Doooomswitched

Not a pretty graph this month, ha. Believe it or not until the last bit I and the first bit I played good, but yeah probably 15BIs lost due to runbad and 11 more due to playing bad. Those $500 stacks add up you know, and in between withdrawing to pay for a half built house I've lost the roll to play 500nl for now, even with the extremely aggro bankroll management I was employing.

I can't wait for the fucking day I don't have any outgoings, no this that or fucking other meaning I have $18k months and find myself broke as fuck 19 days later. Money stress definitely contributed heavily to the downswing, and sometimes I wish I was just staked or something so I could chill the fuck out and win money.

Anyway, 11 more days of this month and I'm definitely going to be playing at least 5k hands per day of 200nl. This is 55k hands, and I'd snap take winning around $5k over that sample.

Techical stuff: I think I've been way too passive of late, I've gotten a strong feel the past 2 days that people are just folding to me. Obviously this could be variance, but basically my 18/14 stats and opting out of the PF wars is going to cost me some value with big hands. This is fine, but where I'm not adjusting is just putting people on one pair hands and going 3 streets a lot with bluffs. I played a session of 200nl prior to this blog and did this much better. Essentially, there's no excuse for my WWSF to be lower than 50 when I have such tight PF stats, and if people aren't hero calling or are making biggish turn folds with top pairs on wet boards etc then I just have to work out who those people are and abuse them more.

Important not to get too caught up in over-arching strategy thoughts though as it can cause overadjustment. Overadjusting leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to bad bluffs, bad bluffs lead to suffering. But yeah I think it's time I started using my tightish image a little more.

Other technical stuff........... I've learned a ton from the skype group I'm in at the moment; Adam, Jude, Zaza amongst others. Probably the main thing is a newfound ability to make biggish folds. Adam is particularly good at this........ and this improves me tons in spots like...... we have AK in a 3bet pot, King hi or Ace hi board, they check shove turn. Previously never folding, now its like 'ok they put us on AK and are check shoving anyway' leads to some very logical folds depending on villain obv.

Anyway, that's it. 200nl grind for a while and so long as I'm patient the money and stress free life will come eventually. weeee

Sanity Blog

Had a day of yesterday and got drunk again, weee. Aim of today is to clear my head and start playing poker good again. My mind does feel a little clearer today, I've looked at lots of other people's hands and actually had opinions on them. I'm going to start off playing a 15 minute 200nl session and reviewing it here. Then hopefully a sweat from dodgeball, make some leggo lites that Matt needs and then do the narration for a vid thats out on Monday (I recorded the footage when I was killing it so no worries there).

So yeah, update to follow in 15 minutes. Goals:

Relax!
Time on decisions.
Trust instincts.
Don't get frustrated.
Try to get a feel for each player.


____________________________________-----------------------------___________________

Lost money but played ok and felt good.

http://weaktight.com/5005478 - I never do this. I did it today 'cos he opens 80% here and is relatively 4bet happy. Luckily I remembered why I never do it.......... basically I'm a level behind here, his level and that of the 'good' 200nl regs is to know they open super wide and therefore not have super unbalanced 4bet bluffing ranges when they know people are going to be 5bet jamming as a bluff often enough. The level I should be on is 3bet fold playable postflop hands VS him a ton. Doing this I also avoid all variance, weeee.

Is about the only interesting hand actually. Plan today is to eat well, shower, and play a much longer session and see how it goes.

Food for thought blog

Vegan food, obv.

I've had that 'minds gone blank, what is poker?' feeling today........ you know where you look at your cards and your opponent and see a flop and you know it's rainbow but then you have no idea what to do with this information. Or maybe you can consciously recall some elements of poker strategy but none of it seems to translate into a coherent plan or feed into any instinctive decision making.

Lack of talking about poker/ writing about poker/ making vids about poker likely has much to do with it. Leggo have been after me for a vid for ages now and tomorrow I'm going to do it. I also need to keep this much more updated with random strategy stuff to keep me in practice.

I did feel much more in tune the last session to be fair though. I've become aware of players adjusting to my constant flop raises..... FlyingSmile, KHK and some others have high raw cbet numbers but just CF every flop. Obviously my own adjustment has to be to lower my own raising frequencies VS those players specifically, and arguably I could look to flat wider PF. PFs boring though, not going to talk about it much.

Actually now I'm on PF, 3betting just doesn't seem to work at 2-5 Zoom. Well maybe it does, but it involves a lot of 3bet/5betting, and having the 5bet bluff strategy in place is bad for lots of reasons. What is still making me much happier is just flatting everything strong and then being annoying as possible postflop with flop and turn raises and overbets and underbets and whatever tools are at my disposal to rob people of money.

I've been finding lots of spots to use the turn PSR against people, often shortstackers but also 100bbs where the pot gets big. The kind of PSR I'm talking about is where the pot is $150 or something and villain has $250 behind. Depending on what result we're looking for, we can bet $48 and make it look like we're after max FE for the river and probably just be lightish for value, or we can go $108 and villain hates life cos it's just like we're never bet folding but with a weakish top pair or 2nd pair hand the $100 overlay that goes in only when they're behind makes life hell for them and depending on their level people find folds a lot.

Anyway I just wrote this to get some of my thoughts on paper and get back into the swing of strategy blogging and hopefully make my mind tick over a bit.

dan

Quick goals blog

................

Been struggling the past 3 days or so, I've been feeling terrible (physically), lethargic, energyless, unable to concentrate etc. Along with a few other symptoms I feel like there's definitely something wrong, but on the other hand I realised that with all my life upheaval my diet's been really bad of late. So starting tonight I'm sorting that out........ it'll be at least a week before I notice the difference though.

In the meantime, I've cured today's lack of energy by having a double strength coffee and a shower. I'm actually ready to kill someone, so a few session goals to help me do that.


1) Understand the player, look at this stats and tendencies and get a picture for how he thinks. Put myself in his shoes, see what he is seeing and what exactly he's going to do with this information.
2) Trust instincts always, this means instincts >> what is standard/ acceptable. If it means, for example, folding an overpair on the flop in a 3bet pot then so be it, my instincts are 99.99% accurate!
3) Time on decisions.
4) If downswing variance happens, so be it, expect it and be happy :-)

dan

Bad start, getting back on track

I started September with a biggish losing day at 500nl, basically played as well as I have been doing but ran bad. Since then I've been moving house and busy/ stressed with that and other stuff.

I'm supposed to have a Leggo vid out, I still haven't done it. I tried today but my brain just wasn't there, too clouded by thoughts of removal men and deposit signatures and British Gas. I tried anyway and lost 5 more BIs at 200nl in around 45 minutes............ my brain felt completely clouded and I couldn't get inside anyone's head, and got owned by 1 or 2 braindead obvious 200nl moves and felt stupid. Check overshoving flop to rep a draw with top set, calling river with a capped range VS Elusivejack when he knows I'm always calling after I check turn to cap range, etc. Easy to get one step ahead of people with a clear mind, but if it's slightly clouded then that extra level is missing and I'm a high variance break even player........

I've moved my desk to my parents where I'm staying at the moment, so I'm basically just now trying to achieve the mental state I've had the past 3 months or so where I've played excellently and won almost every day I've played. Playing for a full hour seemed beyond me today, so I'm going to take it slow......... have a shower in a sec, and then simply try to play a perfect 15 mins before reviewing the hands here. I'll do it in this blog so check back if you've only read this part............. dan


********* Hands Added *********

I played 500nl for 20 minutes, and felt OK-ish. Weirdly, all my colour notes have disappeared, as have all my Stars settings. I'm kinda glad about the colour notes though, as blanket having everyone blue as 'reg' did not help my brain automatically differentiate between them. Playing hands, I realised I really should have a better feel by now of more of the regs. I'll only get that feel by analysing more hands and writing down my thoughts on the hand and the player.

Hand 1: http://weaktight.com/4974989 - raising flop has been my standard for a month or so, but the sudden realisation that I don't actually know anything about this guy put the brakes on it. He could just be the type to snap 3bet get in QQ for example.......... and this cbet size made me think that in general it's not a bet fold, and I'd basically be left with raise folding it........  I should also expect several streets if I take this call line. Betsizes are cool to read, they so often give away the intention on the next street. Example, we have TT on J62ss and UTG+1 cbets $28 into $30 to our BTN flat, you know he's betting the next street too and we can make big flop folds or turn folds because of it.

This flop size actually got me close to that, but there's enough gray area + potential for us to bluff to still make flop a clear call. Turn As is obviously interesting, especially when he checks it. I feel like someone decent always has something like AJ/ set/ small flush here, while someone worse has the transparent QQ KK QJ KJ JT. In that sense, this hand is probably a decent indicator that villain is not terrific, though the board did change a ton on the river.

Anyway, turn, I obviously bet everything I continue with here these days 1/3 pot. I've talked about all the ins and outs before, but the jist is that it keeps my range wide and people play terribly to it. An element of soul reading their reaction to it is vital though. The CC in this spot weakens his range a decent amount, assuming villain not good. He probably couldn't resist CR a flush/ set/ 2 pair to this size.............

River, a 4flush and often an autobluff. Problem is he has ~ 6 certain high spade combos, and probably closer to 12. Taking his range as a whole though, way more than 50% of his range contains no spade. I think in his shoes it looks obvious that he should have a lot of spades though, and therefore he probably doesn't expect me to bluff or turn stuff into a bluff. I therefore bet a big amount that could make Qs or Js lay down, sorta on the level of 'its an obvious bluffcatcher spot, I bet huge, therefore I have value cos every reg always does in this spot'. He folded relatively quickly, which makes me think his turn peel was on the splashy/ bad side. Yes I bet $38 there, but I'm obv doing that with a plan and him CC something like QQ KK Jx without a spade is just calling turn to get owned on the river a lot.

Anyway I'm sticking a 'calls splashily to fold later on' note on him for now.

^ oh btw I think PF is too splashy. Maybe. Hmm, maybe not, PF is overrated anyway we can just bluff people a lot.


Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4975054 I don't know what good regs have when they do this. I do think though that calling to lead the next street needs some exploration, if only for the simple reason it's non standard and people are bound to play badly to it in one way or another. Qfullof8s did this to me the other day and bluffed me I think off tptk..........

Those two were the only interesting hands really. Going to eat and then play another ~ 30 minute 500nl session for review.