BANK ROLLIN': Stuck On a Speed Bump

Hey all. Long time, no blogging for ya. Well, I'm still trying to build up the bank roll from nothing, I was rolling along for a bit playing $1.25 Sit & Go's on Full Tilt.

At that point, the bank roll was at about $40 and I decided to try my luck outside of my bank roll range, contrary to bank roll management rules as laid out by Chris "Jesus" Ferguson of Full Tilt. I played in nine $5.50 sit & go's, finishing in the money in 5 of them, then playing four $11.00 ones, finishing in the money in 3 of them. My bank roll got up to over $65 before I went back down to play $2.25 sit & go's, back to sound bank roll management principles.

Unfortunately, I've been mired in a streak of bad luck overall. I've taken tons of bad beats, and went through my first stretch of actual tilt, where I felt like all my decisions were wrong ones and solid odds betting led to losing anyway. Fortunately, I'm still at $56, only $9 in the hole, but for all my solid play, I feel like I should be in better shape than this. But then again, I'm glad I had the discipline not to shift back to higher buy-ins while I'm going through this rough stretch, which could have left me bankrupt by now.

The milestone of the $100 bank roll feels miles away now...

WELCOME TO BAD BEAT CITY: Population: Me

Although I haven't managed to place in a Hubble Free Roll yet, I decided to try my luck in some of the cheapy buy-in tournaments on Pokerstars.com. I entered a $1.10 buy-in tournament and was playing quite conservatively. No decent cards are coming my way so I decide to splash the pot a little bit. Rookie mistake. Discipline, U-E discipline! I come out of it with about half my stack, but manage to get some decent wins afterward to get up to starting stack size of 1500... Unfortunately by then, the average stack is about 5000 and the blinds are comin' up on me like a bat outta hell!

So finally, being dealt K-K, I decide to take my shot, short stack vs. short stack (the other dude has me covered ever so slightly). I'm all-in, we show down our cards and I see he's got J-6. And that's when the "That's Poker" gods took over:

Flop: T J A
4th: 3
River: 6

He beats me with 2-pair.

Ouch. Not impressed.

After that horrible defeat, I entered a 50 cent buy-in tournament and placed, scoring 96 cents!!!! Probably could've done better, I was on fire early, but made one huge mistake, calling a dude when I had 2-pair with a straight draw on the board. He did end up having the straight and I lost half my stack. Oh well, live and learn. But on the positive side, progress has been made!