401 hands of hell

funny how this blog has turned into a how much money i've lost today kind of theme.

i sat down and quickly dropped 4 buy-ins ($409.30) in 401 hands.

just a sick sick session. i actually held my composure until the final beat and then for the first time ever chucked my mouse across the room. (felt kinda good except that i timed out in all my other hands)

here are the hands:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200430 - standard cooler

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200443 - villain is your standard maniac, he shoved the turn so fast i was expecting to see a pair w/ the ace of clubs or something.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200445 - a hand against another uber maniac. im not usually a big fan of jamming AK pre in cash games but im way ahead of his squeezing range and i "thought" i had fold equity but apparenlty 99 is good.

and the mouse smasher to finish it off,

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200450

days like this make me wish i just dicked around and played $5 sngs for fun like some of my friends.

this month has just been so sick. it seems like i go small win, big loss, small win, big loss.........

admittedly i played poorly at the beginning of the month and deserve those results. its just so frustrating lately. i get on these uber aggressive tables and everytime i raise im getting 3-bet and forced to fold. then when i finally pick up a monster i get zero action or sucked out on. (obv over generalizations because im losing)

so it looks like im going to have a big losing month for the first time that i really remember. im not sure how in the red i am in mtts but im done quite a bit in cash.




im bitter and depressed. my br is a shade under 3.3k now but i have about $400 in rakeback owed to me. if it wasn't for rakeback i'd probably be playing 1cent/2cent underolled.

im going to go puke.

tg

tons of hands, small win

played close to 3200 hands of 100nl today. i think to some multi-tablers that's not that much but to me that is a ton.

before the last week or so i would consider 1k to be a very big volume day. i tried 6 tabling today and actually felt fairly comfortable playing that many at once. i can't see myself ever playing more than that but 6 seems like the sweet spot.

i went back to 100nl and was very happy with my play. obviously there are always going to be a couple hands that are misplayed but overall i thought i played well.

i ended up just over a buy-in but was stuck 3 buy-ins early when i just got stuck in very bad spots. i could of actually been up a lot more but i took a couple of nasty beats that felted me.

here's a graph for the day.



i was planning on playing a bunch of mtt's but the way they started off i decided to concentrate on cash games. i played the 10am $24 and busted from that fairly uneventfully. i then played the noon $24 and about 15 mins in i got my AA all-in pre vs. KK and the board came xxKKx and i decided i had enough for a while.

next i played the fifty fifty again and went out about 1.5hrs in when i pushed AJ and about 15bb's overtop a couple limpers and one of them called w/ 99 and it held up. i also played the 10pm $24 and lasted about the same amount of time before getting short and pushing 77 into KK and thats all she wrote.

i might get some hands in tomorrow morning but then my girlfriend is coming home so my play schedule will be slowed considerably.

tg

back to basics

i've logged 1600 hands at 50nl the last two days and am up 2 buy-ins. i've been happy with my play.

my stats are a pretty much the same as before. (17/12.5/4) im not sure why there is such a gap between my vpip and my pfr % but i'll pay some extra attention to that to make sure im not playing too passive pre. the total AF might be a little high as well but im not too concerned about it.

i might try some 100nl today, we'll see.

i've only been stacked twice so far at 50nl. here are the hands.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1194354 - not sure about this hand, im going to post it on cr forum and see what the opinion is there. villain in the hand very rarely cold calls but he is fairly donkish and is a calling station post flop. i had a bad feeling it was a set throughout the hand but im not sure how else i can play it since he could easily have AQ or AJ and i pretty sure he checks behind on the river with these hands if i check to him.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1197609 - im pretty sure i had this guy on tilt since 2 hands earlier i had flopped a set of 9's against his QQ. this hand im not sure i can get away from given the circumstances. my thinking at the time was to fold pre since he's tilting he's going to be looking for a chance to play back at me but the 9c8c is just so damn pretty i couldn't resist.

played a couple donkaments last nite with no success. i played the new fifty fifty on ftp ($50+5 buy-in, 50k guaranteed) and things were going ok until my AQ ran into QT that turned a T for 2p to send me out about 540th out of the 1000+ runners. i also played the 10pm $24 which i believe is a 26k guarantee but im not sure. nothing much happened in this tournament and i eventually pushed 9bb's from the CO w/ A8s and the button called w/QQ and i bricked a river on a 2458 board to get bounced around the middle of the pack.

im off work today so i hope to play a ton.

tg

dropping down

i've decided to drop down to 50nl for a little while. not sure for how long, could be a couple sessions or could be a couple weeks.

i've been thinking about my play, reading lots and watching a lot of low limit cr vids and i think i see the flaws in my game.

starting back at 50nl will be just less pressure. dropping 5 buy-ins at 50nl is not really that damaging to my br so i won't feel the pressure to win.

br to me is more a matter of being comfortable rather than risk of ruin. (to a certain degree) most people will say that 25 buy-ins is a good br for nl cash as long as you're willing to drop down when you go on a losing streak. so far, i've basically stuck to a 40 buy-in rule for nl cash which is pretty conservative. even that sometimes doesn't feel like enough but at the same time i've seen some really good limit players that were overly conservative with there roll and imo lost out on a lot of profit and growth as a player.

so for now it's down to 50nl to get my confidence back.

a couple other things,

- i cashed in some ftp points and got "the poker mindset", a book that is supposedly really good and deals w/ the mental side of playing poker. i think this will be a good read and should help me w/ my tilting ways. i started reading "poker and zen" a long time ago and never finished it. i found it ok but a lot of it seemed to advocate weak passive play and i never had the urge to finish it.

- im going to start posting in and browsing the nl cash forums on cardrunners. im hoping this will help me plug a few leaks and offer some insight into how others play certain situations.

- lastly, no way im making iron man status on ftp after hardly playing the last week. i might be able to pull out gold but we'll see.

hopefully i'll put some hands in tonite and play well.

tg

re-tooling

haven't played too much lately but when i have played it hasn't been good.

i didn't log a single hand thurs, frid and sat. i was pretty busy with other stuff and by the time i got a minute to sit down and play i was tired and unfocused so i decided not to play.

i got up early yesterday and logged about 800 hands of cash. i made 1/2 buy-in that time but didn't necessarily play well. i went out and did some stuff and came back to log another small session. in about 300 hands i played like total garbage and lost about 3 buy-ins. i was pretty sick, walked away and ran some erans. i came back more focused and made 1-1/2 buy-ins back in another 400 hands. i played ok during this time but still not great. i came back at nite to put one more session in and try to get even for the day. once again i played like crap, tilted like a moron and was a total fish in the game. i lost 3-1/2 more buy-ins to make my total loss for the day in the $470 range.

i was depressed, sick to my stomach and emabarassed about my play. the fact that im getting the crap kicked out of me at 100nl is embarassing to me.

a day later and looking at my play i came to a few conclusions.

1) i tilt way too easily when playing cash games.
2) im playing with ego, not smarts.
3) im playing way too lag for my skill level.
4) im not taking my time to make decisions.

100nl on ftp right now is quite an aggressive game. for some reason im pulling maniac moves that i would never pull in a mtt. its like my inner donk from 3 years ago is coming out. i don't believe anything anyone is telling me with their betting. for instance, a hand from yesterday. mp limps, i raise from the CO w/ 55 to isolate, bad player cold calls on the button and the bb 3-bets pot. the limper folds and i shove because it looked like a squeeze play. bad player folds and bb calls and shows KK. when i pushed the 55 i did it instanly, no thinking, no use of the time bank, no looking up pahud stats. just a knee jerk reaction of "this guy is full of shit, i'll show him".

this is how im playing nowadays and this is why im losing. at first glance yesterday i made the excuse that "im running bad". although i did run poor yesterday, i played even worse. i would estimate that if i a good player had been playing in my spot yesterday, they might have ended down a buy-in. instead i played and am down 5.

so im going to re-tool.

brystmar (guest pro) on cardrunners has a 5-part series out right now about becoming a solid winning tag in the micro to low stakes. im taking tonite to study these vids and get back to the basics. i watched a few of his vids in early may and they were quite eye-opening to me. since then i've slipped into some bad habits that i need to correct.

on the mtt front, im going to stay patient. im getting deep regularly, just not closing the deal. im pretty confident in my mtt game right now even though the results haven't been there.

my br has slipped to about 3.6k which is scary but i have $300+ in rakeback that i can cash in for. ( thank god for rakeback)

here's to turning over a new leaf and getting back on the winning way! (and howard if you're listening, throw me one of those sicko rex55 runs <<<<<<<<< 6 ft's in one week)

tg