Back to the drawing board...

Playing absolutely horrible right now. Bluffing in the wrong spots and missing value in the right spots. Time to refocus and rededicate.

Dropping down for a while...

Just because I'm not feeling it and putting myself in terrible spots. I've hit my hand goal, now I just need to concentrate on not sucking anymore.

Dedicated to learning HU

Mostly because it's been so brutal to me so far. Yet, I can see how it can be very very profitable. Any suggestions on how to get started are greatly appreciated.

later - DP

Ouch.

Well I tilted off 10 buy ins last night at 50NL HU. Whoops. I am actually not too bothered by the loss of money as I have put in sufficient volume to cover with rakeback earnings. But I am determined to not let it happen again. More later.

The Red Line Difference....

My January 2010 graph. Title says it all.

PokerStars Promo

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers, you too can take part by registering on WBCOOP

Registration code: 636494

turned it around...

Once I recognized why I was failing (related to red line in last post), I came off tilt. I'm now enjoying a nice little upswing. More on my adjustments later.

More on my redline....

This is my graph of my January 2010 so far. The huge drop halfway is a massive cooler at 100NL followed by monkey tilt and then a period of what I fear most, residual subconscious tilt. I'm now trying to focus on what this subconscious tilt looks like.



As you can see from the graph, when I tilt, I come down with a combination of fancy play syndrome and station like tendencies. To explain further, when I am in this mode, I tend to try to get fancy against the regulars. This often leads to such spewage as stacking off with 99 in a 3bet pot on a 7 high board in a BTN vs blind situation.

The second part of my tilt is a tendency to become a bad calling station where I call preflop raises with too wide of a range versus the wrong player types. I also find myself involved in too many hands where I fire 2 streets against the 40/10, 50/20 type players with air or weak made hands. These players are not folding with any piece of the board plus any draws. As a result, I find myself folding often on the turn and river when faced with aggression.

Long story short, I've been spewing, not paying enough attention to board texture and villian type, and generally trying to force a quick upswing rather than be patient and wait for the good times to come.

Of course running like $hit at times certainly doesn't help. As I was typing this, I flop a set on a two heart board, fire a pot size bet on the flop into two players, get snapped by a 40/20 type, turn brings a spade draw out there and I fire another pot size bet, river completes the back door flush and I find myself stacked by a flopped OPES turned flush draw rivered nuts. yay.

Less than 2 hands later on my 2nd table, I play a hand terrible and get stacked w AQ in 3bet pot vs 36/23 monkey who has AK on A9XJK board. This is a perfect example of failure to prevent action on one table affecting play on another table. HAVE TO FIX THIS!

So my night went down 3 buy-ins, up 1, down 3, up 1/2, to now down 2.....sigh...

and this post turned to a good one to a shitty one real fast. sorry.

Redline has dived....

and so has my results. Need to get this $hit under control and fast. more to come later.

I warned myself about the tilt monkey...

And still managed to do it. Nothing completely horrible fortunately. Had AA get stacked by 33 within my first 4 hands at a 100NL table. Instantly spewed 2 buy-ins through horrendous play at the 50NL level on two of my other tables (pretty flippin' hard to do considering I was playing just the 1 100NL table and 3 50nl tables). Then continued to get coolered at the 100NL table for a nother 3/4ths a buy-in.

Dropped the 100NL table and made back a bit at the 50NL table, but still short of where I want to be to continue at the 100NL level. I'll be back you bitches. I'll be back.

Currently reading a thread by "boywonder" on 2+2 and found this gem (which I already knew, but frequently forget/disregard):

Your mental, emotional state while playing is 80 % of the work, and you can work and take specific steps to get better at that. Being in the right emotional state will allow you to open up your eyes to what you and the other players are doing without being stuck in the previous hand you lost, how much you are up, what you´re gonna eat later, etc. Combine that with some basic technical steps that can be taken and you got the other 20% to at least achieve enough to live comfortably off poker. I believe, that with todays games and climate, anybody with even mediocre intelligence and some discipline could at the very least make a comfortable living playing this game.

- BOYWONDER - from: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54/poker-beats-brags-variance/destroyed-3-6-time-move-up-graph-286574/index2.html

Taking shots at 100NL

Well....due to my December run good (best month ever for me in cash games), I am now rolled for shot-taking at 100NL. As long as I can prevent tilt meltdown, I believe I'll be able to succeed.

My focus will continue to be on player identification, situation analysis, and hand reading. Seemed to work well at 50NL.

2009 recap and 2010 outlook post coming soon.