Finishing Feb early

Not been able to play much poker this week due to a sharp increase in my workload at work. Work's taking the priority as always, and I'm staying away from the tables. It's best that I just don't play at the moment as there's no way I'd be on my A-game due to getting back late after working 12-14hour days. It'll all die down over the next couple of months and I'll have a lot more time to play poker.

So... I'm wrapping up February early this month as I'm just not going to get the chance to play any more NL. I'll do a proper big "February Review" post when I get the chance next week.

$1/2nl
I played 17.5k hands at $200nl and took a few little shots at $400nl which didn't come to much. I ran at 1PTBB/100 at $200nl, making around $800, and then probably that again in bonus/loyalties. So probably around $1.5k from 6-max cash for the month.

1PTBB/100
I really don't like that figure, I'm not used to running that low. I associate 1PTBB/100 over a decent 17k sample to not playing well enough... so to be honest I feel really pretty down about my earn rate for the month.

However
I watched a Brian Townsend $400nl video a couple of nights back and he said that moving up to the mid-levels is tough. Over the first 30k hands of **well that licked balls, I typed a bunch of text here and lost it, grrr blogger, here goes again at 2am...** $2/4 (the equivalent then of $1/2 now) he played, he logged a winrate of under 1PTBB/100.

Movin up to the midstakes is not easy... I can see that the play sharpens pretty steeply. In my opinion the jump from $100nl to $200 is much tougher than the jump from $50 to $100. The play at the midstakes is much more aggressive, and it's taking me a while to get adjusted to this. You get put in a lot tougher spots, more frequenty. With more aggression overall it makes for lots of tough to play raise pots postflop against aggro opponents. Good preflop play and a rough understanding of postflop is enough to beat $100 for a good winrate, but not at $200. Your postflop game needs to be a lot better.

I'm not trying to downhearten anyone thinking of moving up though lol. Despite $1/2 and $2/4 being tough to move up to it's reported that once you're crushing them the transition to higher stakes is much smoother and requires much less adjustments. Just gotta put the hard work in to get my game up to midstakes standard!

So...
I'm not going to let the 1PTBB/100 stat get me down. This month I moved up, I was profitable, and I'll be continuing to play at $200nl next month. So the month was a success. It was a tough one to take due to much bigger variance than I'm used to, and a much lower winrate than I'm used to, but it was a successful month.

Next month
I'm gonna put a ton of work into improving my game, to improve my winrate. I'm going to get Dave to work out a weekly coaching schedule for me to focus on different key aspects he thinks are important to crush the midstakes. I'm gonna continue to work real hard on lots of different aspects of my game using all of the resources available to me. I've already signed up to LeggoPoker and DeucesCracked, looking forward to using them. It'd be great to see an inproved winrate over the ~20k hands next month.

GCBPT
This live festival at the Maybury in Edinburgh is taking place just now. I've missed both prelim events due to work, but I'm not too fussed about that now as I noticed they chopped the 1st one 13-way due to the casino having to close... which is pretty much the gayest thing I've ever heard. A 13 way chop? loll

Congrats to Geo for taking 1st place in the £100 freezeout, and a free ME seat!

I'm playing on day 1b (Saturday) of the main event this weekend, which is a £500+50 ($1100) freezeout. The majority of my buy-in is kindly staked by a few different people, I'm putting up £200. Will post a trip report over the weekend. Spending the little free time I have between now and the weekend watching Adanthar's awesome MTT videos on CardRunners.

Grinding

Not had much time for strategy on the blog this month. Been putting a lot of hands in, and doing a lot of hand analysis including work with Dave in private sessions. Gonna try to get more strategy posts in though, so here goes...

Tips for Grinding Effectively
I'm trying to play a lot of hands this month, and with other commitments I don't have that much spare time to play them in. So often I'm going to have to play when I'm not feeling 100%, or not fully focussed. I've been trying to adjust my view on sessions recently, here's a few observations I've made.

Pre-session Focus
Before sitting down to play it's good to get into the habit of checking that you're in a good enough state to play. Check that you're not too tired and that nothing's life tilting you that could affect your game. ;) Before starting play recap over your goals for the session, for me these are usually adjusting issues that arose in previous sessions. For example... "don't tilt when an opponent 3-bets you repeatedly, instead find a good spot to 4-bet bluff-shove", "dont complete so much from the small blind", etc. Write your goals down if it helps, and re-evaluate them throughout the session.

Sets
When playing a session I'll typically open up 7-8 tables using SpadeIt, and settle for the fishiest 5-6 tables based on my seating position, etc. I normally play evening sessions for a few hours, one thing that I think is important is Tommy Angelo's notion of "sets". You can play a 3-4 hour session, but you can't multi-table effectively continuously for 3 hours, it's too much brain strain. The idea is to take a break approximately every hour, removing yourself from the game and moving your mind to something else, even if it's just for a couple of minutes. Or if you've taken a few beats, end the set there, take a break and evaluate whether you should play on.

Autopilot
Ed defines multi-tabling syndrome as an inability to think outside of the box, you're playing on autopilot. You're not normally going to realise that you're doing this until it's too late and you lose a big hand. You look back at the hand and find that you weren't really analysing the villain's hand well enough and didn't take things into consideration on previous streets. Autopiloting is death to your winrate, it's important to notice yourself doing it and stop. That brings me to my next point...

Quitting
When you realise you're playing on autopilot, or that you're not profitable in a game, or if you've taken some beats and you just plain aren't enjoying it... you must quit. Tommy Angelo talks about quitting at lengths in his new book Elements of Poker. He views quitting as another strategic decision available to cash game players. We can increase our edge over opponents by making better quitting decisions than they do, just like making better flop/turn/river decisions than them. So quit better than your opponents and increase your winrate and your $$$ edge.

... hopefully these points will give you some things to think about that might help your multi-tabling game. :)

Ref: Avoiding Multi-tabling Syndrome ~ Ed Miller
Elements of Poker ~ Tommy Angelo


Quick update
More variance last night, finished $800 up for the session. Would have been a $1k session if I hadn't been 2-outered in a $250 pot at the end. It's nice to finish a session $800 up despite running $450 below all-in expectation. Played 17k hands so far this month, gonna struggle to get the last 3k in for Friday, work/life is busy.

$1/2 do I play bad?

Worst day $$$ at poker today since I started playing a few years ago. That kind of tilts me. Sick of these swings. Last 3 days I've played I've finished down $700, then up $700 and today down $870. Pissed off.

I'm still up a decent amount for the month (mainly due to RB), but I'm only beating 1/2 for a gay 1PTBB/100 over the 16k hands I've played. I'm disappointed with that, I guess it's not that big a sample, I dunno. I just expect more. Maybe I'm looking at things wrong, or being too results oriented, or expecting too much. But I'm just disappointed that I've put a lot of work in this month and don't have as much as I'd like to show for it.

I'm not sure if the way I play I should be earning morning and I'm just running bad... or if I'm not playing well enough at this limit. I feel like I'm playing well, but postflop I still have some things to work on. I often experiment with different lines and make different plays just to see what happens, I occasionally stack off when i shouldn't... but I think I always learn from it, and it's rarely ever from tilt.

My table selection is really good right now, but I'm going to study Verneers article and new video to improve it still. My multi-tabling game feels pretty good. I'm feeling comfortable playing 6 tables at a time while still developing reads on players, using hud stats, etc. Maybe trying to put a set amount of volume in today messed with my game or something.

Bleh, I'm gonna go read a bunch of peoples blogs to re-enforce that everyone has swings, and mine are pretty tiny in comparison.

EDIT: Just looked at my PT stats for today. 2,200 hands playing 19/16. 22 WTSD%, 52 W$atSD% is losing 4.5 buy-ins even possible with those stats? lol fffsss

Back to the tables

Played a short 6-tabling session tonight. I figured the best way to respond to the little downswing I had was to CRUSH... HARD. :)

Won all of the money back from the shitty session a couple of nights back, and this 10k hands is now back on track!

Time Out
Taking last night off from poker was cool, reckon I needed a break from the tables to relax. Played a bunch of pool with my Dad and bro after work today too which was fun.

I often find myself getting immersed in poker, this usually happens if I've been playing a lot of volume or I'm on a downswing. I actually like having work the morning after taking a hit at the poker tables, it really seems to put poker in perspective for me. When I wake up the morning after a bad session my mind immediately reminds me of the loss, however when I get into work it's easier to step back and look at the big picture. I can see that how I'm running at the tables really isn't that important... and therefor it shouldn't affect my mood.

Dealing with downswings
I've been reading CTS's old blog a lot recently. It's clear that 4-5 buy-in downswings are going to be really common at the mid-limits... so I'm gonna have to get used to it. It's reassuring to see that as good a player as him regularly dropping 7-8 buy-ins in a session and shrugging it off. I need to be less hard on myself when I have a bad session, and just look over the hands and where the mistakes were. Whether it was in the hands, or if it was tilt, or if I was just running bad. Whatever the reason for the bad session though I shouldn't be beating myself up about it, because it's going to happen... frequently. On with the "not caring about money" conditioning. :)

Studying
Did quite a lot of hand analysis over the past couple of days, had a backlog of like 25 of my hands logged on weaktight to get through. Been trying to give Martyn some feedback on a few of his hands too. Also halfway through writing a wee article on grinding and playing sessions, just a few thoughts from a couple of articles/book I've been reading recently... will post it over the weekend.

$200nl vid
Oh aye, before I forget, I made a $200nl 4-tabling video a few nights back. I think it's pretty good, had good feedback for it so far. Used it to review a session with Messiah last week in coaching, but I don't mind sharing it if anyone would like to watch. If you'd like the download link for it just drop me a mail. I'm not making the video public as I'd like to keep my screenname/etc as private as possible at my current site. Cheers.

Start of next 10k...

Down 3 buy-ins in Sklansky all-in luck in the first hour of tonights session = quit + beer + kicking tramps. Wish I had just been lazy and watched the 2nd half of the Liverpool game...

Gonna take a night off tomorrow, going out for some drinking + latenight tenpin.

Almost...

... soooooo close to a perfect game on Wii Bowling.

$1/2 so far

10k hands in at the halfway point of the month, so on track for my target. Over the first 10k hands my objective was really just to settle in and I can work my game up from that.

I started out over the first 5k hands playing way too tight, kinda scared play... $200nl is a LOT more aggro then $100nl, it took me a little while and a couple of coaching sessions to adjust to this. Because it's more aggro I've been getting in more tough spots postflop in 3-bet and raised pots... made a ton of mistakes over the first 5k, lost a lot of buy-ins just not knowing what to do in certain situtations. With the help of Messiah I've moved my game up a notch and I'm not a lot more comfortable with tough spots postflop. I'm analysing situations much better and I know a lot more standard lines in 3-bet/4-bet pots.

My postflop aggression is much more selective now (over the last 5k hands). Due to the poor first 5k hands my winrate here isn't that great, I picked it up a lot in the 2nd 5k. Overall I survived at the level over the first 10k and didn't have to move back down, which is success! Now that I've developed self confidence in my ability to beat $1/2 I can focus on making adjustments to my game and plugging leaks. Hopefully I'll see my winrate increase over the next 10k hands.

So I'm playing about 21/18 now, which I'm happy with, kind of where I want to be preflop wise. My positional stats are pretty much where I want to be too...


There are a few issues I need to address for the next 10k...

Table selection
I like to play 5-6 tables at once and at the times I play there are often only 3-4 good games on the go at 200 on iPoker. So I've got a high RB account at Prima (I'm now setup as an affiliate, so PM me if you'd like an account) and I'll be playing simultaneously at Prima/iPoker to improve the quality of the tables I'm on.

Coaching
Gonna try moving to a video review style with Dave as our last session wasn't that useful due to there not being much action. Dave's a great help going over tough hands on SkyPE, I think this improves my game a LOT. Gonna continue logging my tough hands on weaktight and going over them with him a couple of times per week.

Reading
Finished reading the fantastic Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo. It's one of the best poker books I've ever read, I'd recommend it to anyone that's serious about the game. It's really improved my attitude towards the game, winning, losing, and tightening up my discipline. It's really light and easy to read too, the writing style is really different and accessible. Going to start reading the Full Tilt Pros poker guide book next to brush up a little for the big tourney at the end of the month.

PAHud
Dave's recently reworked my PAHud setup, adding some new stats to my hud that I've not used before. I'm not really using these to their full potential at the moment, so I'm going to spend a fair bit of the month looking at interpreting opponent PAHud stats and looking at how to use them in various situations. Will maybe write a couple of posts on this... I've found good way to learn when to 3-bet/4-bet light and when to float recently based on opponent stats.

Study
Not really watching too many CR videos at the moment. Will try to find some time to fit some of those in. Also Dave sent me a big word doc file he's compiled which contains all sorts of gold, need to get through that.

SIKTILT

Great site run by a bunch of poker players from Edinburgh. Some real funny vids, the pro interviews are pretty awesome too, GP/Aba ones in particular.

The full Rury vs. Annette video is genius. :)

"I don't really have a game-plan for today. It's basically going to be turn up and crush." lol

1k day

It's like the poker gods let me run good for a day. Thankyoooooou! I cleared $1,000 in profits over the last 24 hours, which i'm pretty damn happy about. :)

I played in the OP freezeout today and - despite having a brutal hangover - came 2nd for £270. 3 cashes in my last 3 live tourneys... really feeling on top of my game for the GBPT at the end of the month. Came home, 6-tabled 1000 hands of 200nl when the games were soft between 11pm and 2am. Ran good and finished just under 3 buy-ins up.

So pretty much played 12 hours of poker today. Feels good to win like 1/6th of my bankroll in a day... Ship it.

End of brag post. :)

7k hands played so far this month.

Balance

20k
Had to figure a way to up my hands played to 20k this month. Not really too much of a problem. I can find time to get 2k hands in each weekend, then playing 3x 1k nights through the week should be do-able. Went well the first week and I got the hands in, plus a good bit of study and was enjoying it. However I've not really balance the rest of my life with putting more time into poker.

Eat/Sleep/Exercise
It's incredibly important to live a balanced life away from the table in order to be playing your best at the table. At the moment for me this means eating right, sleeping right, and exercising right. On weeknights I like to play sports or pool in the evening, and I've tried to maintain this while playing 1k hands also. This basically means that I don't have enough time to cook something healthy for dinner, and I get to be between 2-3am after doing the session review. I could miss out the sports and cook instead, etc but I'm struggling to keep exercise/sleep/eating balanced when playing a 4-5 hour evening session.

Work
Nearing the end of the project I've been working on for the last 2 years and although my workload is decreasing I still need to do some overtime to apply polish. Work is still my top priority. This means I usually work a couple of 12 hour days midweek, and again the time has to be taken away from something... last week it was exercise/eating/sleep as poker took up the time and this week I'm feeling the worse for it. From next month onwards I shouldn't really have to work any overtime, which will be awesome for poker time.

Balance
So basically what I'm getting to is that I need to find some sort of balance to be playing my 20k volume optimally. It might be boring but using the gym or going out running directly after work would save a lot of time, and give me a lift before the evening session. Planning healthy dinners and making sure I get to bed before 2am will mean I get the 7 hours sleep a night I need to be fresh the next morning.

In short...
I'm getting a lot of hands in, but I need to keep up in the other areas of my life too. I don't want to dig into my Fri & Sat night no work zones which mainly consist of drinking/partying :) . I think this should be possible with more preperation and a more effective schedule, gonna work on this through the week.

Poker Update
Played 4k hands so far this month at 200nl. Up around $300. Gonna hopefully get a good sized session in tonight.

GBPT
I was set to play all of the GBPT events at the end of this month. However due to work commitments this isn't going to be possible, as I won't be able to get the time off over the 4-5 days it runs. So now I'll just be playing the £500+50 televised main event. I'm going to take £200 worth of my buy-in and the rest will be staked. I'll contact everyone with stakes in me to revise the amounts from the £880 in buy-ins that was originally scheduled, down to the £550 ME buy-in.


Man this cracks me up, the way he looks at the camera is gold :)

200nl

Been setting the new pace, put in 2,000 hands today alone! Really enjoying the new challenge of being up a level. Here's how it's going so far...

I'm finding the play MUCH more aggressive than at 100, and I've not really successfully adapted my game to this yet. I've made a LOT of pretty bad mistakes over the past few days, costing me I'd say around $400-500. I'm sure I'll clear these up over the month while I'm settling into the level.

I had a >$1,000 swing today, and at the end of tonight I had over $2,500 across the 6 tables I was sat at. Biggest pot I've taken down so far has been $531, but there have been quite a few spots where >$1,000 pots have been possible! I wouldn't say the $$$ factor is really bothering me, however I would feel a bit more comfortable if I was deeper rolled. Sitting on the bare 30 buy-ins when I know I have to pay for coaching and live tourneys this month does seem a bit short. If I drop down to 20x buy-ins then I'll probably have to move back down... here's hoping a can run good for a bit and pad the roll.

Got a coaching session with Dave tomorrow night, first one playing 200nl. Got a load of hands stored to talk over... should be good.