Sailor on the Seas of Cheese

I'm going to try to make this short, but I wanted to get something new up quick since The Blogfather himself just pimped me. I thought I was made when his button-men were pimping me, but I think getting pimped on his page makes me an official blog ho. So I've been thinking about what to say in my first post since being hailed by google's top pick for "poker blog", hoping to cash in a tournament or something so I had something to talk about, but I feel like a figurehead on a ship. When I'm cresting the variance wave it feels really good, but when I ride it down it can be a real slap in the face. Anyway, the string of 59o hands (seriously, like elenty trillion in a row, I think... I'll have to check PokerTracker) has given me time to think about some of the comments I've gotten. F'rinstance, the other day I was jokingly saying something like, "If I could take that to the $5/$10 limit tables ... I might start to make some real money." I thought I was kinda giggling when I said it, but SirFWALGMan (what the fwalg does that mean anyway?) said to me, "Take it slow sister Blogger! The 5/10 limit tables are NOTHING like the 5 cent tables." Which, of course, I knew, which is why I was giggling. But then he went on to reiterate something I'd heard before, something like "Your bankroll should be at least 300xBB to play." I've learned most of what I know about poker from reading poker blogs (not naming any names ;-) the last few months, so that number has become almost gospel to me. That's why I'm playing at the 5c/10c tables (my "bankroll", such as it is, wavers between $40 and $60 on PokerStars, which may help explain where I was during the last blogger tournament) instead of the 25c/50c tables. Well, at least that's what I tell myself. I've got a little more self-control than Matt Damon in Rounders, but the reason my bankroll hovers is because I keep "taking a shot" at 25c/50c, not to mention playing in tournaments. Needless to say, I've not yet won big on either of those gambles, but I haven't lost big either. I keep coming tantalizingly close to cashing in tournaments, and every now and then I get my money back plus a little. I actually do pretty well in $5.50 SnGs, something like a 140% ROI for my first ten, but then I lost two in a row and realized that my bankroll wasn't in any shape to handle the variance on those either. This is a paragraph from the future! Well, I said I wanted to make this quick, but I never make anything quick. I had signed up for a freeroll at 2am for my weekly consignment of MeatGrinder, but I was in the middle of writing so my heart wasn't really in it. I called with 98 of hearts on the first hand from late position, along with almost everyone else at the table. The flop came 962 with two hearts and it checks around to me, so I bet the pot. Two calls, then the small blind raises twice my bet. Well, I was feeling stubborn, and as it was a freeroll I didn't have much at stake, so I pushed. The rockets (as it turned out) in the small blind called, I hit the flush, and suddenly I'm almost tripled up. Gotta love the freerolls. A while later I ended up all-in and covering three stacks with an AK. The other hands were (I kid you not) Q5o, A6, and 66. The pair of 6s held and I ended up with just under the starting amount left... I guess I probably shouldn't have called there either, 3:1 odds for big slick seemed pretty good, especially playing against three almost completely random hands. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, 300BB. Wow. I'm not a very patient girl, as a rule, and it just seems like it's going to take forever to go up a level. PokerTracker and a calculator gives me a rough guess of 120 hours of play. I guess that's not exactly forever and ever and ever or anything, but it's close. I'd probably just buckle down and play, but my personal variance doesn't seem to extend more than 100BB or so, which makes me wonder just where this arbitrary 300 number comes from. Does anyone out there have personal experience with a downward slide so long it actually cost 300BB? Well, it's almost 4am here and I've about had it, but keep those cards and letters coming, kids. My friends and my therapist all thank you for "providing an acceptable outlet" for my poker-related thoughts, and I can't wait to find out who's lost 300BB, not to mention who's reading this. See ya at the penny tables.