Mirage

At least, I feel like I’m playing decently again. My EV-adjusted winrate so far this month is nearly 6ptbb/100, and I’m starting to get back near my normal volume. I thought it would be pretty easy to go to school and maintain the same hand volume, but my stepdaughter’s softball practices and games, laundry, dishes, homework, helping the kids with their homework etc. sap so much of my time that putting in 1000 hands every weekday is tough whereas I used to hit 1400 or so without breaking a sweat. Coming off a 35k hand (!) breakeven stretch saps the motivation a bit as well. Thankfully I keep a decent bankroll or we’d be having some slim times around here, hehe. I would be playing right now, but FTP is down (ugh) so I am writing this and updating my Hold ‘em Manager instead.

The wife and I are taking a little vacation for our 6th anniversary (October 19th) from this Thursday through Sunday to Asheville, NC. Some hiking, sight-seeing, shopping, R&R, and seeing some shows are on the itinerary. I hope it recharges our batteries, and maybe our relationship… things have been kind of lame lately. It’s kind of expected when we have 3 kids and we’re both busy as hell but lately it’s been a drag… hopefully this helps (or at least doesn’t hurt.) I’m pretty stingy so any time we are going to spend money on something it has the potential to become a contentious issue. Wish me luck, lol.

This week did have a few good poker days, at least. School’s going well, as is the running regimen, so I’m altogether pretty happy in spite of not running white hot at poker at this particular point in time. Read the rest of this entry »

I am so unmotivated and disillusioned; a break is sorely needed. Hopefully 3 and a half days’ worth of time will recharge my batteries and I’ll be back in grinder mode come Monday! I don’t feel I have played bad this week. In fact, I’ve watched some videos that had some great concepts in them and was pretty excited to implement them. I’ve just been too cold-decked to do any better than break even lately. In the meantime, I bought some running shoes and gear to start jogging with the wife; hopefully it will help me focus, as I see a lot of high stakes players swear by workout routines to help keep them feeling focused and fresh.

I have been quite fortunate to run very well overall since reverting to 4-tabling. It took a few tries to make it to 200NL, and my “shots” at 300NL on Bodog went really poorly, but mostly I’ve run well at FTP, grinding out solid months for about 6 months now. So I don’t want to come off as ungrateful or unrealistic. But the last few weeks have been pretty tough! Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the month, I was a little concerned that I might not be able to reach my goal of 20k hands. For starters, I went back to college for the first time in several years, full time. My 5-year-old son, Andrew, entered kindergarten. My other little boy Sean, who just turned two, went to daycare for the first time. My wife, Monique, decided to start taking some college courses in the evenings herself. With all these changes in our routines, I had no idea how it would all shake out, and how that would effect my poker grind. Read the rest of this entry »

Things have been pretty hectic around here lately, but that’s par for the course. On the plus side, I already have nearly 24k hands logged with 4 days to go in the month; my goal was only 20k. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday started out routinely and tamely enough. Some up, some down, but a little more up then down. Then, all hell broke loose. Read the rest of this entry »

My last blog post seems long ago and far away. My fruitless focus on trying to add tables cost me several months that I could have used to improve and make more money. I don’t regret trying, because I wouldn’t know whether I was maximizing my hourly unless I tried more tables, but it was nonetheless a pretty stagnant six weeks. As soon as I went back to 4-tabling, and focused again on learning and improving, my winrate was right back to 5ptbb/100. In most of March and some of April, I even managed to take a decent shot at 200NL, but it didn’t work out. Fortunately, a week into May, I was compelled to seek staking, which I received. About 11k hands into the stake, my backer decided he needed to back out in spite of the stake going well (he had some other things come up he needed to focus on.) In retrospect, I’m glad he pulled out, because I managed to “stick” at 200NL and things have been pretty much awesome since, save for 5 buy-ins lost at a 300NL shot on Bodog. Here’s the graph since my last blog post, +~$3800 in rakeback/bonus:

Looking forward, the plan is to keep grinding and continue to focus on making whatever improvements to my game I can. I’m able to use more of what I earn to build my bankroll, so a 400NL shot by fall’s end is not out of the question. Also, I have been playing a little 100NL HU with good success as of late, so I may wind up shifting more of my energy to that, though I have no plans for that at the moment.

I think it’s time I go back to what finally gave me a breakthrough. That includes cutting back to 4 tables. It kinda bums me out after making the investment in a second monitor, but my results have been terrible since I went to 6 tables. I’m done rationalizing that it is all because of poor luck or that I am still adjusting. If I look at it from an honest, objective standpoint, since I started 6-tabling I have mostly broke even and had one good “up”swing, not the other way around. 70 thousand hands of <1ptbb/100 don’t lie. Before that I had over 5ptbb/100 over 120k hands. Even if I could squeeze out a better hourly by sticking with it, I’m quite sure whatever I would have to do to make that work wouldn’t be a good enough game to beat 1/2NL 6max. I’m not here to play for rakeback and stay at 100NL forever. I had hoped that I would maintain nearly the same winrate as before and allow myself to make the same money in less hours, but that’s just not happening. The second monitor is still cool to have, it will be a nice aid to cherry picking tables, and I can no doubt run an MTT or two along side my cash tables now and again without any ill effects, but I must not have enough tracks in my brain to process so many decisions without faltering significantly. So, my new priority is to find the handle on my game again, and move up.

The good news is that I have watched some videos recently that have improved my postflop game, but in order to lock in on the game flow and my table image and really focus, I’m going to have to stick to 4 tables. I really feel like I’m now playing better than ever when I’m on my game, but I burn out too quickly with 6 tables going and can’t find the balance between taking pots away with well-timed aggression and spewing my stack off repeatedly for reasons I can’t explain. I expect to get back in the saddle and be better than ever, and once my bankroll is there, I think my confidence will be as well. Hell, I’d go for it right now if my bankroll were where I want it to be. So, I think there are good things just up the road, and now that I am refocused and back to my old tilt-avoiding regimen, it’s only a matter of time before I can right the boat.

I did indeed decide to play again yesterday. It was pretty ugly, but I got through it alright and wound up profiting $58 over 1800+ hands. It was a nice shot in the arm, even if my winrate was terrible; at least I profited! I had free time in the night but decided that I’d take it easy instead of grinding. I played and cross-staked a couple micro donkaments with Eric (a.k.a. MewsicLovr) and got to sweat him to a final table, that was fun. I also played some .50 PL 5CD. I lost about $20 bucks in the first 10 hands donking around with ML; he got most of that, heh. Once I settled in and browsed a couple of articles I made it back, running good and playing aggro. I couldn’t believe how weak the players were, I was blind-stealing like crazy.

Today I got a bit of a late start, which wasn’t too surprising. Truth is I was playing some Battlefield 2 on the P.C. and got involved in a super long round that put me a bit behind schedule, heh. I was pretty relaxed and focused once I started, and before my mid-afternoon break to pick up my daughter, I was up 2 buy-ins. Nice! I hopped right back on when I got home and the tables were hopping. I got put in some marginal spots, but they were working out for the best for the most part today, whereas the last few days they were mostly going badly. Before it was all said and done, I was up 7 buy-ins in 1300+ hands! MAN that felt good. So, hopefully I can sustain an upward trend in the days and weeks ahead, dig out of this thing, and put it behind me. Here’s the month so far: