Well well, what do you know … The email did come after all. So, after a quick phone call I had $75 in my Party Poker account. Who said you can’t get anything for free!!!

So as you would have guessed no blogs for the last few days as I’ve been busy playing poker. Beings this was my first time playing online poker for real money I wanted to make sure I was comfortable and confident before playing for stakes that could have a serious impact on my bankroll. So I sat down at the 0.15 / 0.30 limit hold’em tables.

I played for about an hours the first afternoon and was actually pretty successful … making a profit of about $12.00. Later that night I signed up for a 3 hour session with much less success, losing just over $14. So for the first day, I was down about $2.

However, while playing the night session I also played in a freeroll for new players at Party Poker. There were over 1600 people in the tournament and top prize was $1000 and the bubble was 180th place which paid $4. So after 3 hours I managed to finish in 92nd place winning $6.50. I actually hand interesting hand that busted me, I was in the SB with TT and the blinds at 500/1000 and my stack is just under 10k (10 BB). I’ve been playing fairly tight most of the tourney and figured this might be the time to go all in. After an early raise I reraised and got raised again … with a caller in between me and the raiser I go all in for 10k. The initial raiser calls me with KK and they hold up. I think after thinking about this hand for a while I made the right play and just ran into a better hand.

So in the end I’m up a couple of bucks after the first day with about 260 of my 500 raked hands need to claim the remaining $25 bonus.

Next up is Friday night, deciding to again dedicate 3 hours to playing. For the first hour and half I’m playing 2 tables and struggling to make any thing happen. I decided to start up another table and now have 3 tables in action. This is keeping pretty busy and not much is happening as I’m down money in all three. As my time is nearing the end I actually bust out of one of my tables losing my entire $7.50 but the other two finally start coming around. In the end I lose about 0.95 in one table but am up over $14 in the other. So for the night I’m +$6.20 … not bad. Also, I have managed to play my 500 raked hands and thus released my bonus. So… after a few days my bankroll now stands at $123. Not bad if I do say so myself. We’ll see how things progress.

Of all the hands I played one stands out as the most memorable … maybe even the best hands I’ve ever played. Playing at the 0.15/0.30 tables I was dealt AA in mid position and I raise and get 4 callers … pot is now $1.57. The flop comes AQQ giving me a boat and the second nuts. First to act checks, 2nd bets into me and I raise with a caller behind me and the initial raiser reraises as do I to cap the betting. He of course calls and two of us are left with $3.07 in the pot. We both cap the betting on the turn and the river and he show AQ … boat over boat … wow. I picked up $7.52 on the hand … cool stuff.

If anyone is interested, I forgot to include a link to the online book that go me started. Here it is … http://www.legendsofamerica.com/poker-testimonials.html

Until next time, AA up