My Humegamungous Leak

Hey, the games I am playing in at the moment are a complete and total push over. The vast majority of players are playing a complete fit or fold strategy. However, one thing that I keep doing time and time again is becoming suspicious against aggression. It might be the first time I have been raised in a few hundred hands but Ill still bluff catch to showdown. This is a huge leak, my opponents show big hands the vast vast majority of the time in this spot. Tonight a tight regular over a couple hundred hands called my UTG raise, check called my c-bet on a 654 then donked pot on the A turn and again on a random river. I should immediately have identified this line as one that someone with a set would take given that the A is a scare card and I would likely check back hands that would also call a bet. But instead I thought that the line looked really bluffy so I called down. If I had paid attention and not been so suspicious then you can see that its an easy fold. Making these sorts of lay-downs are critical for improving my win rate at this limit. My leak is suspicion.
Bets are very rarely raised at all at this limit. So when we are raised and end up folding, we are not being exploited. If we were we would need to defend our range. But in spots where we are not being exploited, we can just play our hand face up. Over the next few thousand hands I am really going to play extra cautiously in spots where opponents are not regularly exploiting me. In fact, I can currently only think of three spots where villains are printing money against me.
1/ Stealing my blinds
2/ 3 betting my wide late position opens
3/ C - betting against me a ton
In any other spots, my actions should be polarised based on my hand strength I think. Anyhow, rant over and good luck at the tables!
PS update your blog Mr Askew - good to see you back in the games!

Good Evening

Just finished a pretty long session, think it was around 3 hrs. No results as I am no longer checking them in order to protect myself from short termism. As a guess Id say it was probably break even at best. But this is a good thing, as I am increasingly sure that this is actually where my ability puts me. I am enjoying the sessions more now that I am just concentrating on the individual hands and not worrying about whether or not I finish in profit. Tonight, there were three spots where I played for stacks with good equity and my hands did not hold so I'm sure I ran beneath expectation. Will play some more tomorrow I expect.

Have begun to play a little Chess again for the first time in years. I used to be semi-obsessed (but rubbish) at the game when I was a young teen but when I headed off to uni I stopped playing completely. Well, I discovered the online resource www.chess.com the other day (God if only I had had this when I was younger) which is a brilliant website for Chess enthusiasts and it has rekindled a small flame in me. Knowing how little I know about the game, I'm realistic and Ill never be a good player but I may start playing again so that I can get a bit of competition going in my life. There is a certain beauty in Chess; in its endless patterns and symmetries.

Finally, onto music. There are two records that have dominated my play time recently and they are:
Foals - Total Life Forever
The National - High Violet
Two brilliant albums that I haven't been able to get enough of. I got the Foals record after their Mercury nomination and then found The National album on iTunes while browsing randomly.

Update

Really enjoying the 25NL Full Ring Rush now that I've settled in. Not recovered my losses but holding my own better than before. I am still two tabling and just making sure I make my decisions as good as possible and continue to make copious notes. I think this is a good thing because when I was playing four tables at once note taking was something that often made me time out and as a consequence I rarely would. Every time I make notes on a hand I feel it helps me to internalise that situation and it's outcome making me a better player. The more hands I play the better I feel about my game. I really have come a long way in just a few months. I just need the results to demonstrate the truth in this!

It seems that the WSOP coverage has padded the playing pool with fishier players; seriously though, I am not sure why I was ever scared of playing this limit. There are only maybe a couple of players I have played pots with that I would consider competent post flop players. There are plenty of TAGs who play fine preflop but then just have no clue about post flop concepts. Evidence that I should make money... I just need to log the hands. Two tabling gets me through about 600 hands per hour so hopefully by Christmas Ill have a decent sample to show you all.

Someone told me that the biggest jump in standard at micro/small stakes is at 50NL. If I am not deluding myself about my ability in comparison to the competition at my current limit then hopefully I will have enough bankroll to move up come spring time and then it will likely take me another few months to adapt to that limit. If there is a significant jump in playing quality I may consider getting coaching for the first time. I think that I should now always have an edge on level one and sometimes level two thinking players but would get destroyed by any deeper thinkers than this, so that would be where coaching comes in I guess. Anyway, hopefully in the not too distant future I can post a winnings curve and silence my self doubts once and for all. GL

Less Hands/Hour

- I've made the decision to play two tables and make a lot of notes instead of playing four and getting hurried with decisions sometimes. This is basically decreasing my hourly win rate but I think that the fact that I will improve quicker will compensate for this in the long run. I can really try and decipher ranges and then when I'm wrong learn better from my mistakes. This measure is only going to happen while I am still very unsure about my win rate at this limit. If I can get to a stage - like in 10NL - where I have very strong evidence of winning over 100k hands or more then I'll begin to four table again until such time that I decide to move to 50NL. Of course this is speculation and I may actually lose my poker bankroll. But after a couple of good sessions and the utter belief that this limit plays no better than 10NL I truly think that I will make money here. And after a couple of good sessions I'm wondering if I'm now on my way out of my recent down swing. Only time will tell! GL

No Results, just Play Time!

Hey, well the last couple of days I have completely ignored session results and just focused on trying to play as well as I can. I really like this disassociation as its helping me to play better and not tilt if I have a couple of losing sessions in a row. As it stands, most of the time I'm not sure if I finish the session up or down and that's a good thing - because it doesn't matter what results are like in the short run! I can then objectively look at a few hands from the session and decide if I played them as well as I can. But on the other hand I do need to check my bankroll occasionally. So, I will try and check my balance just once per week and providing it's not dwindling alarmingly do a full analysis of my play at the end of the month. So I will never know how well I've got on until that time. Hopefully Ill have a reasonable sample of hands then to have a look at and the individual session results will become meaningless. I can just concentrate on playing as well as I can on a hand by hand and street by street level. GL

Honesty...

The last couple of sessions I've made some mistakes. I had a critical look back and while overall my play was pretty sound there were a couple of spots where I ignored Baluga theorem and therefore cost myself the best part of a buy-in over 2000 hands. This is extremely significant in terms of profit. {Baluga theorem says that turn raises from straight forward players mean hands better than a pair}. There was also a spot where I called down a donk bettor on a paired board because the betting didn't make sense with any hand but the player had trips. Not sure if I could have found a fold here, maybe. Anyway the overall point is that I am still making significant mistakes and that I must begin to iron these leaks from my game if I ever want to beat this limit.

I intend to stay at 25NL now; while I may occasionally drop back to 10NL for various reasons my main game will be Rush 10/25c Full Ring and all the work I undertake in the next year will be with the goal of finding a winning strategy for this limit. Of course I open up the possibility of burning through my entire existing bankroll. This is no small sum to me, a few hundred English pounds. But I believe this is a risk worth taking. There is little point in continuing to smash 10NL as the hourly is very small and while the extra money would be significant by the end of the year, it will take a lot of man hours to earn that cash. GL

Update

Haven't played much at all, but when I have it hasn't been winning poker. The problem with having tons of losing sessions in a row is it seriously de-motivates you from playing. Fortunately I've still managed to learn a few things in the last couple of weeks despite the lack of serious play. Today for example I was reminded of how we make money at poker; the concept of reciprocality. I am 110% confident that I am playing situations better than most of my opponents at 25NL are, so therefore (given sufficient volume) I will beat this limit - just as I beat 10NL. At least, this is what I keep telling myself. My hand sample is still ridiculously low but if I get to a point where serious questions are being asked about my ability then I will either:
1/ Get coaching
2/ Quit for good
At the moment I'd still back myself (maybe 1~2) to pull the results around but those odds will change fast with every extra losing session. GL