Well, another week in the books and a few things to catch up on, so here goes …

• Finally managed to end my latest downswing of 160 BB with a positive session last night, up 56 BB. So overall my BR is at is at $336, down a bit from my last up date due to the downswing. Hopefully I’m on my way up again, we’ll see.

• As mentioned, I moved my money back to Party last week to take part in their reload bonus. Within a few days I was able to get the first 2 phase of the bonus but didn’t think I could manage the third (827 raked hands in 3 days). That being said, Quadman let us know that even though Party documents three days to clear the bonus, you actually get 7 days to clear. I put in a good session last night and I figure I need about 3 more table hours before Sunday night to clear another $43.59 – might get it after all.

• Obviously I’m still at Party and haven’t moved to River Belle. I was actually getting ready to move last night until I found some fine print that suggested I wasn’t eligible for the sign-up bonus because I already have a Prima Poker account. Not wanting to move there for no bonus I decided to send them an email to confirm – as it turns out they did confirm I am eligible for the bonus and once I clear at Party I think it will in fact be my next stop.

• I finally spent the money on Poker Tracker this week. Wow, what a piece of software. All the data is out there for the taking and these guys have done a great job putting it into a DB and presenting all the mounds of info. That being said, I have lots to learn about it and hopefully as time goes by it will help the game a bit.

• Once you have Poker Tracker, you need to download Poker Patterns. Poker Patterns is an add on to Poker Tracker that allows you to create all kinds a graphs based on the data in Poker Tracker … more cool stuff that will hopefully someday help me get better.

• And the final piece of the Poker Tracker software is something called Game Time Plus. This is really cool, basically you setup Poker Tracker to auto load you hand histories into the DB and Game Time Plus overlays your poker screen with real time stats on all the players at the table. Instantly you know who the fish are and who the good players are. The key here is to know how to play against the variety of players!!! I’m working on this part of it now, lol.

• For the record, Poker Tracker has rated me a Neutral Passive player … not exactly what I aspire to be. The neutral part describes your game before the flop and I’m OK with that, I like to see flops and will make a few loose calls from mid and late position. The passive element describes your play after the flop and this is where I need to work on my game. I’m aiming to be more of an aggressive player after the flop and need to work on getting my ‘aggression’ factor a bit higher in those instances. At this point this is the way I understand it – when checked to I need to bet and when bet to I need to raise -- in a nut shell that would increase the aggression factor. Easier said then done, if I’m playing post flop with rags I can’t just throw money in for nothing.
  Anyway, I’ve rambled on enough, back at it and will be back this week with a review of Poker Rewards and a revelation I’ve had this past week.

See ya next time, AA up