my bread and feed my kids.  Until Uncle Sam decides I cannot do it anymore.

      I wish I had a dollar for everytime someone says they dread getting pocket aces.  Give them to me anytime, please, and I will take what comes.  Yes, there are suck outs and bad beats, but getting all your money in with this hand is profitable in the long run.  I was playing two tables on Doyles Room 2/4 NLHE.  I was having an up and down session, with a couple of $300 rebuys already trying on two occasions to get all my chips in with a flush draw and an pair and losing each time.  Yeah, I can be a donkey sometimes.  But after several hours i built a stack of about $700 on each table.  Then in the cutoff position, I get two Red Aces.  The action was folded around to me, so I raised the size of the pot which in this case was $12.  I always raise the same with any hand so as not to give any player information about my hand.  The small blind folds and the big blind calls the extra $8 dollars.  The flop is 9 Q 9 with no flush possibility.  I am now wondering what are the possible hands that this player is holding.  Obviously, the hand that I want him to have is Kings.  He would be such a dead man with that hand.  I automatically rule out that possibility.  I was in this game for hours and I was making many plays in late position where I sould raise the blinds.  I had done it about 18 times and it was becoming noticeable and this opponent was there to see it all.  I was contesting many pots and it seems that people thought there was a little maniac in me, even though I did make some big lay downs and showed my hand.  Now, this player might just flat call thinking that I am going to try to steal again, but in my opinion with a hand like KK, he would make a small reraise to get some value, because his assumption would be that I would still call that reraise to try to outplay him on the flop.  That is the benefit of seeing a lot of flops. 

   I act first and in this case, I am not trying to slow play at all, I bet $30 which is about the size of the pot.  He almost instantly raises me to $72.  It is at this point that I need to make a decision about whether or not I am ready to play a really big pot with him.  I instinctively think about whether or not he has a nine.  Did he take a flop for a discount with K9 suited, or even Ace 9.  I also rule out Queens, moere so than kings since he would not have raised with the nut full house at this point.  He would have definitely flat called with QQ.  That is the play he should have made, and on the turn I would have had alarm bells ringing like crazy.  His raise made me decide that he might have a hand like KQ and that is a hand that one can call a raise with.  If that is the case, I can definitely smooth call here.  In a live game, I absolutely smooth call here to see if my opponent will take another stabl at it.  But online, I think that making big bets is a better idea since they often get called by weaker players.  I raise to $172.  Then he goes all in.  He had $498 in chips when the hand began.  I instantly call, having ruled out the possibility that he has a better hand, taking into account his play, and more importantly my position, and his perception of my play as somewhat loose.  The hand that he had was close, it was a QJ.  What a donkey!!!!!.  This is great, even if a jack comes, I still have a better two pair, so he is down to two outs essentially.  I turned an Ace to end the hand, which I really did not need.  A nice size pot and a nice $400 plus win for the day. 

   Give me aces anytime, and I would not be crying there in that hand in case he turned over aq nine.  That just happens, but the above is what happens more often than nut when your opponent runs into aces.  You just have to continue thinking about the hand even with aces just to decide if you will play a big pot or a small to medium pot.  I know that I will not always make the right decision there, but thinking about it instead of just making a crying call all in with aces after the flop is the right way to make this hand profitable.  Watch, next time I get the hand, Ill probably get a bad beat and come back to write about how crappy aces are. LOL.

  Still no job and I am losing hope.  I am done thinking about it.  For now it is poker.  I just opened an account with Pokerstars and will play there too.  Because of a single bad session of poker when I lost almost $1500 in a matter of two hours, I dont have an impressive profit for the month, but I am still content with a profit of $2800 or so with 8 more days left ih the month.  Not bad for the first month with such a limited bankroll.  I am considering asking my family to stake me with a bankroll so I can play comfortably.  Maybe I will offer them a small percentage. 

     The other week, I had an absolute nightmare of a session.  I tried to play three different screens, bought in for $400 on each screen and promptly lost over $1,200.  I was playing PLO 2/4 on two screens and one 2/4 NLH game.  After that, I decided to take a couple of days off.  My bankroll could not afford such a loss.  A couple of days ago I felt that I could shake the cobwebs.  I only played two screens.  Coming off a loss like that there was definitely room for me to be timid.  I chose to play 2/4 NLH on one screen and PLO at the same level on the other.  I bought in short at $125 at each table for a total of $250.  It was over 80% of my remaining bankroll, with a little over $1100 cashed out this month.  I chose my spots in the first 50 or so hands but then I started to play with no fear.  You just have to play aggressive and not let a big previous loss affect the things you do at the poker table.  It is not chasing that Im talking about, but to play your hands confidently, especially when someone is betting into you.  I brought my bankroll up to $2600 in the last three days, cashed out another $800 and now I feel I am well on my way to a good first month of online poker.  $1900 is all that my wife in Michigan needs to last her for at least 6 weeks, rent paid, car paid, food, cable, the works.  She can get the law degree that I carelessly throw in the toilet with my troubles.   My plan is to cash our another $600 this month for a total of $2500.  She is so happy about my play and the money that I can give to her.  There is even money for me to travel to see her and she is coming to town tomorrow.  No poker for me tomorrow I guess.  I will use the rest of the money to keep building my bankroll.  A losing session can happen to anyone.  I dont believe in going back to the table the next day, but rather a break of a few days.  The loss wears off, thats poker and thats the difference between posting a profit for a given month or not.  Interestingly when I anayazed my loss the other day, I realized that I became too timid as a result of acting like I was in bankroll protection mode.  I needed to loosen up a little to get back to my winning ways, as funny as that sounds.  When I lost, I simply folded too many hands, and I let myself get bluffed out of big pots or outbet by players who took the lead in the pot and kept it.  That is the irony of poker.  Out trade tool is money but at the end of the day they are chips and you have to be willing to throw them around a bit.  What a Game!!!

    Still no job yet, although there is a chance I might get an interview at t real estate firm next week.  I do hope that I can ge the job as it pays about $75K per year.  With such a stable income and my poker skills, I could be a six figure man.  If it does not happen, I am prepared to double down on poker.  I cannot play more than two games.  That is definitely a conclusion I can draw.  I dont know how people do it.  4 to 5 games at the same time.  I mean that is ridiculous.  It suits their game, I guess, mechanical, positional, wait for onoly premium holdings.  I play another way.  I sense the talbe where I play, even online, I am a situational player, an opportunist, I make moves that are not in the book but work based on the momentum of a game or table.  With so many games going at the same time, it is hard to see which player is really on tilt, who seems to raise a lot from early position with Ace 5 and other trash.  Im also no longer interested in playing $1/2 in either holdem or PLO.  It is too much of a slow grind.  I am going to feed on a steady diet of $2/4.  It is so much easier to make money at that level. 

     What is it sometimes with these early posiiton bettors who make it $4 in a 1/2 NL game?  To me there is no purpose to this bet other than to induce a call from a really good hand in later position rather than a raise.  Well, im not one of those.  I decided to play a little bit more today, not seeming content with a $170 win.  I played for about 40 minutes after dinner and pretty much was going nowhere after a few hands.  Then, an early position player raises to $4 from under the gun.  No one calls until it comes to me in the small blind.  I have pocket jacks.  My opponent has about $100.  Now comes the part that makes me love NL holdem players today.  Based on this type of raise from early position, he is basically telling me that he has a medium pair.  He is looking to take the lead in the pot, perhaps, but I am thinking exactly the same.  With my hand, I want to reraise it so I make it $10.  There is no way I am calling him in that scenario.  I dont want to get outplayed on the flop.  If he has KK and and Ace flops, I can still take it away.  If he is trapping me then fine.  I just have to pay him off and lose only $100 dollars.  I still will have chips on the table and can easily grind back to $200.  That is why in that scenario, I think that this player made a very bad play.  I would have raised to about $8 to give the impression at least that I have queens, Kings or AK or maybe even aces, even though all I have is a medium pair.  What this does to a player like me with pocket jacks, or ace queen or even pocket tens or a hand like AJ, is not to raise but to simply call.  Then my opponent reraises me all in for the rest of his chips.  Even with pocket jacks, I insta called because I was confident that the best hand I would see is AK but most likely 77 88.  As is turns out he has pocket nines.  Had he raised the pot to $7 from his position, in the off chance that I get aggressive with AK or something and reraise him, then an all in move from him might actually get me to fold.  If I have pocket jacks, as I did, I wont call him either.  His $4 raise screwed him.  That bet is such a huge tell that I did not hesitate.  I actually flopped quads, but that is besides the point, I had him crushed and did not need any help.  So I ended my day with another $100 win that brought the days total to plus $268 or so, give or take a dollar.  Ill take that every day.  I would not raise $4 in early position with any hand.  Besides, that type of raise creates a multi way pot with many people looking to take a flop.  Online its $4.  In live action, a bet of $6-10 would often represent that type of hand, although I did meet some players who were using that bet deceptively to mask aces.   I am going to get my hand histories for the last few days and start to analyze them.  One of the things that I want to look into is situations where I checked to my opponent with a big hand where it was better to just bet and get a call.  I think that I made the mistake of missing out on extra money from these players who would have made me more money from a winnning pot.  And that is just like losing a pot sometimes, those opportunities are not coming back.  It is a flaw in my game and I need to fix it.

I cashed out $600 dollars from Doyles Room.  I read many bits on the poker sites that there are tremendous cash out problems for US players requesting regular mail checks.  Unfortunately, I cashed out $400 a week ago with that method.  This time I paid the extra money and requested a fedex check.   The players who used this method alo got paid in good time.   I am concerned about the site even though in the bits I read from the last couple of months it seems that the regular mail checks are taking about a month.  A few months ago, some of their checks were bouncing and that is after they were being sent out 3-4 months late.  The site, as of a day or so ago, no longer has a regular check deposit option.  I guess they know about their problems.  This is the last thing I need.  If the courier check comes fast enough I will stick with the site.  Lets hope and pray for the best.  I prefer the action here than Poker Stars and Full tilt, although I will open accounts with at least one of these sites in the coming weeks.

  I really dont know how I would occupy my time without poker.  This week, I am waiting to hear from someone who promised me a job interview with a good real estate company.  The position pays about $75K plus.  Man I really need that job, and with such worries on my mind, I went online to play two games at the same time, 1/2 NLH and 1/2 PLO.  I bought in for the max in both games.  I tried to focus on the game and not on my troubles.  This is the worst economy since the great depression and someone like me with a huge mistake from the past that will always travel with me wherever I go, well I will just have a harder time getting a real good job.  My play last night was a bit erratic and more aggressive than I would like and I wanted to avoid any heavy swings like that negative $240 hole I had to dig out of to eke out a win.  I played solid poker today and within an hour I was able to cash out of the NL game up $72 and from the pot limit game, thanks to someone who kept betting his two pair into my straight (which was open ended and hit on the turn) I was up $101 in that game before I cashed out.  All in all, it was one hour and ten minutes of play and I made $173 for the day.  THis makes 12 days of positive results and wanting to keep it that way, I logged off.  They are still writing about me in those goddamn newspapers about me being involved with this guy and that guy and people being former associates in my business.  I am sick of it.  I am Russian and I often meet with people of my own kind in places in New York, So What!  Is that illegal?  The paranoia level in this country makes me sick.  District Attorneys, cops, investigators, most of them make me sick.  But I feel that my terrible nightmare of the last couple of years has hardened me and made me a much better poker player.  They say that the best comedians lived a tragic youth.  I think that the best poker players are not bred in comfort but have lived through tragedy and difficult circumstances.  I play a game of deception where for the last several years I perfected the art of legal deception.  Its funny when I think of it, but I think there is something to it.  I love poker so much because the aspect of deception frankly gives me excitement.   

  My wife wants me to move to Michigan to live with her while she goes to law school.  We talked about poker and did some calculations as to what type of income I could generate.  Frankly, If I book around $150 or so daily, we could live like kings over there since she has a nice one bedroom apartent for only $550 per month and a car payment of 330 or so.  She even told me that her mother might help me get stakes with a bankrooll to allow me to play some juicier games.  I might take her up on that offer and she has been tracking my progress so far. I only need a couple of hours a day to make that kind of cash and the rest of the time, I can help her get thtough law school being a former attorney.   Without poker I might not even consider going there because finding a job there is even more difficult and will take some time.  I am willing to do this.  These are the types of things that one has to consider before sitting down at a table and playing poker.  My style of play and desired expectations are a function of circumstances and it has made my game unbeatable for the most part.  I know this, if I get that job in New York, I will continue to play the same style of poker to supplement my income, looking to generate no more than $40,000 per year playing a game that has very little swing factor to it.  I keep hearing more instances of poker acocunts being confiscated.  This is worrisome but I am confident that a paper check that these poker sites send you is impossible to trace.  I know that the checks are non-descript and do not mention poker.  I am still waiting for my first two cash out checks but I know it takes time.  Grinding is the only way to play poker.  That is what I think a player who moves up from a lower limit to a higher limit sometimes forgets and gets stuck in the beginning.  When I move up to higher limits, I know that there will be a temptation to go for those $2000 to $3000 days.  Those will come naturally, but pursuing them creates crazy swings.  Ive been there.  For me, I will simply look to book wins of $250-300 per day on average when I do move up.  In the meantime, I am enjoying the small ball approach and am finding a comfort zone.  That is the key, to find your comfort zone in this game.  I am planning a trip to the Mohegan Sun soon as I want to check out the poker room and I will definitely be looking forward to a little live action.  Ill be writing about it soon.  I cant wait to play live with all those fishy New Englanders.

    Today I went back to my usual routine, playing 1/2 NLH on Doyles Room.  I tried to see if I could improve my rate of return and decided to buy in into two games and play them together.  In previous attempts to play online, I found playing at more than one table to be rather difficult and would find that my play on at at least table would suffer so much that it made it unwise.  I was determined to see, however if that could change and if I could find a way to do it.  The games are soft enough so I really felt that this was something to try.  Well, it worked and only a half hour later I was able to post a $130 win between the two tables.  There are so many distractions these days that it is hard to sit down and play and I had to log off.

   I returned in the late night to play and was itching to repeat the same.  Unfortunately the tables were all full and I decided to play NL but all that was open was the .50/1$ game which I bought into for the max.  After about 45 minutes of play, I was down to my last twenty dollars and then I decided to quit before it got worse.  Then I found a $1/2/ NL game and about another hour of play produced another loss of about 10$.  I was only up $40 for the day so I decided that I needed a little jolt of adrenaline.  My play was suffering just a little bit and I knew just what to do.  I went and bought into the $2/4 PLO game with the $400 table max six handed play.  In this kind of game a raise is often quite sizeable preflop that you need to think about which hands to call with or reraise.  I am not one of those people who believe in the reraise in PLO.  I dont ever do this, even with aces, especially with aces, unless perhaps it comes with a double suited connector like AJ or 89.  Even then I elect just to call.  First of all, I like to call many a raise in PLO for the reason that some PLO players will see this tendency and think that I am a weak player.  In fact, I will often limp just to give the appearance that I am a weak player.  This helps becaue over time, these strong players do just what most books tell them to do, raise and put pressure on me.  Well, I often call with excellent hands that these same books say you can reraise with, 3 bet it or even 4 bet it.  Once the flop hits, I am in a position to get a big bet from my opponent, and if I nail it, then i can smash that pot.  This is because the opponent has become accustomed a bit to pushing me around.  But all that pushing around has not made me lose control.   It has been a profitable play for me, but you have to be disciplined about which hands to get involved with.  My rule is that taking my hole cards, I need to be able to make at least 4 reasonable hands with all combinations, and if I am out of position, then I want my hole cards to work together to produce six playable two card hands.  At 2/4 today, I was down $230 making a couple of bluffs, and showing them, and missing some draws.  I did not worry, however, since I felt that I was still in control of my game.  With only $170 in chips I decided to rebuy for $130 more and had $300 at the table.  Then I went on a run of hitting sets and flushes, but most importantly, the other players at the table could not put me on these hands since no matter what the strength of my hand, I would call a raise.  Note however, I did stop limping into pots.  After picking on a player who called me down in a big pot with middle two pair against my set of queens, I raised my stack to $660.  Then I picked up a relatively small pot with aces when everyone else folded my flop bet and now I had $702.  I am beginning to think that Omaha might be a more profitable game, if you could just wait for the right hand and not lose your stack in crazy coin tosses.  it seems like big hands get paid off rather easier in this game.  I am definitely going to play at least as much PLO as NLH from now on, especially once my bankroll is bigger.  Thanks to PLO I was finishing up the day up over $200 on the day.  For now, I am content with that type of consistent victory. I cant wait to play higher limits a few weeks from now.   

     The last two days I have only been able to play a couple of hours each day.  Yesterday I played 1/2 NLH for no more than an hour and a half, bought in with $200.00 and cashed out $366.00.  Then I was visited by friends and had to stop playing.  Oh Well!  Making money, even small money is still money.  This afternoon I sat at my computer wondering at the beginning if this was going to be the day that I finally had a losing session.  Nine days straight I have had a winning session.  I made sure of it with my style of play and quitting while I was ahead.  Man I had a bad feeling about today.  It didn't take long for me to find out that this could be that day.  After about fiftenn minuites of play i was down to about $170.  Then I was dealt Ace Queen in late position, raised, got a call and flopped a Queen.  I bet each card and the other player i was heads up with called each bet.  He also had a queen but with a king kicker.  at last that is what I think.  My stack was not at $225.  I was on my way to a good day I thought.  Then I played a hand I had no business being in.  It was raised to $7 and I call with K 4 suited in diamonds from the big blind.  The flop was 3 3 6 with two diamonds on the board.  On the flop, my opponent bet $15 dollars and I called.  He had started that hand with a little over $190 in chips.  the next card was a jack of clubs.  I did not yet hit my flush.  The turn is checked and I check back looking to get a free card for my flush.  Then comes the seven of diamonds giving me the second nt flush.  It is checked to me and I bet $30.  Then my opponent makes it a straight hundred to go.  Damn!  I could have folded but I realy think that my flush here is good.  But what would he raise on the rivier with.  Pocket 66s?  Yeah that is what I am worried about, and slightly less about the Ace high flush.  I made a bad call and he promptly showed me the pair of sixes for the boat.  He floped it, and I ran into a big hand and made a really strong hand on the river.  This put me at less than a hudred dollars in the game.  it took another hour for me to lose the resto of my buy in.  Im stuck $200 for the day and my worst fear has been realized.  Should I stop?  No way.  I know that if I just adjust my play a little that I can still get the best of it.  But there would not be any more holdem for me today.

I move to a $2/4 Pot Limit Omaha game and buy in with $400.  I have no time to play for small little nothing pots.  When I was jailed on Rikers for six months, there was a card game almost everyday.  We played for things that had value in that game.  In this case, we put a bag together with all the commissary that we wanted to buy in with.  The buy in for the game was $5 and you could rebuy any time you wanted to.  This buy in gave you 90 chips which were made out of spcially folded playing cards, with red and blue having different values.  The game that we played was pot limit Omaha and there were always five or six of us at the table.  PLO was a game that I had played before, mostly home games where we would play the high low version.  It is a game that many people do not know how to play well, and I knew from other players that online, the PLO play was at times very suspect.  Playing PLO in jaiol for six months where the biggest pot would sometimes be around $50 was a great learning experience, especially since there was this young kid at the table who was an absolute master at it.  He was killing the game for about two months.  Eventually, however, I was able to catch up to him and we would often just play heads up with me more than holding my own.  As I bought into the 2/4 game I was feeling confident and it was my intention to make back all my money.  For the next couple of hours I played tight, solid and payed very close attention to avoiding playing handws out of position.  PLO is an extremely positional game.  This alone allowed me to quickly take down pots and after about an hour of play I had $716.  I was tempted to continue, but my bankroll is still not at the level where I can start swinging for the fences, especially with a game as volatile as PLO.  This was supposed to b the down day, but now I was logging off Doyles Room with a $116 profit for the day.  Tomorrow is another day and I know that the more hands I see I will eventually get the best of it.  So inclreasing my bankroll is the key.  My goal is to be around $3500 after seeing about 1000 hands of poker in the coming days.  Anything more is just icing on the cake, but with that kind of money I could pay for my son's necessities, like speech therapy and I can send my wife $550 for next months rent and maybe a couple of more dollars for food and stuff.  How the once mighty have fallen.  Damn.  Times are really tough, the country is in recession and the policies of our government are not going to help.  Look at what they are doing with poker!!! I have read that players are having their accounts confiscated, and the only way some sites can get you your money are by sending you a paper check which takes days if not weeks to receive.  This type of law does not surprise me.  I went toe to toe with this government.  They took down my business because I was paying runners $1000 for every accident case they referred to my law office.  That is actually a god damn felony in the state of NY and every other state.  They prosecuted me for that and for billing my clients the expense of that referral (at least 50% of it) once I obtained their settlement money.  They said my activity was organized crime and a scheme to defraud insurance companies.  I hope that this country does not kill online poker.  Look at what they have done by locking up some fo the executives of these sites.  I am still a patriot of this country, but I do not recognize it anymore.  I love poker, I live poker, and Ill be damned if Uncle Sam is going to bust up this dream.  There is simply too much money to be made from online poker.  Let us live!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      The last couple of days ive been playing 1/2 nlh in Doyles Room.  Ive noticed something curious.  It seems that people simply do not know how to play Ace King.  Dont get me wrong, this is a hand that I myself have trouble playing but it doesn't have to be a hand you dread.  I dont know why but people seem to overplay Ace King pre-flop and get themselves into trouble, especially online.  Here is an example.  Yesterday, i bought into the game with the max, $200.00.  After about 20-30 minutes of playing, I was down about 14 dollars, nothing major.  Then, I got Ace King in middle position, the cards were not suited.  I asked myself the question, what do I want to do in this hand if I raise.  No one has limped in yet, so one possibility is that I will take the blinds if everyone folds.  But suppose I get one or two callers.  Or suppose someone reraises me with a pocket pair.  What then, do I call the reraise and see the flop?  The pot at this point could have over thirty dollrs in it and a pot sized bet on the flop would set up a possible confrontation.  I decide to call for two dollars and see if there is a raise behind me.  As it turns out the small blind made it $6 to go and was called by the big blind.  When it came around to me, I still had the option of reraising.  Ace Kink is a hand that I simply do not like to play too big preflop in a small stakes game because it takes away from possible plays I can make after the flop.  I dont want a play at the pot to be too expensive.  So I decide to just call for another $4 and take a flop.  the flop is KJ2, with two diamonds.  Well I have top pair top kicker and there is a little under 20$ in the pot.  The flop is checked around to me and I decide to make a bet of about 2/3 the size of the pot.  So I bet $14.  The small blind folds and the big blind waits a bit and then raises to $70.  I instantly fold the hand.  What did he have?  Whatever he had, probably pocket jacks or maybe he got lucky calling with King Jack in the big blind, I knew I was beat but because I exercised pot size control and only invested $20 into this pot, I was not tempted to stay in the hand and I still was left with about $165 to fight another day.  A little more than fifteen minutes later I got into some pots and raised my stack to about $230. 

     I strongly believe that an professional level poker player is not looking to baloon the size of the pot if he can avoid it.  There are too many outdraws in poker, especially online, and the pain you feel from these is minimized if you can take steps to control the size of the pot.  Had I reraised with Ace King in that scenario, I stood to win a mini pot if everone folds, but if I get a call from the big blind of my reraise, then my bet on the flop is no longer $14.  Now I need to fire about $30 or even $40 into the pot before the big blind most likley reraises me.  Now I have to wonder if he is making a play at a nice pot.  In the same session, I played with another player heads up in a pot where I was in middle position and he was in the cutoff.  I was dealt pocket queens.  This was a game where a fair amount of raising was taking place and I was slightly tempted to just call from this position with that hand.  Then i thought better of it and decided to take another route, because I just didnt think a disguise at this table would get me too far.  I raised to $7 to thin the field and was sure I was going to go heads up with someone which was fine by me.  The cutoff then reraises the pot to $22.  His stack is about $350 deep and he has been playing quite a few pots, but in showdowns he always seems to show good hands.  I called the raise and decided to see a flop which came down A 8 6 rainbow.  I was absoolutely convinced that he had ace king at this point, maybe even something better.  As you can see, by making that reraise, I put him on ace king, because I have seen so many players take that route with that hand.  I check, ready to be done with the hand as soon as he puts out a healthy bet.  Then out of nowhere, with $45 in the pot, he bets $10.  WTF!  Does he really think I am that stupid, I mean come on.  He wants to keep me in the hand.  In my opinion, that is a terrible way to play poker.  I noticed though that online, there is a lot of that going on.  These players online do things like that when they flop a set, a flush, or a top pair top kicker and want to keep you in.  In this scenario I could understand him a little bit.  The flop was pretty dry and that coud make me think that his bet is to feel out if I have an ace, which means that he might not have it.  Or we both have aces and this is a hand that might come down to the kicker.  I know a lot of players that would throw away their hand, even though it was only ten dollars, but I was still willing to stick around for that small amount to see if I might be able to outplay him on the turn.  The turn is a 9 of clubs, making a straight possible but unlikely with the pot raised and reraised preflop.  Now this guy checks out of nowhere.  What?   I was thinking about making a move, but now I am convinced that he might be looking to do a check raise on the turn.  So I check and the river is a glorious Queen of hearts making me a set on the river.  He now makes a pot sized bet of about $60 dollars.  I double the bet, he goes all in and I call for all my chips.  He shows Ace King, and I turn over the set.  What a way not to play ace king.  I think Im gonna enjoy playing online for a good while and I definitely wont go crazy about Ace King.

This is my first blog entry.  I decided to write about my poker experience and share my story because I think that many people out there are wondering if they should play poker profesisonally.  What I have to say here might guide them in the right direction.  I am not young by poker standards, I am 33 years old and have been playing poker for about nine years.  When I first started to play the game, I was a successful attorney with a private practice in New York bringing in about 70-90k in monthly income on a consistent basis.  Bankroll was not an issue to me and one day I decided to go to Las Vegas on a trip with the family.  One of the things that I really wanted to do there was to play at the Bellagio Poker Room, about which I had heard so much.

I bought into the 2-5 NLH game with 200 dollars which is the min/max buy in for that game at that time.  It was 2004.  It took no more than two hours for me to increase the size of my stack to over $600.  I called very little, but my approach wasn't so much to look at my cards, but to play my position, do a lot of reraising preflop and making one or sometimes two continuation bets on the flop and turn.  It was a tactic designed to bully the table and it worked to perfection since most of the players were content to sit back and try to hit a set on me which never came.  Then, as luck would have it, I started to actually pick up hands and more importantly I started to nail some flops.  Another 3 to 4 hours later I reached over $1100 in chips.  I am an aggressive player, that is something that is etched into my DNA.  I was not afraid to lose 1 or 2K in such a game with all the money that I was making.  But I was a competitive person and despite all my agression, I was never going to shove all my chips in without the best of it.  This is what many of the solid pros at that table just couold not understand.  They were looking for an eruption that never took place.  With a little over $1300 in chips and after about 8 to 9 hours of play, I got involed in a pot with one of the solid players at the table who was even more deep stacked than I was.  He raised the pot to $30 out of the big blind after two people, including myself had limped into the pot.  I limped into this pot with a pair of queens and called his raise to see what kind of flop we woud see.  Its heads up and the flop is A-Q-Q.  Yatzee!  Now I was hoping to God that he had pocket aces, and from the way he played only premium hands at the table it was likely that he actually had them.  We both checked and the turn was a meaningless 7.  I bet out $65 dollars on the turn and he promptly calls.  This proved to me that he was trapping me with a big hand like aces and did not want me to go away.  On the river I am reticent to check in the event that he checks back.  Maybe he has pocket kings or something and is afraid of the Ace or thinks I have one of the queens.  I bet out $150 which is not too small of a bet to make him think that I have a monster but maybe enough to get paid off handsomely.  He raises to $300.  Im in business and my next move is to reraise him all in, he calls and I show him the QQ.  He squeamishly shows the aces and doubles me up.  That night, I took out over $3900 from the 2-5 nlh game and took my entire stack over to the 10/20 NLH table, where I increased the size of my stack to well over $8000!!!!!  This does not happen everyday, but in poker anything is posible and that night was my first experience playing live poker in a commercial casino setting.  I was hooked for life and all I wanted to do after that was to play poker.

Over time, I played poker at the 10/20 to 25/50 NLH level for several years while I was still practicing law.  Mostly, I would play in private games or drive to Foxwoods to play in the games there.  Sometimes I varied my play and played in Borgata.  The swings in those games were out of control and if it werent for the fact that I had a business, I dont know how I would have survived them.  During the next 3 and a half years I tallied up the results of my play and I actually lost about $18k in total during that time period and that does not include the expenses of travel and food that probably added another 15k to that total.  Was it worth it?  It did not really matter, that money was not significant in my life and the fact that I did not lose more money at such high limits proved that I was quite an accomplished player but a player who did not yet respect the game enough to tighten up his game, play less aggressively and try to eke out a profit margin from those games.  I was always trying to win 25 to 35k in most sessions not realizing that it was costing me way too many hands and even when I did have a big win, it was covering previous losses. 

In 2007, my whole life changed.  I was prosecuted for racketeering, enterprise corruption, money laundering, fraud, larceny, everything but the kitchen sink was thrown at me for the way I was running my law practice.  It was a mess and I quickly lost my business and license to practice my profession and the threat of prison time was looming over my head.  I was a husband and father of two children and the world came crashing down on me.  My home went into foreclosure, I had to look for a rental home, my cars were repossessed and I had to find a cheaper used vehicle for purchase.  My daughter could no longer go to her favorite school because I simply had no tuition money for her.  Meanwhile, my son was struggling with developmental problems and learning disability.  My life was in ruins over the fact that I had devised an incredible system for making money as a lawyer.  I should have known that the insurance companies would not have rested too long while they saw their money flying out the door.  With no job and no business, my wife suggested that I do something with poker to make ends meet on a temporary basis.

She handed me $1500 in cash, almost the last of the money that we had at that time and told me to find a game and to start doing what I knew best other than the law.  That was the birth of my professional poker career.  I know that there are many people out there that just come upon poker as something they find out they are good at and eventually become pros.  This was not my case.  That last money that my wife gave me was all that we had and I was about to risk it all in a card game.  This was different than Bellagio, there was no more security from a thriving business.  I drove to Foxwoods casino intent on doing the best that I could to at least double my bankroll during the next three to four days, but most of all, I was determined not to lose what I already had in my pocket.  I had not played there for some months since I was battling my court case and many of the higher limit payers immediately saw me and greeted me thinking that I was about to take a seat at their game.  They were shocked to see me take a seat at 1/2 NL, and I was not about to tell them what happened to me.  What a way to start a poker game, hiding underneath your hooded sweatshirt all embarrassed.  This was the best thing that could happen to me from a poker point of view.  Playing at the high limits did help me with one important aspect of the game.  I was absolutely ridiculous at reading hands.  It got to the point where I stopped caring for positional play, sizing my bets correctly, or thinking about the type of starting hands that I would play.  I was that good at reading opponents.  This one talent, however, came at the price of weakening the rest of my game.   Now at 1/2 NL, where many of the players are much weaker, it is a lot harder to put a player on a hand.  This game, much like 2/5 NL requires that you respect position and the type of starting hands you play and just how much to bet on each card.  I played a very different game when I sat down, much tighter, much more honed, but with my strong reading abilities, I was actually able to pick off a few bluffs and quikcly I was able to make around $700 for that session.  I never looked back and for 8 months I played in the Foxwoods poker room at the 1/2 NL level from thursdays to sunday mornings and during that time, I made over $58000, and that money allowed my family to survive and actually live a normal life.  I made more money at 1/2 NL by managing my bankroll and by respecting the game than I did for three years playing much higher limits. 

Before long, my pending court case was coming to an end.  Already i lost my license to practice law, but now, I had to do six months in jail in of all places, Rikers Island.  I had to find a way to give my family the means to get by while I was incarcerated and it was at that point that I decided to take approximately 3k to Borgata to play 2/5 no limit for about six weeks right up to the day of my sentencing.  At 2/5 NL the game changes rather considerably and one of the adjustments I had to make was to call less hands out of position.  Also, controlling the size of the pot was a skill that was put to work much more in this game, expecially when I had hands like AK and a pair of tens.  At 1/2 I was more in a gambling mood with these hands, but at 2/5 nl you could lose a $750 pot by overplaying this hand when all you should lose, if you do have to lose, is about $75-100 with such hands.  I always think about how much money a hand could potentially make or lose.  Right before my sentencing, I was able to give my wife $18900 which she was use to feed the kids and herself for the next 180 days.  The money was not enough to house them and they had to move in with my wifes mother overseas, at least until I left jail.

I was just released last month and once again I find myself broke and without the possibility of any solid employment.  My wife had gotten accepted to Law school in Michigan and was in desperate need for me to find a means to support her.  Her mother had very limited means and had helped with tuition and other expenses, but she could not carry the burden.  Once again, I have tuned to poker and I have no doubt that destiny is at play here.  This is my life and until now, I always looked at the game as a stop gap.  Well, I certainly will be getting a job, as the conditions of my release require that.  But I know that without poker I will not be able to make it.  To me, I see poker as a major income supplement or as the primary source of my income in the event that I do not get a decent paying job.  I need poker but this time I welcome the news.  I have grown to love the game more than I ever thought I would.  If you want to play this game professionally, it cannot feel like a grind, even though you will be folding lots and lots of hands for hours on end at times.  Addtionally, I have decided that with my limited means, I cannot play live poker, but I am excited to finally take advantage of the gold rush (at least for some) that is the world of online poker.  I started with a bankroll of $200 and went to a smaller but reputable poker room that has a great deposit bonus.  It has been eight days.  My bankroll is currently at $1670.  I am playing small ball and enjoying every moment of it and building a bankroll in the process with minimal investment.  In the business world, a small investment that can yield significant returns in the long run is a recipe for success.  If you are playing on line, you can even take $50 and with discipline, you can take that amount and convert it to $1500 after a month.  Poker takes time and small ball is the key to winning poker, even at high stakes tables.  In the coming days, I will share my online play and will talk about how other life experiences influence my poker attitude.