Tomorrow will be the first day of an era of uninterrupted discipline. I wake up to my first shot at my $500 roll on Absolute.
I will play 4 tables of 6-max 25NL.
My schedule will be two hours on, two hours off, for three sessions.
Good luck, play well. Remember to meditate between hours, eat well, stay comfortable, and not play tired or stupid. Easy. Will post graphs.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
How I Roll: Strategy Session I
I'm presently running 16/8/3 after 12k hands of 25NL, and I'm averaging about +4.5BB/100. All-in-all, I'm very happy with this situation. I think that my preflop leaks are pretty marginal, and I'm applying pressure positionally on the flop, collecting a lot of small pots in position.
By far my biggest leak is not shutting down on the turn and river when I should. There are far too many situations when I either:
Catch a hand OOP, donk into a pf aggressor, get raised, call. Donk again, get raised, call; repeat.
Catch a hand as an IP aggressor, get check-raised, call. Donked, call. Massive monkey-donk on river, call. In other words, I lose most of my chips in the worst possible way: to someone shouting in my face that they have a hand.
These are the kinds of situations where, if I had paid more attention to the action at the table, I might have had a sufficiently clear read on my opponent to shut down instead of donating a hard-earned stack.
There are different kinds of aggression in poker, and at the level I'm playing, most of it is scripted, because people aren't worried about table image or long-term meta-game, they just want to make the "high-percentage play" and get paid off in the long-run. This is obviously exploitable by anyone who reads the same books.
By far my biggest leak is not shutting down on the turn and river when I should. There are far too many situations when I either:
Catch a hand OOP, donk into a pf aggressor, get raised, call. Donk again, get raised, call; repeat.
Catch a hand as an IP aggressor, get check-raised, call. Donked, call. Massive monkey-donk on river, call. In other words, I lose most of my chips in the worst possible way: to someone shouting in my face that they have a hand.
These are the kinds of situations where, if I had paid more attention to the action at the table, I might have had a sufficiently clear read on my opponent to shut down instead of donating a hard-earned stack.
There are different kinds of aggression in poker, and at the level I'm playing, most of it is scripted, because people aren't worried about table image or long-term meta-game, they just want to make the "high-percentage play" and get paid off in the long-run. This is obviously exploitable by anyone who reads the same books.
Swing and a Miss: Busto at Month Two
Hello. Among other things, I recently took a crack at learning poker. I am, to date, a failure at it, but this is consistent with expectations. I'm a young, college-educatedwhite male; that is to say I'm egotistical, insecure, impatient, and inattentive, four of the worst possible traits a poker player can have.
A short account of my first shot at poker, to explain where I am now:
This March, I deposited $200 onto Full Tilt Poker, and turned it into $500 in about a month of casually 6-tabling $0.25NL. I also became an avid poker reader, starting with three of Harrington's Hold 'Em books (two on tournaments, the first one on cash games), and started posting in the 2+2 poker forums.
About a month in, I hit a pretty bad run, and my bankroll sank to $220 over the course of two weeks. I realized that I had to step down to $0.10NL to not risk going busto, so I did, and I continued to run bad for another week, breaking about even over 10k hands at the ultra-micro limits. One fateful friday night I made the severe mistake of going on "tournament tilt" out of frustration, further kicking my ass down to ~$50 in one night.
That's where I am now. About two months in and more or less busto. On the one hand, I'm incredibly embarrassed by my behavior. On the other, I think this is probably the lightest possible way to learn what tilt can do, and what the psychology of even a very small downswing can feel like.
I plan to write a lot more about tilt as this blog progresses because I find it so fascinating. I am by nature a relatively sedate person, but poker is sort of like driving. Everyone who isn't you is a dipshit when you're on tilt, and their idiot plays make you MAD. This, despite the fact that their idiot plays are supposed to make you HELL OF PROFIT. It's not only completely illogical, it's completely ass-backwards.
So now I have $500 on Absolute Poker (a poor choice in retrospect), $150 in rakeback coming from Full Tilt, and a few days to reflect on my game before customer service at Absolute validates my account.
A short account of my first shot at poker, to explain where I am now:
This March, I deposited $200 onto Full Tilt Poker, and turned it into $500 in about a month of casually 6-tabling $0.25NL. I also became an avid poker reader, starting with three of Harrington's Hold 'Em books (two on tournaments, the first one on cash games), and started posting in the 2+2 poker forums.
About a month in, I hit a pretty bad run, and my bankroll sank to $220 over the course of two weeks. I realized that I had to step down to $0.10NL to not risk going busto, so I did, and I continued to run bad for another week, breaking about even over 10k hands at the ultra-micro limits. One fateful friday night I made the severe mistake of going on "tournament tilt" out of frustration, further kicking my ass down to ~$50 in one night.
That's where I am now. About two months in and more or less busto. On the one hand, I'm incredibly embarrassed by my behavior. On the other, I think this is probably the lightest possible way to learn what tilt can do, and what the psychology of even a very small downswing can feel like.
I plan to write a lot more about tilt as this blog progresses because I find it so fascinating. I am by nature a relatively sedate person, but poker is sort of like driving. Everyone who isn't you is a dipshit when you're on tilt, and their idiot plays make you MAD. This, despite the fact that their idiot plays are supposed to make you HELL OF PROFIT. It's not only completely illogical, it's completely ass-backwards.
So now I have $500 on Absolute Poker (a poor choice in retrospect), $150 in rakeback coming from Full Tilt, and a few days to reflect on my game before customer service at Absolute validates my account.
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