Dipping my toe into the no-limit waters

After my last upbeat posting about my new experiences on Full Tilt, I got beaten back down severely. Only the deposit bonus I am working off there is keeping me at about even, and even that is a bittersweet pill because PokerTracker ignores that and still shows my losses. The only way to get rid of those red numbers is to actually win by good play. Sigh.

Frustrated, I have been testing the No-Limit waters again. When I started playing online, I struggled for a couple months with Limit holdem, never really getting a handle on it. Then I tried No-Limit, and enjoyed good success, watching the graph of my bankroll take a sharp turn upward. After several weeks of upward growth, things got a little unclear. I don't remember exactly what happened - I think I started playing more SnGs and tournaments, as well as trying to learn the basics of Omaha and Stud games, and generally lost my focus and let things dissipate.

I'm still struggling with Limit, so maybe it is time to ease back into No Limit for a while again and see if I can still make money at it. Frankly, I don't remember a whole lot about what I was doing the first time around that seemed to be working well for me. I think I was playing very cautiously, giving up hands quickly I was not sure about and then waiting to double up with the nuts. It sounds pretty weak-tight to me now, but hell, it made me a thousand bucks pretty quickly. The thing is, I have a sneaking suspicion now that I might have just got lucky.

This time around I have read Harrington On Holdem, and hopefully have a better idea of how to play. I'm dabbling in the $.05/$.10 tables on Full Tilt now, scraping out a couple bucks profit at a time while I try to decide if I really can play this game again or not. It shouldn't be so different than playing no limit SnGs or tournaments, but somehow it feels different and I am being extremely cautious.

I still have my goals of reaching the 300BB profit level in $1/$2 Limit and $1/$2 Limit 6-Max, but I'm going to put them on the back burner for a few weeks while I give this another try. I can only bang my head against the same wall for so long before I have to go try another wall for comparison.