Playing Awesome, but Not Enough Volume

So I've been playing so little lately. I really need to buckle down on my thesis work and my work work. Weekdays are spent doing work and weekends are spent with the gf which leaves almost no time at all for poker. Despite that fact, I'm playing super well as of late. I decided to play only 2 tables instead of 3 and I think that really helps you to re-focus on your game and make sure you are playing tip top. I also noticed my long term graph has a very steady, sharply descending red line. I long thought this was because I wasn't bluffing enough but but I think it's more, much more, because I'm not calling enough bluffs and playing far too tight especially preflop. Playing only 2 tables really lets me play to my opponent as well exhibited in this hand:

Hero (BB): $281.50
BTN/SB: $154.60

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with Q A
BTN/SB raises to $3, Hero raises to $10, BTN/SB calls $7

Flop: ($20.00) 6 7 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB checks

Turn: ($20.00) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $12, Hero calls $12

River: ($44.00) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $20, Hero calls $20

Final Pot: $84.00
Hero shows Q A (a pair of Nines)
BTN/SB shows Q J (a pair of Nines)
Hero wins $83.50
(Rake: $0.50)

I'm not trying to brag about this call or anything, I actually think it's somewhat standard but had I been playing 3 tables I may have overlooked the fact that this guy was a bad player playing very LAG. I called turn cause I though I could be good and I had overcards with spade outs if not. On river I'm getting 3:1 to call and I'm certain this opponent will be bluffing that often. His line doesn't make sense for anything. He wasnt good enough to v-bet slim with one pair so his hand is very polarized between air and monsters.

Anyways I really wish I could play more but I have a lot of pressure on me right now to finish my thesis work and get a full-time job come august and september. We'll see how that pans out, in the mean time, with the little time I spend playing poker, I hope I can keep playing at this level.

Whoa Variance

So I went over Jasons last night to hang out and we ended up playing some poker. I was playing pretty well then hit a huge downswing that was totally out of my control. I lost every AI possible; it was so sick. Over 1k hands I managed to lose 700 playing very well, and tilting off a stack at the end. I have recently set a stop loss at 500, but the hands I was losing I was playing well, I think i've finally experienced the sick HU variance. This is why I dropped to 100NL to learn HU instead of playing 200NL HU. Rather than post each hand, I'll just post links to the hands in pokerhand.org if you're really that bored to look.

Setup after small 3bet, he was 3betting 35%
Lost coin flip #1
Lost coin flip #2
KK < AK, aipf
cooler, 66 is the only hand i lose to and hes calling with worse
cooler, this one is a bit questionable i suppose
bad beat, set in 4bet pot cannot hold
my tilt bluff to cap it off

Aside from my tilt bluff, all of these hands more or less played themselves and all of it can be chalked up to variance. Yet again my classic "have a good month then dump it in one session towards the end of the month" strategy has come into play. Obv I just havent been putting in enough hands and if I did this would just end up looking like a little bump on a graph but it's still pretty sick. But it's an enlightening experience to know that running this poorly is probably not that uncommon over large samples of hands.

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.

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.

New Month - Fresh Start

January 2009 is over, thankfully. What started out as an awesome month took a turn for the worst a few times. I had 2 peaks in this month and fell hard from both of them. So my graph for Jan 2009 is here and it looks soo so ugly.

Lucky I was up about +1k on cake this month so it was not a complete waste of a month. Then you add that I won about 500 in rakeback and its meh, a month I'm not happy about but I guess im fortunate to be in the green given the quality of my play at times.

I'm pretty sure I have a chronic tilt problem of some kind. I have a hard time maintaining foucs over long periods of time at a time. I see glimpses of focus and good play for a few weeks at a time and then it disapears. If I ever look at any of my lifetime graphs they affirm this; what you see are long stretches of one trend or another over large'ish samples of hands. I'll be a consistant winner for 30k hands, then a consistant loser for the next 30k, then break even for 20k, etc. I've been watching deucescracked videos but I think where I really need to put my effort is into maintaining focus and playing my A-game as often as I possibly can. At the same time I need to minimize how often I play my B and C-games. I think at this point I understand poker theory enough and just need to focus inward and become better at recognizing when I'm playing well and when I am not.

Swing Start to New Year

So 2009 thus far has started off so so. The first 4 days I was on a nice heater and playing super well both at 6max and HU at NL200. I was at about +3k for the month within a few days. This was mainly due to the fact that HU play has made me much more aware of general poker play theory and has made me generally more aggressive. I went from 20/16 to 25/21 simply from playing HU. This winning got to my head however, and I spent the next few days playing SUPER LAG and dumped off about 1k. In the last day or 2 Ive played superb but running super bad. I played a little 6max session just now losing every flip and getting sucked out on a few times. I'm proud of myself despite this fact because I was still playing my A-game and really owning my tables. Just as I had about gotten back to even after 3 hours of grinding and running about ~700 below my all-in EV I ran into this gem.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Mighty S3rb (SB): $219.95
tuti77 (BB): $385.90
nickyballz (UTG): $200.00
Hero (CO): $596.55
Katarak (BTN): $211.45

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is CO with 2 2
nickyballz raises to $7, Hero calls $7, 2 folds, tuti77 calls $5

Flop: ($22.00) 2 3 3 (3 players)
tuti77 checks, nickyballz checks, Hero bets $14, tuti77 calls $14, nickyballz folds

Turn: ($50.00) T (2 players)
tuti77 checks, Hero bets $34, tuti77 requests TIME, tuti77 raises to $101, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $67

River: ($252.00) 7 (2 players)
tuti77 bets $263.90 all in, Hero says "sososososososso gross", Hero requests TIME, Hero says "dont you dare show me TT", Hero says "blah k", Hero calls $263.90

Final Pot: $779.80
tuti77 shows T T (a full house, Tens full of Threes)
Hero mucks 2 2
tuti77 wins $776.80
(Rake: $3.00)

The villain in this hand was as tight/passive as a regular that you can imagine. He pretty much has no imagination or agression in him and will just play his cards and do a lot of set mining. Looking back on this hand I really think I could have folded. If he had any aggression in him at all I obviously cant, but TT is the ONLY hand in his range here. I just hope this doesn't set me on some chronic tilt and knock me off of my true A-game which I have been playing lately.

On a side note I've been talking with <3_tha_grind from 2+2 and we've been sweating each others sessions and occasionally sharing some action. It's been going well and I think it's mutually benficial to each of us. I know he's a winning player so it's nice to just get half his action if I'm not in the mood to play. Also if I see someone at 2/4 or even 3/6 HU who is a total fish, it's nice to know that I might know someone who might be interested in sharing my action.

Whoops...

I need to use some discretion when choosing the play a session. So the other night I decided to fire up some HU 200NL with my friend Jason sweating me on Mikogo. We played 200NL for about 400 hands. I got up on him early 2 BI after some nice plays then lost 3 to him after playing very badly once he adjusted to me. I was a bit disgusted and at this point it was about 1am and I was totally exhausted and needed to sleep, but decided to just move back down to 100NL and play some more HU. I played this one guy on 2 tables for the next 900 hands or so and lost 8 BI to him playing super miserably, and running very badly. I lost 2 flips 1.5 and 1.75 stacked to him and got setup a few times but the more I lost and the later it got, I just played worse and worse. I need to learn from this and really use some discretion while playing sessions. I really should not play while I'm tired. I should also make an effort to keep all of my sessions short, I feel that I play at my best more so at the beginning.

At the end of the night I finished about -1100, which included -800 at 100NL, so bad. Here is the graph.

So now Im gonna drop back down to 100NL until I'm able to get 10BI back. I think this has been my achilles heel for a long time; play well for a long time then blow a lot during a long and poorly played session. Hopefully I can take something away from this.