Thoughts going forward........

First of all, I'll save all the merry xmas etc for an upcoming leggo blog. This blog's about beeswax after all.

May as well start with my year results. Not very impressive at all sadly, around 1/3 of the year before, and I'm sure many 10s of ks of absolutely horrificly played hands and spew.

So, despite my best efforts then, a proven 1.5ptbb winner at midstakes (wtf, lost 22k at 3-6!!!)

How to find consolation there without kidding myself? Well, my game has been in a state of almost constant flux the whole time. Just looking at the red line swings gives an indication of how wild my changes in style have been.

I feel at the moment that I'm almost there with a settled game and gameplan. Throughout this year, I've switched daily between 16 tabling and 4 tabling, playing 28/24 and 19/17, between 3 betting everything and check raising everything. All these approaches are fine, but clearly require totally different skillsets and it's important to concentrate on one gameplan at a time (not the check raising/3betting thing, Im talking the number of tables and looseness).

Closely related to the above, is the simple fact that my A game just wasn't present nearly enough this year. Given that I rate my B game as being a probably 2ptbb loser, and I played my B game a ton of the time, I think this reflects well on my A game.

So keeping my A game going is verrrry important. I've successfully implemented some things this year with regards that:

• Playing a maximum of 55 minutes per session is definitely vital.
• 'Reverse Tilt'. I've only remembered this fleetingly, but what it basically means is that when I lose a pot or get sucked out on or play bad, to shut down for 5 minutes. Ie, after getting set over set VS the megafish, the very next hand I might be close to 100% certain that 3betting 97s otb vs co is the correct play. What 'reverse tilt' does is override that and force me to fold it.
• Diet, exercise, drinking water. Have gotten better, but need to get even better.
• Daily 'training', this in the form of HH reviews with people like Dodgy and Pawel and Ian. Much like a shark (so I'm told) standing still means you drown. Just the act of being forced into critically analysing hands gets you in the right frame of mind to play as well.

So back to my settled gameplan, this goes something like this:

I play 6 tables. Despite only playing 6 tables I'm never bored as I'm constantly looking at every hand on every other table, making notes of their imbalances and coming up with strategies to exploit them.

I play much more aggressive PF right at the start of the session and look to slow down as the session reaches it's 55 minute point. This works purely from a gameflow pov, and thus I prefer to 'randomise' (not very random but WE) my 3betting and 4betting ranges by recent history and gameflow than I do by things like playability and blockers (although they still come into it, I'm virtually never 3betting T3o for example).

I really concentrate on balancing. I won't harp on, but this isn't for the usual reasons of 'in future we can do x y z' (although that will matter eventually as I move up and the player pool shrinks). It's basically about ensuring that I can't be handread easily. For example, just getting into the habit of ensuring you always have some % of alternative hands in your range before making a play means villain can never legitimately say 'this is NEVER a bluff', 'this is NEVER for value' etc.

PF wars, don't really get into them at 200nl.That doesn't mean don't 3bet 13% on the button, it just means that when they eventually 4bet don't 5bet jam JTs....... instead wait for them to prove they actually are fighting back with speculative holdings. If there's one major difference between 200nl and 400nl on FTP, it's the fact that 200nl regs just lie down and take their punishment.

Position position position! Gotta be 16% in UTG and UTG+1. Mix up 3betting the blinds and flatting/CR depending on the opponent. If he opens and folds the BTN a ton, 3betting ATo has to be better than flatting it.

Finally, I'm starting the year off with a solid 200nl base rather than the other way around. As in, too often this year I've started a month at 400nl-600nl, dropped $10k and then spent the next 21 days making it back at 200nl. So now before I go anywhere near 400nl again I have to make 25 BIs at 200nl. Could be a hard slog and depending on rungood take me a month or 2 months, we'll see..........

Is all!

dan