The Good vs. The Bad

Overall the switch to playing STTSnGs has worked out very well. I am getting more volume in, studying more intently and had some great improvement to the BR. Well, that is when you look at Tilt.

Not bad eh?

Not so good when you mix in what happened at Stars.

The stars games are a mix of the >50c MTTs which I was playing for value and the 1.5d 9 man turbos, so it is a bit skewed, but man does it look bad. Overall I am plus about 2 bucks for the whole month. Not sure what happened since my last post to throw the numbers off either because the BR is now ~$195.

Now to pad my own sob story, yes I ran ridiculously bad when I took my shot at playing the 1.5d games on Stars. Like REALLY bad, but whatever, that's poker. I just get disappointed when I know that from the outside looking in you see at best a break even player complaining about how his ATo monster gets cracked by KQs all the time. But really, you could add about 10 bucks to my running total to make up for the sick beats I was catching.

But to anyone who got this far, your scoffs are well founded. I did play bad as well to get there. I mean, I have only been playing the 9 mans for a couple weeks. There has to be some sort of transition phase from MTTSNGs. But I have improved quite a bit since the switch. There has been a ton of study which has helped tremendously. I have found leaks in my game that I did not know existed. I have also solidified some confidence in my game, I actually believe that there is hope for me to nail down my dream / goal of building a BR of $100,000 and live off of playing a game I enjoy. I read on 2p2 today that certain regulars feel that the average poker player can expect to earn $25-30K per year. The way that I have been improving, playing and logging solid volume, combined with my belief I can do much better than the average, that otherwise depressing news gives me something to hope for.

I missed my goal of logging 500 games this month, but I did hit the goal of breaking in the 1d games. I just didn't know it was going to be on 9 man sngs rather than 90 mans.

So for next month I have set down the following;

- Log 500 games
- Begin working in $1.50 games on Stars
- Continue review of almost all games, find and plug leaks
- Keep up to date with study notes
- Watch 15 hours of study videos

As for my personal life, I have joined the choir at my church. We have a concert on June 2nd and I am very much looking forward to it. I like the time that I spend there, it really helps to keep me grounded and focused. I must be crazy though, because I don't think there are many Christians who like to play poker and even less poker players who would consider themselves Christian. But hey, I always did march to the drum of my own beat.

Switch Up The Game

So I have been mostly treading water with 50c 90m turbos on stars whilst mixing in the occasional 1d 90m turbo. I think I may have got a little complacent in my study, but I do believe the biggest reason is the lack of volume. Really, I don't hit my prime until about three hours into a session playing these types of games and that can really drag on. Also, the stress of putting the volume in by playing about 8 tables on average during the session has been putting me in zombie mode. A combination of lack of binks, lack of fun, lack of motivation and lack of stamina caused me to make my most recent decision.

Currently I am playing 50c 9m turbos on tilt. It is kind of refreshing to go from an MTTSnG mindset to a STTSnG mindset. The action is a bit more intense, the swings are a bit jumpier and the volume gets crushed way easier. I still have to log in a ton more volume with those games to figure out what my win rate will be around, but I think I have proven to myself I am a winner there. It will also sharpen my game overall when I do make it to the final tables of MTTs and MTTSnGs. I will have a much better grasp of ICM overall and will be able to recognize spots to push my edges much easier. Who knows, it might actually be the best thing to do to build the BR. I could maintain bronze on tilt for the decent free rolls, play the stars less than a dollar MTTs and grind out some very fishy micro single table sit n gos.

At the very least I can practice my control of nerd rage quit; those variance bumps just smack you in the face as compared to MTTSnGs. Much easier to go 10 in a row without cashing imho. But hey, I may be wrong.

I fixed the problems with HM2, auto import isn't working too well so I have to manually do it. Not much I can do there, tried everything.

And SNGWiz seems to be running better. The last couple updates must have narrowed down the default ranges some and sped up the overall performance. Or maybe I have just not used it as much since playing the STTSnGs. It is hard to find the time to grab a HH while 8-10 tabling on stars rather than 4 tabling on tilt.

I have decided to forego Saturday night festivities for the most part with friends. I really want to dedicate Saturday and Sunday to the grind without nursing a hangover or getting lack of sleep. I have committed myself to going to church on Sunday to help commit myself to it as well. It sounds much better to say I am taking off early on a Saturday night to make it to church rather than to gamble for 14 hours. Well, I guess it depends who you ask.

BR~$210

Post Mexico

Tons of fun these past couple weeks. I took a two week vacation from work to play some poker, build the roll and went to a wedding for a couple of my best friends in Mexico. The sunrise pictures I got are stellar and I can't wait to go back for some more good times. Back in the grind I feel refreshed and ready to improve my game once again.

Tabledroid has been working very well for me; I am up to 10 tables comfortably. This has helped my overall win rate and also helped me overcome tilt somewhat. With being able to squeeze more volume out of my daily routine I am less fazed when the cards don't go my way. This is because partially because I am distracted with many other decisions to make at the same time but also because I get those wins more often in any given session to bump my roll. I fixed the computer up a bit also to help improve the speed of my game play. Glad I made those improvements.

Cardrunners also has just released the mobile version of their website which helps my game. I have some downtime at work right now with it being the time after spring break up which makes it slow. Now I can spend some of that time, about an hour each day, watching training videos on my phone without anyone at work noticing. So things are looking up all around.

Right now the main thing I have noticed improvement on is my ability to make reads on fishy players and adjust my game accordingly. I am starting to extract more value from them by making exploitative plays, things that they don't notice and walk right into my trap. Sure sometimes it backfires, but the long term benefit well outweighs the negatives. This has made it easier for me to accumulate chips early and mid game so that I can avoid the push fold scenarios until much later in the game. The thing I need to work on is differentiating between people randomly pushing buttons and the thinking opponents that you will find at the micros. Once I can hone that skill it will improve my win rate significantly.

 HM2 seems to be fucking up a bit, it doesn't seem to register all of my wins or all of the games played for a given session and shows my graph as worse than it really is. I think it might have something to do with desktop compatibility mode not registering correctly, but I am not sure. The steps listed in the forum as to how to fix it don't seem to be working for me. Doesn't really matter though as the hand histories are working fine, so my review still goes well.

BR ~ $200

I will leave us with one of my favourite moments from the trip.

Enjoy!