September Starts Here

The start of every month is the 'most important', but I really feel like this September is the most important I've had this year. It's long, it's unbroken, I have no shitty festivals or weddings or stag dos taking up 4 day chunks of my time. I'm coming off the back of an $11k upswing after being stuck the same amount, and it's my best chance to post $20k+ for the first time this year.

I've written similar blogs at the start of months before. Then something flips inside my head, I stop making blog posts, I drop $9k in the first 3 or so days. Then I get my head on, analyse everything properly, identify leaks and weaknesses, and probably drop down a level. Then I spend the rest of the month getting even.

This time has to be different. This time, I need all the rigour of success from day 1, session 1.

I've had a few losing sessions today and yesterday. Complacency definitely set in. Currently, this manifests itself in the following two ways:

• Tons of PF spew, tons of getting in 33/ AQo UTG+1, etc.
• Stats hit something like 33/25 again.

A word about stats and 3bet %s and such. Obviously there's nothing wrong in playing 33/25 in itself, given I'm happy in lots of postflop situations. There's nothing wrong with 3betting a lot, provided it's controlled.

Importantly though, we should look at one of the main reasons for playing so loose. The main reason I've always played so loose is so that my ranges are always wide, and I'll always get paid off with my big hands.

Plenty of the hands I play when playing 33/25, ie 97s UTG 6 handed, blatantly can't be played profitably VS 5 decent opponents in a vacuum. I can just about break even though, and the whole image that is subsequently projected means nobody is folding TT to my UTG+1 3bet, nobody is finding a hero fold with AJ on an Ace hi board in a 3bet pot VS me, etc.

To play 97s remotely profitably too, I'm going to need some decent amount of fold equity from time to time. That doesn't mean folding out Ace and K hi, it means making someone fold AT on a JT3hh flop from time to time.

So two things,

a) I don't have that FE.

b) The main reason for the looseness, ie the subsequent paying off, is already there and isn't going anywhere any time soon.

The above might not be true if people actually cared about session gameflow any more. But I don't think any of the middling regs do. They've got a HUD, it says I 3bet every position 14%. They have notes, it says I triple barrel most wet boards with junk providing a smidgen of equity.

GuiGui is I think a very good example. Everyone has a story of the time Gui 3bet/5bet 87s for example. Everyone knows that he's capable of overbet bluffing, and cbet/ CRing the turn with marginal draws. The fact that we have this knowledge makes him more difficult to play against than it actually should be given his frequencies for such moves are frankly (IMO) extremely low.

I'm basically in Gui's position, ^100, and it's time I exploited that properly with a massive gear change, simply by virtue of keeping myself at around 22/18. If I'm ever much looser in a session, it's either going to be by virtue of a fish to my right, or laziness.

So first session of September coming up. Goals are to stay 22/18ish, and not to do any PF 5bet spews. Review to follow in 45................