Thursday, May 22, 2008

enlightened

so i was pretty happy with my play last week although i felt weird about some of my post-flop play. for some reasons there's spots where im just betting out or checking based on whether or not i think my opponent hit the flop which probably isn't the worst strategy but also not optimal. after going over a few hands with my coach, he starting telling me how bad some of this was and all of a sudden it just kinda clicked in my head. i kind of got the concept he planted in my head about two weeks ago and has been hammering in ever since.

i have to get rid of my fear of being bluffed. it's a lot more than that obv but this is probably the root cause of it. i look forward to making great decisions tonite.

also, i've been a little burnt out from watching nlhe videos on cr and dc lately so i decided to watch a bunch of plo videos just to change it up. i want to keep my concentration on nlhe but plo videos are refreshing and i might also mess around with some 25plo and try to work my way up slowly. i don't want to risk hard earned bank roll from playing nlhe on being a mark in a plo game although i don't think anyone is really all that good at the lower limits.

oh and i dropped about $350 playing during my lesson the other nite over 500ish hands.

tg

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

on a tear

since my last post i think i've put in around 4.5k hands which is pretty good since i didn't play too much late last week and never put in a monster session since i was sick and am pretty useless most of the time. i make a rule to not play when sick because i have zero discipline and a general "fuck it" kind of attitude.

i stayed home from work on friday and was feeling a bit better by late afternoon so for fun i hopped into a couple satellites for ftops event #12 ($216 nlhe) and won a seat on the first try. i lasted about an hour and a half and was quite active throughout the first hour. i was down early after losing a decent size pot w/ KK on a AAxxx board when i checked the flop thru and called small turn and river bets and lost to A5s. at my lowest i had about 1.5k and at the end of the 1st hour got back to about 2.7k after flopping a set and making a boat against a tight mtt reg that unfortunately didn't get paid off. early in the 2nd hour i pick up QQ and raise utg, he jams from mp with a smallish stack and i was really happy with the spot since i think he thought i was horrible and would jam lighter than usual. i lost a flip against his AKo and now i was on life support. with blinds at 60/120 i think i had around 1.2k and jammed over a loose lp raiser w/ 33 and he snapped me off w/ AJo. i was actually thinking about it the other day and if i had to guess it's probably been about 25 tournaments since i've even cashed. yikes. in all fairness though i haven't really taken them seriously and have done some stupid things with good stacks like limp/jamming in the sb to a bb raise w/ 98o and getting shown AA. meh.

as for the 1/2 journey things have been going good. i think i played pretty well over the weekend and after getting unlucky a few times still managed to be up about $1800. i was very pleased with how i played for the most part but i have noticed some poor play while going through the hands in pt today. i'll probably look at those during my coaching session and keep improving. im also enjoying the professional nl holdem book and while nothing is ground breaking yet it has clarified a few concepts i was fuzzy on. hope to finish that up soon.

i think i've only played 11k hands so far this month and it will get tougher since i have a bunch of work to do this week and might have much time on the weekend to play. most of my sessions now i've been 5-6 tabling so that helps when it comes to getting hands in. oh, and i also sat in a 2/4 razz game the other day and pretty much busted half the table in about 20 mins and broke the game. it's insanely funny how bad people are at these games.

anyways, bankroll is healthy at 12k and the rakeback account is almost bust due to tournament buy-ins and coaching costs. 4k more and i'll start my 2/4 journey although i have lots to learn before then.

tg