The month evaluated

Think I’m going to put my Monday update up now to stop me playing for a while. Everything is going great; this week I made about $190 and got $100 in rakeback. It’s now a month on from changing my game and I’ve added 1/3 to my roll. I have gone from having a roll of $1577 to $2389. I’ve played relatively little poker too because I have been working towards my exams and I had two loosing weeks. Even taking this into account I am earning roughly $18 an hour playing poker (not including tournament time).

So I wanted to use this post to try and evaluate my game. Ok I lost money for two weeks in a row – why? Well the first week would have been a winning week if I didn’t drop nearly 4 stacks on a hung-over session – okies I got a bit unlucky but I was trying to play 5 tables and I could barely work out my holdings let alone their range. The week following that I was completely demoralised and I think I played fairly bad poker as well as just kept getting consistently unlucky in the big pots – all-in-all I lost $38 that week and I recon I should have been up a stack or two statistically. However, I still think half my losses this week were due to bad play.

I think my new game is so much better than before because I’m trying to expand my edge constantly. My table selection, well it was non existent before – just find 9 tables asap and get playing. Now I will find tables, “sit-out” and observe the players before I get involved. Also, really getting the feel for the tables before I play has helped my adjust my play. For instance, I started putting into practice the CR ideas during the weekday sessions, however, when I tried to use aggressive post-flop bluffs against them on the weekends they kept calling. I have to confess that before, I barely noticed the difference in play between Monday morning and Saturday night.

I still haven’t moved back to PTY for any real period of time. The reason is I don’t believe I can really practice my game on PTY nl:$50. I’ll get in situations where I’ll 3-bet the button with AQ and get 4 callers etc – therefore, I just feel that I can make more through tight play with very little aggression – and I really want to open up my game, FT lets me do that.

I want to try to adapt a more Laggy approach to my game, and I think on the midweek NL:$50 on FT it’s actually possible to make this work. I’m watching the CR videos and trying to bring a few of their strategies into my game – obv. the players aren’t thinking on as many levels as they would be at the higher stakes so I’m not going to try anything that complex.

Using PAHud and PTH have been great – I now datamine FT for hours each day. I feel it gives me a great edge esp. when I first sit down at the table. Using these programs has definitely contributed to my success this month.

I think that perhaps the biggest positive change in my game has been my attitude. I concentrate on every pot regardless of how much money is in it. I really think about how I’m feeling before I sit down to play a session, and I don’t play if I’m not feeling about 95% perfect. I have certainly shed my defeatist attitude and am taking bad beats much better than before. They still piss me off but they are not as damaging as before. Prior to re-evaluating my game I would play 9 tables, and be loosing on most of them, then get a big hand, stack someone and then be up $20-$30 for the session – therefore, if that big hand went wrong I would be stuck $70-$80 for the session – you can see the predicament. I believe now I’m trying to beat the game and play good poker rather than primarily make money.

So my plans for the future: well, with no summer jobs lined up as yet I will have to see my poker as a bit of a job. I would like to start bonus-bagging as well – so maybe use the mornings for bonus-bagging, the afternoons for tourneys and satellites then hit the cash games in the evenings. I need to make just over $600 before I start playing the 50/1 and I’m really hoping I wont ever have to look back. I think if I can play successfully at 50/1 over the summer I can definitely make a fair bit of cash. I want to start playing more Stars tourneys – with the new 3k starting stack I feel I certainly have an edge. I have played 3 $18k guaranteed and have finished 220th, 196th, and 68th – although I am loosing for this tourney overall I still think I am +ev in the long run. As I said I also want to branch out into bonus bagging, it sounds like free money – and as it requires patience rather than skill it’d be an ok thing to do whilst I’m in bed every morning – hell I could even do it with a hand over. Lastly I would like to branch into some sort of trading, I think my dad has a good idea of the markets – however, he is less of a gambler than me and so favours the low risk side of investing – whereas I would prefer to try for larger profit margins. If anyone would like to give me some advice on how to invest, and better still – what to invest in, it’d be much appreciated.

TY for reading

(ps. I think I will avoind the tables until next monday (25th) - I have exams on tuesday and thursday next week and will be pissed or hung over until monday - so this is the safest decision!)