My recent play

I've talked a little bit lately about my hope to focus my play and to set very tangible goals to strive for in my poker play. I've been pretty disciplined lately - and while I am sorting out what I want my goals to be, and how I am going to achieve them, I have stuck to playing freerolls.

There are cash freerolls on FTP nearly every other hour. The opposite hour there are freerolls to a 'round 2' tournament which runs weekly and has a $1,000 prize purse.

I've run pretty well in these lately, but due to the stingy and deep format of the freerolls, I've not cashed. I've made it to 2 Round 2 events (by placing in top 250 of 10000 in Round 1). However, I've missed playing in both of those round 2 events, since they run right in the middle of the day on Sunday - not a good day.

The $150 freerolls have been pretty good too. I've placed in the top 200 about a half-dozen times in the past few weeks - but as I said - no finishes in the cash.

A first reaction is likely to be - 'these are freerolls, what good are they'? To me, they serve a few purposes:
-- Learning more about myself as a player
-- Playing against a lot of styles, and still trying to make successful plays
-- Keeping me from playing anything else before I set my goals and determine my bankroll

The first two points here are pretty important to me. I've really focused on learning how I play, trying to mix things up and no matter the outcome, trying to make the right poker move. In the past month, I've taken a series of particularly bad beats, where I've gotten all the chips in with a dominating hand only to have an opponent hit a 1,2,3 or 4 outer. Oh well, its poker. At some point the karma will tilt in my direction too (and hopefully when the stakes are bigger!)

The other thing that I've realized out of this freeroll binge is that I really like Razz as a change of pace game. I like the stud format, and I also think that I'm pretty good at it. Always easier to like something that you're good at, right?

For now, off to keep plugging away at freerolls until I get my goals and bankroll sorted out. Anything interesting happens in them, I'll be sure to post it here.