GrogBlog- In Depth Analyis: June 2011

Since black Friday, I dare say the games on Stars have gotten a bit easier. Particularly during this WSOP where even the decent Euros are in Vegas, there seems to be a lot of fish and a lot of bad regs, albeit the hardcore of difficult regs including KingTenClubs, Gogols Nose, Flaggelator etc are still on every table.

Black Friday coincided with my decision to move back down to 6 tables.... whereas of late I have moved back to 9, the month or so of 6 tables really opened my mind to a ton of stuff I was doing wrong and am now doing right. (as an irrelevant sidenote, Jesus I have gotten so bad at writing !!!!! )

Anyway, I've done well in terms of winrate, and since spending the first 2 weeks of June splashing around in live Vegas cash games, I spent the 10 days since returning making all my money back and today crossed $10k for June.

Here are my results since Black Friday......

http://www.tessies.co.uk/giraffes.jpg

So running hot EV wise, but I would argue not particularly situationally...... and this is a small sample in the scheme of things obviously, but given the EV PTBB is 6.9 I should at least be able to hope with a high confidence interval that the true rate is around 3.5 or something..... if anyone has a link to that Noah article about winrates and variance please send !

Anyway, I put recent success down to (in no particular order, but probably all of super equal importance ).

Never playing light headed.
Quitting as soon as I'm not 'feeling it'
Having a super focus on regs. Not individual reads, I'm not really interested in those, but one or two reads from which I can infer their level in a whole range of spots.
Always ensuring I'm one level ahead, not one behind, not two ahead, and not on the same level.

So with the whole one level ahead thing, I've literally given up approaching poker in the 'general' sense. By that I mean I used to go in with a whole set of goals; 3bet more, or less...... cbet more, or less..... 4bet more, or less....... play looser, play tighter, etc.

So, I don't even know what my VPIP/ PFR is these days. I dare say on some days its 32/30, on others 22/18. I'm basically just reacting to each situation as it comes up, generally meaning I raise PF, see what my opponent does, then ascertain what level I put him on, then go one level further.

In practice, this can mean a ton of stuff. Ie, VS slightly winning regs I'll bet check bet every hand as a bluff and get 100% folds. VS the same opponent I'll check raise wet boards small and barrel off if flatted safe in the knowledge all nutted hands are getting 3bet. VS very good players, I'll flat sets on said wet boards and let them barrel off, etc. It's such a broad concept but just one I really feel I have the hang of at the moment.

A few fun hands to finish !