Till now, I mostly played freeroll tournaments to get my bankroll up. By almost reaching the $100 it’s time to stop playing freeroll’s and start making some cash.

In the time I started playing poker, I did experiment with cash games before, but overall it didn’t go well. I still was too much focused on playing tournaments.
A big mistake I made was that I didn’t make a bet or a raise when it was needed. For example, I’m holding pocket 8’s and the flop was Q J 8. Instead of making a bet here I just checked hoping somebody would make a bet so I could re-raise. But nobody did just that, so they all got a free run to the next card, a King. Not a good flop for me, with 4 other players in the game. Someone certainly has an Ace and will make a straight if the 10 flops. Or one has a 10 or 9 and also will make a straight if their needed card hits. So in a desperate attempt scaring them of I made a bet, 4 times the big blind. 2 players called and I could only hope the board will pair or no Ace or 10 will show up. And as expected a 10 was drawn on the river And I got forced to fold my set when the first player made a bet and was re-raised by the other player. They both had the straight to the Ace.
Ok, I made a very good laydown here, but it wasn’t hard at all to fold it as it was pretty obvious I was beaten. If I only made a good bet after the flop, maybe they folded already then?

I can name a few other hands like this that I played wrong in a cash game that would not harm me that much in a tournament. When playing in a tournament, you can make up for this loss, but in a cash game it’s actually real money that I was losing and we don’t like that do we?

So after a few misplayed games I decided to focus myself back on tournaments to get my bankroll up.
And although it took some time, I can say I did pretty good so far.
When I started out in February with $0 it took me a couple of games to win my first money. $2 to be exactly. A freeroll on Full Tilt set me on my way to success  
5 days later I again ended up in the money and with a few cash games in between I Managed to end the month with $4,73 on my bankroll.
March was awesome, I made it to my first Final Table, but got a bit too excited and tried to win the pot with deuce seven This immediately ended my final table experience.
Not too worried about that, the day after I made it to the Final table a 2nd time. This time I ended on the 4th place.
10 days later I did exactly the same, finished 4th again.

In April I started out playing on PokerStars also where I won my biggest tournament cash so far, $24 in a $500 freeroll. But this money was needed to deal with the losses I made in cash games. With a few other good tournament results, I almost made it to the $50 that month.
May was the best month so far with 13 money finishes in freeroll tournaments. I got my first real top 3 finish when I ended 2nd and on the last day of the month I won my first tournament with AK.
In June I took a well deserved holiday near Venice, Italy so I didn’t play that much. In July and August I enjoyed the nice weather here in Belgium so I didn’t play much. And in September I started out playing freeroll tournaments on PokerStars where the Pokerchamp of Flanders will be decided. Closest I got in the weekly final was a 7th place, just 2 places away from advancing to the live regional finals. But I did manage to qualify myself 4 weeks in a row for the weekly final.

So with the bit more experience I gained in the last couple of months, I tried to play some cash games again and so far with good results. Biggest win I had was in a $0,02/$0,05 cash game where I bought myself in for $2 and cashed out with $3,9. Best win was when my KK won over QQ and 66.
In the few cash games I played now, I certainly can see that my game evolved compared to how I was playing before in cash games.
So the plan for the next month is to play more cash games and less freeroll tournaments.
Now let’s play some poker!!!

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