This will probably be one of those posts that's more for my benefit than anyone reading it. Good to clear my head of a lot of things that are irritating me.
Pretty poor start to the month. I'm not getting as much volume in as I'd like, mainly due to there not being games running on the site I play at the times I'd like. I'd really like to grind right now, but there are like 2 mid-stakes games running. Currently getting set up at a 2nd site, waiting on money wiring and I should be good to go there this week.
Swings are pretty brutal at the current stakes I'm playing, so I've decided to stop shot-taking at 5/10 for the rest of the month. Now that I need to withdraw 'wages' from my bankroll each month I think losing another few buy-ins there would stress me out too much.
I'm like $3k down at 5/10 across a very small sample of hands there this month, there were 2 hands that I played badly and 1 where I got owned by a good regular. The latter I'll go over in coaching, but here are the first 2 which I know I misplayed...
Hand #1
In this hand we're $2000 deep, I flat a 3bet in position with QJss vs a very loose 3bettor with a high 3betcbet. My image at the table is very tight. Flop came 963cc he cbet $210 into $255, I bluffraised to $500, he thought for 10secs then called. Turn was a 4o, check-check. River was a 2o, he checked, I bet $1000. In hindsight his range is pretty polarised to TT-QQ and flush draws. There are more overpair card combos than there are FD combos and I'll never fold an overpair so I just gotta check back.
I remember a bunch of thoughts running through my head like "I can't win this pot without betting", "I don't want to show this down as I'll expose my flop play to villain", etc. Unfortunately in these spots at 5/10 I my mind kind of glazes over and I don't handread as well, I tend to look at the amount of money in the pot, get excited and misplay my hand. Something I'm working on fixing.
Hand #2
This occurred around 5 mins after the previous hand. The previous hand tilted me, but I thought I could play on. Evidently that was not the case. I isolate 67hh from the HJ, CO and UTG limper call. Flop is 89Thhs, I bet, loose/bad CO calls. Turn is the Qs, I check, villain bets pot ($280) with $500 behind. His range here is so polarised to the J here that I need to fold, but I make a tilted shove convincing myself that he could be betting a FD which is rarely the case.
Even after this hand I still played on, which in heinsight was a really bad decision. I gave myself the reasoning that my image was now so bad at the table that I could just nit it up and get paid off a ton... an excuse I used to give myself ages ago to play on tilted. The fact was that I did play on tight, but weak/tight and tilted, which is bad and outweighs any advantages of my poor table image. In future I won't play on tilted under the reasoning that my image is bad, I need to regain focus or quit.
Big leaks I gotta fix
1) Stopping spewing ;D I'm making a TON of river bluffs and high variance plays at the moment, really to get a feel for how effective they are and just generally try new things out. 5/10 is not the place for this! Hence why I won't be playing any more of it until the end of the month. But yea I'm working on plugging the spew, but I knew this would happen as I work more aggressive plays into my game and put myself in more tough situations so I have to accept it, but work on fixing it.
2) Getting tilted then taking 20mins to realise I'm playing weak/tight and quit the session isn't acceptable. I need to be able to recognise that I'm off my A-game and quit instantly. No excuses or conditions take priority over this. State of the games don't matter, my image doesn't matter and needing to log a lot of hands doesn't matter. I must analyse my mental state and quit within a few minutes if neccesary.
Other shit
I got my tourist Visa for Thailand today... wooooooo! I also managed to get some last minute jabs that I almost missed, one of them is a course of 3 injections the last of which I'm getting on the morning of my flight out... close!!
Been helping my flatmate interview people to fill the spot in the flat I'm leaving in Edinburgh. It's been fun, there are a lot of wierd people out there :) Went out for an Thai meal last night, had this amazing fruit curry with pineapple, grapes, lychees, delicious. Went to the awesome Stand comedy club in Edinburgh where they had a newcomers night, they have like 10 different acts who get different lengths of time based on how good they are. Was pretty awesome, some absolutely terrible acts, but some of the guys were really funny. Shipped free tickets for Slumdog Millionaire tomorrow night which I've heard is fantastic...
13 days to Asia-time \o/
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Beck, tilt, and thousand dollar river bluffs
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3 comments:
Honestly, my biggest form of tilt is playing weak/tight and folding far too often (which is something I do too much of anyways!!), so I know what you mean. Playing your A game at all times is paramount. You can get away with it when your edge is huge to begin with, like a small stakes, but when you get higher, like where you are at, the edge is smaller and you just can't get away with playing in that manner. Keep your focus and quit when you need to quit. It is good that you notice these things and are working to correct them.
Good post. For hand #1, if you're going to put more money in after the flop, it would have to be the turn, but i think it's better to just give it up, right? At least at the lower stakes, I'm trying to avoid cold bluffing the flops even against the lagtards, instead waiting for spots where i've got some equity and semibluff. I think those guys who 3bet/cbet a lot are used to getting played back at, and so the FE isn't as high as you'd think it would be.
I got a beat on your play now, so when you try and c/r the river as a bluff when we play headsup4masterbedroom again, I am going to snap call with 5th pair. Woot!!!
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