So after a little break from playing poker, I jumped back into some Rush Poker this week on Full Tilt. Rush Poker is poker on crack, played at warp-speed as you jump from one table to the next without a moment to catch your breath. Multiply that by four tables, and it’s the illusion of utter chaos. 800 hands an hour. I played a six hour session and churned out 5,000 hands - more hands in one session than I have been able to achieve in some previous months.

It took a while to adjust to the style of 6-max cash again after playing exclusively HU for the last 10 months. I found myself calling too light and generally spewing. So I tightened up the reigns, and when you throw in the ridiculous amount of rakeback, it’s probably a good option for me with my limited playing schedule.

While there are plenty of regs there, there’s still plenty of value. I mean, check out this hand from today’s session. I flatted AK in position as there were some aggro players in the blinds, so I was trying to induce a squeeze. I’ll sometimes call in position with big pairs/hands, and sometimes I’ll 3bet. This time I flatted and, well, I was clearly outplayed.

***** Hand History for Game 27515407446 ***** (Full Tilt)
$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold’em - Saturday, January 22, 07:40:59 ET 2011
Table Afterburner (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: HERO ( $124.95 USD )
Seat 2: vengeneance ( $100.00 USD )
Seat 3: Medicine4Goat ( $120.05 USD )
Seat 4: Rosavita 66 ( $39.30 USD )
Seat 5: supermarsch ( $57.00 USD )
Seat 6: kenpokershiro ( $71.10 USD )
vengeneance posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
Medicine4Goat posts big blind [$1.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to HERO [ Kd Ac ]
Rosavita 66 folds
supermarsch folds
kenpokershiro raises [$3.50 USD]
HERO calls [$3.50 USD]
vengeneance folds
Medicine4Goat folds
** Dealing Flop ** [ 7s, Ks, 4h ]
kenpokershiro bets [$4.00 USD]
HERO raises [$12.00 USD]
kenpokershiro raises [$63.60 USD]
HERO calls [$55.60 USD]
kenpokershiro shows [2h, Th ]
HERO shows [Kd, Ac ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9h ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8h ]
kenpokershiro wins $140.70 USD from main pot

So I have just wrapped up my 100,000 hands of heads-up cash games. It took me roughly ten months to complete which isn’t great, but considering I’ve travelled/worked a lot more this year than I thought, and the distinct lack of action available in the second half of the year, I guess it’s understandable.

During that time I started out at $0.25/$0.50 and played up to $2/$4, exclusively heads up, across a variety of sites including Everest, iPoker, Microgaming and Party Poker.

I start out by smashing $0.25/$0.50 and $0.50/$1.00 but was a steady loser at $1/$2. I continued to learn and improve and decided to move up and leave $0.50/$1.00, where I was a winner at over 21BB/100 over nearly 40k hands. At that point I managed to turn things around at $1/$2 with some better game selection. I was smashing the fish, but occasionally I’d run into a reg and combined with a few horrible run-bad sessions, I’d give it all back.

At the 85k hand mark it looked like I was going to reach my $ goals, as I was unstuck at $1/$2 and winning at $2/$4, but unfortunately the last 15k hands were the worst of my life. I had my biggest ever losing day (by almost double) and followed that up the next day with my second biggest ever losing day. It was a numbing experience. I don’t think I ever emotionally recovered from those two sessions as I floundered my way to the finish line, giving back a lot of the hard work I’d done in the previous nine months.

Overall I made nearly 7,000BBs in 100k hands, which is profit I guess, but certainly well short of my goals setting out in this challenge.

I’m going to take a little break from poker for a while to shake some of the run bad and get my motivation back. I have learnt a lot about my game during the challenge, and my post-flop skills have improved. I’ve also learnt (learning) how to deal with the swings and variance, and when is best to play. Poker is so much mental, it’s something I really need to work on to make sure I only play when I really feel up to it.