Five-figure week, you're doing it wrong

Started out this month well, running up around $8k... then in the last week I've swung down around $10-12k. It's been my worst ever week in poker and is proving to be pretty confidence shattering. I played higher stakes than usual this month, the bulk of my hands have been at 2/4 but a fair chunk at 3/6-5/10 with some shots at 10/20 too.

I'm probably employing more aggressive shot-taking and moving up strategies than most professionals, but I'm comfortable with it. The high-stakes games have been really good and I'm +EV enough for it to be worth the variance. However I know right now that I need to drop down to regain confidence.

I feel some stubbornness in myself, that I don't want to grind 1/2 when I've been playing higher (and when I can see that some of the higher games are soft) but I know it's what needs to be done right now. There's no room for stubbornness or ego in poker. I see blog posts every week with people complaining about how they "should be" or "are good enough to be" beating a limit. So many people aren't willing to take full responsibility for their own results. The fact is that noone is as good at poker as they think they are.

On a personal level I'm very disappointed with how my first year as a pro is going. I made a goal to make $150k this year and it's becoming clear that I'm not going to get close to that. I can relate the way I'm feeling just now back to tough times when I was working on my degree or on GTA, having low confidence and not being sure if I'd be able to make it to completion. Getting beat down every time I try to move up is incredibly frustrating. I know that I just need to take things as they come and work hard and I'll get there. Results will come.

I'm off to the pub to watch Man U crush Barca... I'll leave you with some inspirational Michael Jordan.

Edinburgh Biking

Supersick trailbiking tricks around the streets of Edinburgh by Scottish based Danny Macaskill. This shit rocks.

Payoff Wizard #2

Here I continue the (worryingly regular) section where I publish some hand that I played like a calling station fucktard. Seems to work well as my punishment for being so motherfucking stupid... yes I'm tilted.

$3/$6 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

CO		($627.05)
BTN		($1236.00)
Hero (SB)		($1176.00)
BB		($1676.65)

Pre-flop: ($9, 4 players) Hero is SB

1 fold, BTN raises to $21, Hero calls $18, 1 fold

Flop: ($48, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $36, Hero calls $36

Turn: ($120, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

River: ($120, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $96, Hero raises to $295, BTN raises to $740

LOL he made the nuts, I'm never good here, right? But wow what a lovely price I'm getting...

Hero calls $445

Final Pot: $1,600
BTN shows:
Hero shows:

BTN wins $1,598 ( won +$801 )
Hero lost -$797

FML. That's the most fucking retarded call I've made in ages. Not even a monkey clicking buttons bluffs there 30% of the time.

Coming soon - Baz teaches you how the most effective way to set money on fire.

New biggest $$$ pot

Was down around $5k in the previous 24hours leading up to this hand. If I got sucked out on I think I'd have probably set fire to something :)

$5/$10 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

CO		($936.48)
Hero (BTN)		($1995.00)
SB		($1977.00)
BB		($1974.04)

Pre-flop: ($15, 4 players) Hero is BTN

1 fold, Hero raises to $40, SB raises to $130, 1 fold, Hero raises to $330, SB raises to $910, Hero goes all-in $1,995, SB goes all-in $1,067

Flop: ($4,312, 2 players)

Turn: ($4,312, 2 players)

River: ($4,312, 2 players)

Final Pot: $4,312
Hero shows:
SB shows:

Hero wins $3,980 ( won +$1,655 )



And here's one from a crazy session last night. Villain was a huge fish playing extremely aggro. The 2 key things to this hand were that I expected his squeeze to be around 30% in this spot, and his potcbet to be 100%. Running maths on that the flop shove works out at around +$200ev.

$3/$6 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($820.00)
UTG+1		($1040.00)
CO		($678.00)
Hero (BTN)		($1200.00)
SB		($718.00)
BB		($1172.00)

Pre-flop: ($9, 6 players) Hero is BTN

UTG raises to $21, 2 folds, Hero calls $21, SB calls $18, BB raises to $105, UTG folds, Hero calls $84, SB folds

Flop: ($252, 2 players)
BB bets $252, Hero goes all-in $1,095, BB calls $815

Turn: ($2,386, 2 players)

River: ($2,386, 2 players)

Final Pot: $2,386
BB shows:
Hero shows:

BB wins $2,384 ( won +$1,212 )
Hero wins $28 ( lost -$1,172 )




Also...










www.playhimoffkeyboardcat.com :)

The Professional

Knocked up this background in Photoshop to help remind myself that shitty sessions where you run bad aren't worth stressing over. The quote is from Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo.

Payoff Wizard

I know I'm beat but I just can't click the fold button...

Stacks:

UTG		($200.80)
UTG+1		($299.40)
Hero (CO)		($400.00)
BTN		($107.35)
SB		($181.20)
BB		($178.75)

Pre-flop: ($3, 6 players) Hero is CO

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $7, Hero calls $7, BTN calls $7, 2 folds

Flop: ($24, 3 players)
UTG+1 bets $17, Hero calls $17, BTN folds

Turn: ($58, 2 players)
UTG+1 bets $48, Hero calls $48

River: ($154, 2 players)
UTG+1 bets $120...

He never has a boat, ever. But he's also never vbetting anything worse than my hand. But he's a LAG so he triple barrel bluffs 4flush paired boards, right?

Hero calls $120


Final Pot: $394
UTG+1 shows:


Sigh...

High-stakes variance, quitting

I've been playing a bunch of 5/10 recently when the games are good. It's been going well so far and is very +ev however the variance is a lot higher than I'm used to.

Yesterday I played a session in the morning and had to quit after around 45mins down around $2k. I knew I wouldn't be on my game after taking such a quit beasting so went for a run, grabbed a shower and some food and came back refreshed to play another session. There were good 5/10 games running again so I jumped in and instantly lost around another $1.5k in 20 or so mins. I felt pretty tilted so quit out again and took a longer break and came back to play an evening session after dinner. I felt that my mindset just wasn't right, I could feel a little "win it back" mindset, and didn't want to grind the mix of 1/2 and 2/4 that was available.

While I'm pretty happy with my quitting decisions it's pretty frustrating only getting 400 hands played in a working day, when my target is 2,500. Losing $3-4k is usually where I need to stop for a day as I know it'll put me off my game and this is a lot more common when playing 5/10 than 1/2-3/6. Shit, it's only 3-4 buyins.

I don't want to quit playing those games because they're really good, also I expect them to toughen up my skin to be able to take higher amount of variance.

So what I'm going to do is minimise the amount of high variance spots I take. I played these 2 hands yesterday...



Stacks:

Hero (UTG)		($1035.00)
CO		($7241.50) --- He's a nit
BTN		($1800.50)
SB		($335.00)
BB		($817.72)

Pre-flop: ($15, 5 players) Hero is UTG

Hero raises to $35, CO raises to $120, 3 folds, Hero raises to $290, CO raises to $3,850, Hero goes all-in $745




Stacks:

CO		($493.00)
Hero (BTN)		($1264.00)
SB		($598.75)
BB		($3330.00)

Pre-flop: ($15, 4 players) Hero is BTN

1 fold, Hero raises to $30, SB calls $25, BB raises to $120, Hero calls $90, SB calls $90

Flop: ($360, 3 players)
SB goes all-in $478.75, BB folds, Hero calls $478.75

I'm not gonna bust out the math on you but both of those spots are roughly neutral EV. Meaning that at best I'll win or lose $50 in EV in the long run.

Now if my objective from sitting in a high stakes game is to get involved in very profitable situations because there are soft players playing, not to be flip for $2k pots. At 1/2 or 2/4 I wouldn't care, but if a couple of flips push me over the edge for having to quit for the day then they're not really worth losing 3-4 hours work for a small amount of EV.

Gonna cook up some steaks then here's hoping for a monster 4k hand night tonight!

Missing Vegas

The WSOP starts in a couple of weeks and most of the pro poker playing population is flying out to play in it. I feel a bit gutted to be missing Vegas this year, super tempted just to fly over for a couple of weeks. I know it's not really worth it though money wise, so I've been looking at a bunch of alternatives to getting some summer tourney action...

First up FTOPS is this week, with a few cool events on the cards. Tempted to play a 6m shootout, HA and the $2.5m main event. There are a few live events on the cards too, GUKPT Scotland in Aberdeen in mid-june and the Scottish Poker Championships in Edinburgh at the end of August. Both of those events are kind of fucking dull compared to Vegas though and I know they're probably not worth the variance ride. Aberdeen instead of Vegas? FML. Will likely head down to the local casino and play a few smaller buy-in tourneys instead.

Just feels shit not flying out to Vegas at this time of year. I'm a whiney bastard right now about being in Scotland... back to the grind I guess!

May

I really want to move forward this month and take my game and results to the next level. So far this year my results haven't been as good as I know I'm capable of so it's hard work time for the next few months.

April
April went well for me... I was away on holiday for half of the month and didn't get any play in, but in the last 2 weeks I got some grind in and had my biggest month yet (although still not breaking five-figures). I'd credit this to really working on game selection and playing a bunch of 5/10 when there have been soft games.

A few poker videos I've watched recently have got me pretty excited about taking my game up a stage, the level of instructional videos out there now is really amazing. Particularly Phil Galfond/PBJaxx/DRGiggy videos on BlueFire are amazing. Allso really liked BalugaWhale's new series on DC, and DearFoxwoodsFiend. Definately check out the recent Eagle314 vids on CR too.

Ranges
All of these videos put a huge amount of emphasis on hand reading and basing decisions on villain ranges something that I don't think I do enough, often due to auto-pilot or playing too many tables. And really something that hardly any players at mid-stakes do enough. I know this is something pretty common that's been said a million times, but it's really clicked with me this month. Watching some of the plays that Durrr and PA are capable of on HighStakesPoker has really made me interested in developing the skills to make such sick plays... and the info is definately out there.

Autopilot - the enemy of creative players
This is soooooo important as it's just not possible to have a high winrate at midstakes without developing reads on players and handreading well. Last month I mostly played 8-tables, often mixing NL and PLO and while I found that I could play that amount pretty well I really didn't have much time to observe reads on players and make notes. I'm gonna limit myself to 6-tables all this month as I think it's the right balance for me. Also, I'm gonna limit my session lengths to 2 hours. I played a couple of 3-4 hour sessions to get hands in last month and really don't feel like my concentration was good enough to be profitable after the 2 hour mark, definately a point where I moved on to auto-pilot.

Day to day variance
I've removed all results and $$$ stats from HM this month and won't be checking my graphs or cashiers. I've also removed all blogs/feeds from my RSS that post short-term results. I'm just sick of people embracing and talking about this stuff like it matters. I feel that it's incredibly important not to take any notice of day to day or even week to week results because they're just so full of variance. All that matters is playing your best game with the best game selection at all times and working hard on improving. It's pretty obvious that spending time looking at results from session to session is pointless, it's time for me to get more discipline and wipe it out completely.

Exercise
This has such a positive effect on not only my poker play, but motivation and confidence that I'll be trying to get as much in as possible. I'd like to run a half-marathon by the end of the year so I'm going to start training for that. I'll be aiming to exercise every day that I'm also playing poker... preferably before my sessions. Will be mixing it up with some squash/bball/footy to keep things fun, and staying away from the gym as much as possible as it crushes my soul.

New students
I'm looking to take on a few new 6max or FR NLH students this month. $50nl/$100nl students would be ideal but I'd be happy to consider anyone at lower stakes or that's struggling to move up to $200nl. Check out my coaching page for more info.