A Tale of Two Days

yesterday I lost $40 over 8000 hands. Today I won $50 over 4000. This is the way it goes sometimes, I was pretty demoralised yesterday but resolved to play as well as I could today to try to ride out the downswing. I also adjusted my strategy somewhat. I did a little bit of research and there are a few things I could be doing differently and I'm trying to take it all on board and adjust for the better. The first is stealing the blinds more often to try and offset playing a few more weaker hands out of position. The other is trying to see a few less showdowns. I hand read fairly well for these limits but even so I think I'm not saving enough river bets which is chipping at my profit somewhat. Another thing I tried to do today was some work on equities. My thoughts had been clouded somewhat recently as there are so many reasons for betting written about online: Protection, Value, Bluff, Semi-bluff, Blocker etc etc. In reality the EV equation is pretty simple and I think alot of people over complicate things. Of course using the EV equation we can certainly justify those reasons for betting listed above, but I prefer to think of things in a simpler straight forward way. Betting really can be narrowed down to two things; betting for value (where our equity is better than villain) or bluffing (where our equity is worse than villain). Betting for protection is just value betting where villain's equity is a little closer to ours (hands with draws usually hover around 33% equity versus a made hand). Semi bluffing is just bluffing where our equity is a little closer to villains (ie when we're in the 33% equity player's shoes). Anyway, I'll spend tomorrow morning working on some of this and maybe pick some hands from my database to revise with. Once I can quickly figure out decent betting lines based upon equity I think I'll become a much better player. GL