It's da weekend

Today was quite tiring. WW were out en masse & they chewed bits off me in session 1. This was quite usual, but annoying all the same. I had tried a few new things against the bad players and none of them really worked. In session 2 I dropped to 100NL figuring the games might be less annoying. I quit 100NL because I was running at -104bb/100. A donk raised utg and bet the flop, I called, and turned 2 pair on J65-7. I bet the turn and donk check-raised. As his utg range was 4% I thought no way he has 98 here, the board was two-tone and I shoved. He called & flipped over 43 ftw. FMPL.

Back at 200 I gave up on any fancy moves and just played straight-up for value. It took ages but I finished in the green despite dropping 2.5 buy-ins in non-SD over the 1k hand session. I think this is just a better way to play WW, if I concentrate on value I always drop a bunch in non-SD but my results are usually better. You have to have a lot of patience to play this way but it definitely beats the spewy feeling of session 1.

On the plus side I made some thinner value raises on the river, all of which got paid. My favourite was betting weak on the turn & river OOP when I turned the nut flush, reg villain thought on the river and then shoved all-in with third pair trying to get me off my hand. I lolled.

Killing Time...

Argghh. I set off my HEM db on a vaccum/analyze and forgot how long it takes, so now I can do some light browsing only on my pc until it finishes. Bored with internet-world I decided to blog. Here's what I came up with...

Why do poker revelations come to you when you are in no position to find out whether the revelation is true? Mine come either when I am unable to use my db (like now), or at 2a.m. when I cannot keep my eyes open. That's why I write everything down (old skool), because I'm scared I won't remember the next day.

Downers cause Uppers. It's true. I struggle to maintain my "achiever" mindset when I'm winning a lot, yet I know that mindset will get me to where I want to go. It's the "I'm unstoppable" "I'm not the best player but I WILL out-work you" mindset. When I win consistently that mindset is not at it's best, I settle for winning. But, when I'm on a downer, it comes straight back out of the box. Being on a downer has highlighted stuff I should have been working on (and probably fixed by now), and it gets my ass back into gear.

These days poker info is coming out of every site, video and article. This can mean nothing, especially if the info comes from a commercial organisation who are duty-bound just to put out content, irrespective of quality. You either need razor-sharp filters for your senses or you need to plan your study work. Organise yourself.

Some people in the afore-mentioned online poker industry don't get it's a "snap-snap quick-quick" industry. Ipskinner disappointed me & I won't be using them, I'm trying iBolide next. How poker sites look to the eye is important, I'm surprised most of them don't have good mods built-in by now. I'm sure they will eventually.

It's just like in the movies.

Breathe

Poker is up and down at the moment, I'm trying to stay in the middle and not swing too high or too low emotionally. If you read other poker blogs, and I know you do, you'll know that coping with variance is nothing new. It is, however, one of the skills that make good players good, and average players bad. It's completely natural to get upset over silly beats and bad sessions, and when you string a few of either together it can put you off your game. I'm trying to do the things (prepare) that put me in the right spots to do well. When I hit the tables I feel ready to play, I'm in a good, relaxed mood.

Doing this makes it easy to adjust to what happens. Today I dropped to 100NL after 100 hands or so, I decided to ease the pressure after my 200 session started badly. Later on, in a new session, I quit early as my second 200NL session was worse than my first. Everything I did went wrong, meaning I played as well as I could and it made no difference. Poker is like that sometimes. I now have to look into the hands and work out what I can do better, and I decided I must do that before I play again. How I manage myself affects my results directly, especially when things aren't going well. Sometimes the off-table work is more important than the next hand.

I'm not good, I'm lucky

It's been a long week. Up until today it was my biggest losing week ever, and the beats were tough to cope with. Today I ran like God, sucking out on people and hitting a lot of draws. I played meh, made a couple of big mistakes, mis-played my biggest pot win ever (but sucked out). I still had a losing week but at least today made it bearable.

The good thing about losing is it makes you work harder. I've had a few leaks brought to my attention by this swing, have been made aware that some things have slipped and I need to put them right. I'm not playing great either, & if you don't play well consistently then bad things will happen. For all the scummy asdfghjkkl beats, I have played badly in spots, and my results are my responsibility.

Cowboys just squeaked a win over the sorry 'Skins, goooooooooooooooooooooooo Dallas.

Not

Sorry, premature RGT sighting, normal service resumed.

Relief

Rantville

Quick rant - how many asdfghjkl training site videos have I watched advertised as "(blah blah) dealing with aggressive regs"? They're generally not about this at all, they're generally sweat vids and through almost every one of them you need matchsticks to hold your eyes open, there's so little action and usually zero aggressive regs. When the pro gets 3bet he stops the video and explains for 5 minutes why he's folding. Is that it? Dealing with aggressive regs - fold. The end? Fook. /rant