Happy Birthday to me!

It's been a bit of a grind the last couple weeks. I haven't made as much money as I had hoped. I had some down swings, but managed to come back. I ran some numbers on my tracking software to find some things I could change to plug some leaks.  I think it's helped. I'm playing a bit tighter than I would prefer but it has stabalized my game and improved my winrate.

I've fallen behind on my Silver star VIP for January. It's still doable, but I underestimated how many hands of play it takes to reach that playing at 10NL.

1st week progress report.

A decent week overall. Only one losing day, and that was Friday. I finished up $46.70 for the week. I would have like my winrate to be a little higher, but with the number of hands i'm playing now, the lower winrate is expected but I'm still making more per hour just through sheer volume of hands played.

The Poker Gods were generous today.

Tuesday was a okay session. I came out a little bit ahead. Wednesday I didn't play at all, I decided to spend the day with my girlfriend. Today was quite good.  $31.40 after two and a half hours of play. 

I caught a break on this hand.

PokerStars Game #23710995488: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2009/01/08 21:39:57 ET Table 'Euneus V' 9-max Seat #2 is the button 

Seat 1: Hoppendopper ($20 in chips) 

Seat 2: NoUse4ANick ($9.95 in chips) 

Seat 3: Donny ($11.35 in chips) 

Seat 4: terapin_ed ($9.80 in chips) 

Seat 5: Gordy88 ($1.85 in chips) 

Seat 6: marc"lion"81 ($21.95 in chips) 

Seat 7: darehkhella ($11.50 in chips) 

Seat 8: stanko111 ($10 in chips) 

Seat 9: JohnnyBuddha ($10 in chips) 

Donny: posts small blind $0.05 

terapin_ed: posts big blind $0.10 

JohnnyBuddha: posts big blind $0.10 

*** HOLE CARDS *** 

Dealt to Donny [7d 7s] 

Gordy88: folds 

marc"lion"81: raises $0.30 to $0.40 

darehkhella: folds 

stanko111: folds 

JohnnyBuddha: calls $0.30 

Hoppendopper: folds 

NoUse4ANick: folds 

Donny: calls $0.35 

terapin_ed: folds 

*** FLOP *** [9c Qs 7c] 

Donny: bets $1 

marc"lion"81: raises $1 to $2 

JohnnyBuddha: folds 

Donny: raises $3.90 to $5.90 

marc"lion"81: raises $15.65 to $21.55 and is all-in 

Donny: calls $5.05 and is all-in 

Uncalled bet ($10.60) returned to marc"lion"81 

*** TURN *** [9c Qs 7c] [7h] 

*** RIVER *** [9c Qs 7c 7h] [Kh] 

*** SHOW DOWN *** 

Donny: shows [7d 7s] (four of a kind, Sevens) 

marc"lion"81: shows [Qc Qd] (a full house, Queens full of Sevens) 

Donny collected $22.05 from pot

So it begins.

I started out with 50 dollars in July of 2008. At first I played once or twice a week, and slowly started playing more and more. I started playing $5 No Limit Holdem.  By December I had built it up to $212 and moved up to playing $10 NL.   I  have built up to $302 then had a bad day that left me at $277.  My Goal is to make enough money playing poker to make it my full time job by July.

My immediate goals for right now are to reach Silver Star VIP status by the end of January, and have a bankroll to move up to $25 NL by the end of February.