Entitlement was an issue, which I felt I put right, and now I feel it's crept back in 'I've fixed my entitlement issue, why am I not winning now???' lol.
So I definitely need to get back into writing and analysing in order to improve. I've waited a fairly long time now for it just to 'turn around', and it's quite possible that this is just the 1 in 6 year series of hands where I've ran the worst, but I don't like the feeling of putting anything down to variance and it's quite likely that a fair number of leaks have crept in.
In no particular order, I'll list some random thoughts as to what I'm doing wrong:
Mental:
- A bit of impatience when playing lower stakes.
- Not having confidence in myself, and therefore not trusting instinct 100%.
- Not ensuring that the 'narrative' is working, and forgetting how to re-ignite it.
- Not having enough awareness of the 'tilt cycle' and therefore being unable to exit it.
Technical:
- Not taking my time and planning ahead enough.
- Related to the above, I feel I'm a little bit too 'splashy' atm.
- Also related, I've been a little too passive and looking to show down hands too much. Winning with a made hand should basically always be a last resort, and so for example doing the standard button flat with KQo to a 3x is a bad idea.
- Lack of 'dopeness' (lol). Dopeness is basically that point in a hand where I go the extra level or have that extra bit of creativity needed to crush the hand. In my last 200k hands of breaking even you won't find many 'horrible' hands in there, nothing 2p2 could laugh at or anything, but there's nothing where I've really had a flash of inspiration. When I'm playing well, these flashes are extremely common.
- Related to the above, really core variables like PSR and bet sizing have been absent from my analysis of late.
- Not adjusting enough to the players I'm up against. I'm ending up on the river with really weak ranges and convoluted bluffs VS 100nl players who are simply always calling top x% of their absolute hand strength.
- Lack of care given to my own betsizing when bluffing and value betting.
So yeah, quite a lot on there, and I'm only stopping because I don't want to over crowd things. My plan is to play a 30 minute session, analyse some of the hands here, and also grade myself on each of the things listed above. Be right back.....
Session Cool-down
Ok, fairly happy with that. Played just 2 tables of 100nl and found I had tons to think about and really enjoyed it. Probably the enjoyment came from seeing the infinite possibilities for getting edges. There were a couple of really unorthodox plays in there too, which don't mean in of themselves that I was playing better, but are certainly a sign that I shook off the inertia and 'fine, standard' mentality that took hold.
Hand 1: This it the hand I was least happy with. It's 'standard' of course, but just extremely meh. I quite like the smal cbet size on this board texture, but I think turn and river are just going to be way too weak. Instinctively both streets need much bigger bets. I'm going to check that out on CREV now....
Yeah, like betting bigger on the turn folds out more of his 7x, and betting bigger on the river folds out more the Tx that remain. Our blocker's pretty decent, and optimal on the river seems to be about 1.5x pot.
Hand 2: Obviously looks standard, but I was happy because I didn't treat it as such. Firstly, villain took a while to 3bet pre, so this weakens his range considerably and I was happy getting in 99+ there. Secondly, I gave a lot of though to my sizing....... I've gone back to splitting my sizes here, so I choose the bigger size with pure bluffs (AJo etc), AK, JJ and some QQ. Basically hands that want to encourage a jam or fold. Then I have a smaller size to around 8bbs with AA, KK, some QQ and hands like QJs, JTs, T9s. This range is kinda exploitative, because it gets fucked over by light jams (though not by that much actually.
In terms of grades, my mental side was really good. A few times I 'forgot' what I was doing, but a quick strategy injection of 'look at all the details, plan ahead' brough back the narrative. other stuff was all good too actually, though in a short session there weren't too many opportunities. I did play one sick hand that I'm not going to post because it just looks really bad lol, but I was super confident in my read and happy I went with my instinct.
Coming up, more 100nl weee.
