what i've been up to

i was playing quite a bit throughout early november and was well on my way to playing at least 20k hands in the course of the month. then one week i just got burnt out from other things and was tired and unfocused so i didn't really feel like playing, so i didn't.

that only left me a couple days left to play because i was leaving on the 29th for a weeks vacation. i played two sessions which were absolutely horrible and anfocused and i managed to drop about a 1k over the course of 900 or so hands. that was it for me for the month and i'll have to dig through hem at home but i think i made about $500 over the course of 13k hands or so.

kind of a drag because up until those sessions i was having a pretty decent month being up like 1.6k which was a good confident boost.

the bitter taste of the last few sessions really left me pondering my problems over the past couple months. my thoughts led me back to the same old thing, lack of focus and concentration. as much as i try to learn and improve away from the table, the second i sit down i fire up 4-6 tables and go on auto pilot. and my auto pilot system is not that good. i tend to make knee jerk reactions based on emotion and generally make educated guesses. the end result is a lot of standard lines and a real lack of hand reading. when looking at my play im really only playing my hand strength a lot of the time, when my hand is weak i fold no matter my opponents range, when my hand is strong i bet/raise no matter my opponents range and when my hand has mediocre strength i play the guessing game.

so what can i do to fix this? well, i think the first thing is to reduce the amount of tables i play. i've never even considered playing less than 4 tables but i think my focus and concentration will improve if i start just 2 tabling or even playing one table at a time. so this means that the small amount of hands that i play a month will probably get smaller but at the same time whats the point of playing 20k hands a month if im not playing any of them optimally.

when i focus i have the ability to play pretty well imo. so my goal for december to start is to play 5k hands 2 tabling and see how i do. if i feel more focused and see better play emerging i will consider adding a third table. i really don't see myself going back to 4 tabling for the next 25k hands or so but im not going to write anything in stone.

i think down the line i can see myself having some sort of structure where i play 4 tables 75% of the time but go back to 2 tables 25% time to ensure im thinking and learning and not just grinding.

anyways, i played about 500 hands the other morning when i got back from vaca and made about $90 playing the "old" style.

im going to play tonight a bit but will ease back into things. i think i might also start playing on deep tables since i think a lot of regs don't adjust their strategy when deep and tend to make a lot of exploitable mistakes. i also might start mixing in hu into my play since i really only play 2 tables of that at a time anyways and it would help with getting hands in.

tg