I Think I Have Found The Sweet Spot

I have been playing a lot of 3-6 Hold'em on Full Contact Poker lately. This is Daniel Negreanu's skin for Poker Room. They gave me a great bonus to work off after I deposited $650. I think it was around $350. I have earned over $150 so far in the bonus plus another $250 or so in table winnings.

The site is pretty cool and the hands seem to move faster than Party Poker. There have been some software glitches like part of my screen going dark or the note taking function not working, but overall I am pretty happy with the site.

I have been doing quite well because I can make Poker Tracker work in conjunction with the live games. I have set up PT to download the hand histories every 5 minutes. After 20 minutes or so I have 20 or more hands on everyone in the table. FCP allows you to color code your notes so it makes it really easy to identify which players are Tight Aggro, Loose Aggro, or Passive fish. With only 16,000 players, there seem to be a lot of the same players that show up at the same time and a lot of them are easy money. Even the waiting lists are usually not too long. I will scan the open games and look for tables where the pots are at least 5 big bets and put myself on the list. After 30 minutes I can tell whether a game is fat or not just by the stats. My only issue is that the site is that it's not big enough to support playing 3 or more tables at one time. I don't think I could find enough healthy games plus it would probably move too quick for me.

I have tried using Poker Tracker with Party Poker and PT always seems to crash after 15 minutes. It's been great to get to use it again.

I played a couple of Sit-n-Go's on Full Tilt last night as well. I bought into a $55 and a $33. In the $55 I got a hold of some chips early and basically cruised into the final 3. Both of the players seemed decent so I knew this part would be a dog fight. I lost a good chunk of chips slow playing top two pair and a flush hit the river. The leader went all in and I took too long to call so the site folded me. I asked in the chat if he had the flush and he said he did. Good thing I timed out I guess? Now I was down to about 6-7 big blinds. I was dealt 55 on the big blind. The button made a 3x raise from the button which I took as weak. She was in the 10 BB range where the all in move made more sense. She had played timid in the past, so it looked like a steal. I was short enough that it didn't matter as long as the small blind folded, which he did. I reraised all in and the button called in a shot with AA. Another excellent read by me!!! It worked out well for me though as I caught another 5 on the turn and put her down to a very small stack.

Once it got to heads up, my opponent was coming over the top of me on my raises from the small blind. I had to fold the first few. Then I won a bunch of chips when I pushed in the turn with Ace high. He had an open ended straight draw and luckily he missed.

Now he was playing the all in game. He took back the chip lead and I had had enough. I raised 3x the blind from the small blind with A-2. He raised all in again. This time I called and he had King X unsuited. Unfortunately he hit the X on the turn and I was done the next hand.

The 33 was a rock fest. No one seemed to raise and I never got any action whenever I raised. I finally made it down to 4 handed. I got caught stealing once or twice so my stack was down to 4x the blind. The guy on my left was just as short and the other two had comfortable stacks. In the small blind, I was dealt 5-2 offsuit. The math says push so I did, hoping the other shortie would continue to play tight. He waited unti the last second and he called with King-4. I hit a 2 on the flop, but he hit the 4 on the turn and the King on the river and busted me on the bubble.

I know it was only 2 games, but they seemed a heck of a lot softer than the $55's at Party Poker. I will have to give them a few more chances and see what happens.