My smallest win so far

I got around to playing today, and it looks like I'm getting around to posting about the session today as well. I put in a good 4 hours today which I'm very happy about. I'm starting to feel good just about getting +EV hours in. +EV stands for +Equity value, or in plain English an action that on the average you would expect to make money. So whether I win or lose, I'm just happy to put in the hours, and I wish I could always feel that way whether I'm winning or losing (especially the losing hours).

That being said, I had the smallest win today. 82$. I actually came back from the dead to make this 'break even' day. I was down to as little as $180 or so from my initial $1000 buy-in, and I make the most -EV play in the world (probably not that bad but I still got super lucky).

I 3-bet some idiots preflop raise with Q9 offsuit and of course 3 others call my 3-bets cold (they call 3-bets without having any money in the pot to begin with which is a no-no in terms of playing 'good' poker).

Flop comes 8xx which it checks to me I bet and get 2 callers
Turn blanks again, in which I'm probably tilting still and try to bluff them out even though its hopeless and both players call again
River 9, and I bet cause they have an 8 which they both do and they both call, and my poker sesssion just went from a short 2 hours to go another 2 hours. After this hand I make a conscious decision to play well.

I realize I never mentioned a change in my 1 rule. It's pretty much a more complicated version of it (remember its $800 buy-in and if I lose that I go home). The reason for the change is because $800 is way too little, and I could still be playing my best poker and have lost that $800 because I don't think its enough to tilt me (which I'm probably wrong but its okay). Instead now I buy-in for $1k and if I get to $250 or below I will play hands up to the big blind and not post that blind and just go home. This pretty much leads to a similar $800 stop-loss, but I could potentially lose $1k, but it leaves room where if I get a big hand I don't just win the small amount due to the lack of chips I have.

On another note, I sorta wanna be getting into playing some of the weekly/daily tournaments around the Bay Area. I don't fancy myself a particularly good tournament player, but I feel I have a pretty strong edge against the competition to be strongly +EV. I haven't done much studying/reading on tournament play, but I do know a lot of idiots learn a lot of how to play from watching TV, but don't have an overall understanding of how you need to adjust differently to different situations like chip stacks, tournament structure, payout structure, etc. Hopefully I can get around to those as there are a lot of Sattelite tournaments (tournaments to win tickets to bigger tournaments) going on where I could potentially win a $10k tournament seat which I could sell or something of the sort. Maybe I'll start with limit tournaments as people are idiots at limit hold'em in general. Hopefully I'll get to more on that as I've just gained some great insight on that topic. 2:30 AM, time to try to fix sleeping schedule to be at least more normal!

Dlow