A wild, wild ride

I changed things up tonight, in a major, major way. After I had another losing session, I decided to disobey all my rules! Fuck 'em! Not only did I re-up, I re-upped at a $100/$200 table instead of a $5/$10 table. Since PokerStars keeps everything proportional, the maximum initial starting stack at a $100/$200 table is a whopping $40,000, instead of the measly $2,000 at a $5/$10 table. Of course, I put up the max. I was cautious early on, folding everything. Finally, however, I got what I considered to be a betting hand. I was dealt a pair of jacks. The flop came 10 5 7, and the turn was a 2. I was all over this hand! Just my (bad) luck, the river was an ace. My pair of jacks lost to two pair, aces and tens. I was crippled, and soon enough hit the felt for the second time in one night.

At this point, I was down $42,000 on the night. $42,000! As they like to say on the intertubes, WTF ???!!! In a couple of hours, I'd negated what it had taken me over three months of blood, sweat, and tears to amass. My current PokerStars worth was actually less than what it had been when I'd started blogging on November 25th, 2009. Had I taken complete leave of my senses?

Guess what I did at this point? Damn me if I didn't re-up for another $40,000! And this time, lady luck smiled on me. A stealth two pair of aces and tens won me an ungodly pot of $89,880. As far as I know, it was the biggest single pot I've ever won in my poker life. So let's break it down:

table 1: -$2,000
table 2: -$40,000
table 3: $49,680

delta: $7,680
balance: $287,726

The way I'm feeling now, caution be damned! Life's meant to be lived! I could easily make $300,000 by the end of my next session! Of course, I could just as easily backslide to $200,000. Tonight I finally realized that since starting this blog, I just wasn't willing enough to risk big to get a big reward. From now on, you'll see a lot more volatility in my results, but I promise it won't be boring!