Review Time

A couple of losing sessions in a row, so I need to play a session where I take my time over everything and then review here....... I usually find this a great way to nip downswings in the bud before they escalate into 25 BIs etc.

Review to follow.......session will be strictly 25 minutes long.


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Bleh, not a good session! Looking through the hands, it's clear I could've saved *some* money, but I just simply didn't win over $25 in any particular hand. 'Not winning hands' can get endemic, which is why I've endeavoured to loosen up my image a ton through (potentially breakeven in a vacuum) flop raises, turn check raises, etc etc. Unfortunately, if the situations don't come up then they don't come up.

I certainly could've folded this river (although Sauce would not have done). One thing I need to learn to balance is that..... the mode of play whereby we make plenty of bluffs does not disqualify us from also making the same number of obvious folds that we did previously. It does enable us to get in the money lighter, but only in spots where we are the aggressor, ie we can suddenly treble tp3k for a value in a 3bet pot. Spots like the above, especially on the river are just *classic* ssnl folds all day.

So yeah, I'm all about being very hard on myself at the moment, but I think this session and the ones preceding it are simply about pure runbad in the 'not having good situations' sense. I'm going to endeavour to fold more rivers though, but just continue to do what I'm doing and grind through it.

I'll play another 60 minute session after a short break. Goals are to time on decisions, have a video narrative on medium-big decisions, and probably look to fold rivers more. Review to follow.

Session #3

$30 won on the session! EV of $215....... a sad last minute beat to destroy my dreams

http://weaktight.com/5608552

Was super happy with the session though, basically a textbook example of how I want to be playing, decent amount of 3betting, delayed bluffs, and flop raises but without venturing into spew.

Feel like I should walk my dogs. Hmm, really can't be bothered. Meh, actually the mental inner peace it gives me will probably help me. So yeah, gonna walk em.

Session #2

Lost $130 or so, but an ubercooler accounted for all that btn-sb QQ vs KK. Although, maybe it's not that much of a cooler, I need to start 4betting a ton there probably to be thrilled getting in even QQ at Zoom these days with the lack of dynamics. But meh, still a cooler, he was like 13% from that spot.

Lost with 33 on t32r A too a big pot, and then bottled calling the river here http://weaktight.com/5608414 . Yes it doesn't look like a call, but I had strong spidey senses on this guy, but my desire to play solid meant I folded......... I like the turn bet by the way in case anyone's wondering.

Basically a load of sorta unavoidable big pots totalled $230, and I lost only $130, and so kinda happy.

For session 3, plan is just more of the same, avoid making mistakes and keep looking for spots to apply pressure.

Session Review

Still struggling along at the moment. $7k under EV for the year, and then the confidence issues that result, have left me pretty poor. I NEED to write more of these blogs I think, I've been stuck in a bit of a grinder's rut 'get in dems hands' which isn't healthy. Well, it might be healthy for a while, like if you find a style that works and hammer it, but eventually things and regs change and some adjustment might be needed.

I think for a while at 200 I was hammering the 'fold everything, make the nuts' style, but I'm sure I'm not imagining things when I say lately I'm finding it a little difficult to get paid off. I think my image has probably just evolved to the point where every check raise gets a snap fold, every 4bet a snap fold. I basically haven't been very balanced, just relying on coolering people and then avoiding the re-coolers.

The other problem with this style is, that it's a bit 'card dependent' if you know what I mean. I don't sit down expecting to print money, I just hope I'll get some semi cooler situations and then make the big folds in reverse. Consequently WWSF has gone under 50 the last month, down to 45 or so. Red line (red herring a lot obv but still) winnings also plummeting at a large rate.

Where I'm going with this, is that I want to change my in-game outlook slightly to have more of a 'non showdown' mentality. This doesn't just mean start going crazy, but it does mean planning the hand with an eye on winning without showdown at some point. Playing one session like this felt much better, I was much more vigilant in looking for good situations rather than just going through the motions.

Thinking through the hand probably takes care of a few PF leaks as well, overcalling KQo in SB when the postflop situations are mostly pretty poor for us, etc.

http://weaktight.com/5607810 - important to pick my opponents better! But yeah, I think in the past I just try to show this down or something. Weak flop CB and weak turn bet though and it's just a good river bluff spot VS most when we bomb it.

So yeah, that's it for now. Just going to get more sessions in and keep reviewing and try to turn this around!

Mental Refresh

The year hasn't started well for me so far, but that will change. I can put it down to really poor mental game, and lack of technical *thinking* outside of sessions to keep me up to speed. I basically need to start writing here more..........

It's clear I've allowed a ton of leaks to creep into my mental game. For one, I'm no longer unrelentingly positive when playing. In an ideal world, bad beats are seen as heaven sent 'cos they keep fishes wanting to play. Bad play on my part is just to be expected sometimes, because nobody is perfect. Variance will happen as surely as it will rain, so expect it and don't be sad when it does happen.

Discipline has also been a problem........ I'm trying not to be too hard on myself but there's been too many big mistakes VS bad bad players. Something about playing VS genuinely good players concentrates my mind and mistakes are few and far between, but if we ever start jamming AJo to an aggro 4bettor at 1-2 then that guy has won..........

I don't know where this ramble is headed really. I just need to start analysing every session again here until I get back on the winning track. So, starting now.........

Technical Goals:
Be overly nitty on the back foot.
Read our hand in our opponent's eyes.
Get to *know* the players.
If we don't know the player, it's probably a fold.

Mental Goals:

Video narrative- really important that I learn this to unconscious competency level
Positive thoughts only
Take time on medium pot+ decisions- again, really important that this gets learned to unconscious competency level.


Ok so to get the ball rolling I'll start off with a 30 minute session and then grade my performances based on the above and then do a technical review as well

Refresh Blog........

For those that don't know, I've had a decent amount of turmoil recently. My house that I bought ended up costing a ton more, and withdrawing my bankroll down to an infinitesimal amount preceded a small downswing that left me with next to nothing online.

From $2k I ran up to $3.5k, down to $1k, up to $7k, and I'm currently at $5.3k with a few bad sessions behind me. The last session I played, I had that dreaded 'forgot everything about how to play poker' feeling, so I basically just want to re-affirm some basic technical stuff.

Preflop: I've been going 2x from all positions. This has a couple of important effects; firstly people flat much wider (especially from the blinds), 3bet smaller, and when I do get 3bet I only lose 2bbs rather than 2.5 or 3 (a pretty big difference). I've been 3betting much more from the blinds, but I've definitely noticed a decent increase in the amount of 4betting I've faced. My fold to 4bet stat is an expoitable 63%, and although I've always shied away from it I think I need to start throwing in some lighter 3bet/5bet jams from LP and NOT get carried away with doing so to the point of spewing.

I think I'm starting to loathe 4betting again. I think especially IP I'm just going to flat 100% of the time, at least for the next few sessions. Min raising hands like 96s leads to 3bets to like 6x, which need to be flatted, but at the same time I'm pretty concerned at the overall weakness of my flatting range. Although, maybe I shouldn't be............ the fact that the 3bet is small to begin with means I can get away with more fit or folding without trying to force things the 11th time in a session I flat 86s and it flops JT5r, for example. Anyway, yeah, I'm gonna flat everything and see how it goes. OOP I'll keep with the small 4bet of probably like a 10% range of suited broadways + Axs or something

Flop: Tough to generalise, but I think at 200nl just cbetting IP an exploitable amount is good, while OOP take more tricky check/ bet / bet lines with my whole range. Yeah, I mean this is the kind of thing that has been making my mind go blank. So many contradictory things go through my head when I raise from BTN and flop comes J83ss. His range is wide, my range is wide, he knows my range is wide, does he realise how wide his own range is flatting a minraise? Yada yada.

Ok I'll update this later, typing about stuff has definitely helped enough for now. I think I need to start defining my 'sessions' as starting with 15 minutes talking hands on skype or something. Really important warmup so I don't dive in, have a blank mind, lose confidence and start spewing.

Here goes..........

Time to grinddddddd

I was gonna title this blog 'grind of my life' or similar, but it sounded more like a euphemism for me having a terminal disease or something. This is basically just a self pep talk blog. Cliffs, after this I am fucking DONE with withdrawing money from pokersites.

 Two mediocre months in a row, September 'cos I definitely ran bad, October 'cos I was sick bored of 200nl Zoom and my play reflected that. Nevertheless, I got my bankroll to a respectful SSNL level, and now I have to withdraw virtually all of it to finish this house. $10k is coming out, leaving me with a roll most would consider small for 50nl! Luckily I feel super pumped and super on fire to annihilate 200nl Zoom in November. No more sulking that I'm not playing higher, no more feeling sorry for myself, no more giving the regs too little respect or too much. I'm just going to work hard, concentrate, make a ton of notes, play a ton of hands, and do well.

I've been playing without a HUD the past week or so. It's really helped me get back in the mindset of what's important in poker. Getting in the habit of relying on the HUD is a killer. In November I'm going to play sometimes with it, sometimes without it. I feel like I'm able to bring it back for now to get general reads on unknowns, but as soon as I feel I'm getting lazy and overusing it it's going to go out the window again.

Play goals (you've all heard these before):

• Take time on decisions
• Be crazy aggro IP, be a nit OOP (in general)
• Board texture/ psychology approach (what is he thinking, what does he expect us to do?)
• Always click button corresponding to instinct. Especially on river folds!
• Attack weak ranges/ fold to strong ranges.
• Reverse tilt when we lose.

3 minutes to midnight and I'm excited about playing for the first time in a while. Gogogogogogogogooooooo.