Friday, May 29, 2009

More of the Same

So the semester is just ended and I've had a little more free time to put into some hands so for the last 10 days of the month I was able to log about 12k hands, some at cake but most at FT. Not a very big sample but I was winning at about 7 ptbb/100 over the 11k hands up about 1300 and couldn't be playing better, my true A-game. I was using no game selection and just playing whoever and pounding them, the regs included. So i was playing a session tonight which was going well, up about 200 when this guy sat at one of my tables:

At 100NL specifically he was down $5,700 over 16k hands putting him at -18.7 bb/100. Right away I could see he was bad making terrible bluffs and playing 80/65 and 3bet was at 45. Right away I went up on him 200. We continued to play and he caught some nice cards to get back to about even. He then hit quads in a 4bet pot vs my KK and got set over set in a 3bet pot with a FD board. Then he hit a random 2pr in a 3bet pot where I had KQ for top pair and very good kicker on a FD board. At this point I was only down about 200 in the session overall which isnt bad considering how the cards were falling, and I closed all my other tables but this guy was so bad I couldn't justify leaving the table, so we played. I played worse and worse and he played better and better and continued to run like god and ended up putting me down 1k on the night. I probably wont play tomorrow so here is my monthly graph now:



I played so bad vs him but to his credit he played pretty well. Over 1k hands his fold to 3bet was 4%, his fold to 4bet was 7%. He was 3betting 35% and folding to flop cbets under 10%. I normally like playing players like this but I was card dead throughout the entire match and then I fell into a bad place and just allowed him to push me around. I took a few ill-timed stands which then made me not want to take any more stands but that's exaclty what I needed to do.

Basically I didn't stop when I should have. Once I was down 500 to him I knew it was because I was playing bad but I said to myself, "this guy is so bad, even my c-game is better than his A-game." but I guess I was wrong. This is a trend I always repeat. I play well and grind steadily upwards for a while, in this case it was only 12k hands. Then I'll play someone who I perceive as bad, get a few bad beats against them, then spew off multiple buy-ins to them justifying it the entire time by telling myself, "I'd be losing money by walking away from this big of a fish". I have these melt downs, the other time was vs bautrotrimm who actually turned out to be a very solid regular.

If I could just avoid these reaccuring melt downs Id be so solid. My overall bb/100 has been about break even over my 130k hand sample. However, I think for about 90% of this my winrate was something like 2-5 bb/100. For the other 10% of the time my winrate is -25bb/100. I go on these tilt swings which just nullifies all of my good play before hand. It's hard to have a stop-loss for myself but maybe I should. I think losing more than 6 buy ins in one session is abnormal and probably means I'm playing badly. Even if I lost 6 BI's all by way of coolers it still has an effect on my play from there on out for the rest of the session. I have a tilt problem.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Why Not

Why not make a post here. It's been so long since I've done it and I was able to put in a nice session today at 100NL HU. This semester has been super busy with my classes and my flash programming. You toss in tennis club team and the USTA tournaments I have been playing in and I literally do not have time to sit and play. Really I have spread myself much too thin this semester and I just havent really played any poker at all as a result. Since I don't have time to play real sessions, I spend most of my time playing stupid short sessions on cake poker. The HU games there are much much softer than on FT and stars which has become a shit show in and of themselves. There are 30+ games of 1 reg at a table waiting and only like ~5 games actually running with 2 players. Everyone is bumhunting and its sort of ruining the HU games.

Anyway, I've been averaging about 8k hands per month or so. It's hard for me to tell since you cannot track cake hands. Whenever I play I forget how much I miss playing. My session today went so well. I was just mentally crushing the two opponents I was playing against. I think my constant agression was really running them over. There were a few times where I'd c-bet at a 223 type board and get a snap check/fold from my opponent even though they must know I have nothing since I was c-betting like 85% of the time. I would just think, "I have this guy just mentally beaten right now". Even though I have plenty of work on my shoulders pretty much at all times, I think I will find a way to put in some more hands tomorrow and just relax.