500nl

I was feeling a bit fed up with 200nl today. Stange, as it's not like I have a stellar winrate there and can say I've solved it, but I just feel sorta 'not stretched' there if you know what I mean. The player pool is so big it's hard to get real insight into how individuals play, and I'm almost just left with a set of rules that the average 200nl player adheres to. Something like; never rebluffs, always fires 2 and not 3, river bets are polarised, yada yada. I dunno, I just didn't feel inspired to grind another month where a really good effort might net me $8k + bonuses.

So I decided to play 500nl with some caveats. Actually before I continue the big reason for moving to 500nl is that the rake in bb/100 is 80% higher at 200nl than 500nl, so even with a much worse winrate I'd be doing better.

I was speaking to Adam001 and Jude today, and they were discussing 500nl opponents. What struck me is how they described players in terms of 'He's the type of player to do xyz' and 'He's got good psychology and thinks about poker in terms of this and that'. Because neither use HUDs, they're much more able to holistically consider a player's tendencies and approach to poker, as opposed to '3bets wide from CO, folds a lot to 4bets', ie the raw numbers stuff. I think the difference between the two modes of thinking is the difference between grinding out a small winrate while making no big 'numbers' mistakes, and owning people's souls.

That last sentence might need backing up a little. Well, when I was successful I used very little HUD, and my analysis on opponents was exactly along the same lines as theirs. Example paragraphs from my 2009 blog:

'Don't Reward The Nit: 3/10 - A new one this, it's something I used to concentrate on and need to get back. Essentially, I make money off nits by a) stealing pots and their blinds, and b) not ever paying them off. They don't have to be pf nits, some nits play like 24/21.... but essentially postflop they're just weak weak scared types. Yellodawg on Cereus is the High Priest of these types of player, and I need to stop things like this...'


'Hero wins $832.50 ( won +$417.50 ) 
GOGATORS86 lost -$415


Maybe a standard call dunno, but seemed really tough at the time as he'd been losing several pots, and I thought he'd be on the level where he 'knew' that I'd think he'd start bluffing. I give too much or too little credit obviously...'

So nothing major here obviously, I could trawl through and find better examples but it shows my thinking was geared towards a lot more towards more intangible things than raw vacuum-ous numbers. So with a smaller player pool, I feel I can start reviewing hands every session with the express intention of getting to know the regs there very well and get inside their heads more.

First session was interesting anyway, will review all the hands shortly, and am considering setting up a separate 'regs' blog that I can start working on right away................