sevens

I 8-tabled for a long session last night, putting in roughly 2k hands, and I really wanted to work on playing each hand to exploit that individual opponent, instead of just playing my hand value and relying on showdown value. I was sick of playing a weak nit game, getting run over, giving up pots all the time because I missed and they have second pair or a draw, and relying on not being coolered in order to win. Which obviously was not working so well. I think I probably used to be more aggro than I have been lately; the downswing had a lot to do with that I think. I gradually played tighter and more nitty postflop, always fearing the nuts. Last night, I had enough.

The biggest pot I won all night was 50bbs, and I got stacked for more than 100bb when I got flush over flushed. Yet I still ended up 1.5 BIs. I didn’t play my usual 11/8 nit game; I played closer to 15/13, running 30/26 or so on the BTN and CO. I was being aggro in good spots, double barreling, light 3b’ing, and making effective bet sizes. Instead of betting 1/2 pot and giving up if I get a call, I was betting more like 3/4 pot and people were (omfg) folding more. My redline was awesome, and I wasn’t relying on making hands to profit. The one cooler I had honestly didn’t really phase me too badly, and even with losing that pot, I was still up at the end of the night. It really was a breakthrough night, and I do realize that I am taking the natural progression of swinging between playing too loose, then too tight, then too loose aggro, then too tight nit, then too loose again, hoping to find a happy medium…but I think I just took a huge step in the right direction.

Been playing the last couple nights, and I’m actually not running like complete crap. I hit a lot of sets and they held (lol stop the presses!), and had a lot of KK/AA where I was able to extract value. I was also getting some nice position spots where I was able to pick up the pot with nothing or with a made hand with weak SD value. In the last two days, I’m up around 10 BIs, and am actually up 2 BI overall for the month.

I was gonna go to this electronic music fest in Minneapolis last night (Spark Festival, for those of you who want to google it…they bring in some pretty big names), but I was pretty tired and I had to work at 8:30 this morning. So instead I stayed home and played some FF12 and poker. I’m gonna head over to Minneapolis for the closing night of Spark tonight, so I think there will be no poker. I have like 8 or 9 days left in the month, and am 12k hands shy of my goal. So there’s still plenty of time if I stay focused. Oh yeah…and I’m like…2,350 VPPs away from Platinum, which should be easily doable if I just stay on track.

One more thing: minraising as a blind steal is awesome. Crazy thing, I need it to work less often, yet (over a small sample) I think I’m having a higher frequency of success. I think this is due to the fact that people like to 3b a blind steal, but they realize there’s very little value in light 3b a minraise, since even if I fold, they’re usually risking 6 or 7 to win 3, instead of 9 to win 4. Since I am raising with basically the same frequency, the payoff to light 3b it OOP isn’t as great. And if they 3b correctly, I can call with a wide range if stacks are deep enough, and play a position pot vs an OOP player with likely a rag hand. And if they 3b incorrectly, I will only call when I have them crushed. So double whammy for them.

I’ve been playing much better recently but I still have been unable to get out of this run-bad. My game had taken a gradual shift towards bad play, especially playing OOP pots, and I’ve recently been working to correct that. I do silly stuff like cb TPTK, get called on a dry board, and then c/f the turn because I fear the nit has a set. I need to stop giving up so easily…and stop trying to “lose the minimum” when OOP. I think it’s just inevitable that I’ll lose more when OOP, and I have to face that. I need to b/f more and not c/f because I think I’m losing value.

Also with this downswing, I’ve had an increasing emotional attachments to hands. Like…if I lose a hand, instead of thinking, “Oh well, I lost the minimum,” I think, “;galksjdf;lakjs;lrej TT < JJ yet AGAIN, wtf!” I need to look into why this is and do something about it. Last night I did something that helped, and I’ll give the set up story to it. So Full Tilt now offers .01/.02 and .02/.05 tables. A bunch of us on 2+2 all sat on a 2NL 6-max table and flipped for about a half hour. If you don’t know, flipping is where everyone shoves all in preflop with every hand. It wasn’t a big deal because worst case scenario, you lose 10 or 20 buyins and it doesn’t really affect your roll at all. Well, I was the big winner of the night, having a $117 stack at one point. So last night, while playing on Stars, I went to a $2NL table on FT and just shoved all in preflop for like 15 minutes. It kept me from getting too emotionally involved on my tables at Stars, and it let me blow off some steam. After I was done flipping (seriously that gets boring after a while), I checked my Stars account and noticed I was up like 1/2 a buyin just from grinding out and playing optimal poker. I got my head out of the game and let instinct take over…I wasn’t emotional and it payed off. So I need to figure out a way, other than flipping, to do this regularly. Or just look into why I my anger trigger is set off so easily.

Oh well….still on track to hit Platinum this month….plz to be hitting combo draws one time ok??

The past two days of my life have been quite busy, but I haven’t changed my schedule at all.  I just found a way to be more efficient with my time.  Here’s what happened.  After the first couple weeks of school, I realized I was forgetting to do major things for class.  I’d do most of what I needed to get done, but I’d somehow forget one big important thing.  So Monday morning, I made a “To Do” list of everything I needed to do that day, based on when it was due, and then I wrote down when during the day I planned to do it.  At the end of the night, I had checked off basically everything, and I went home feeling really good about accomplishing so much in the same amount of time.  I played poker that night and didn’t feel bad about neglecting school, because I did everything the list said so therefore I didn’t need to worry.  Today, I took it a step further and made a time schedule of when I was going to do everything and how long I had to do it.  

What does that have to do with poker?  I don’t think it has anything to do with it really.  Other than…if you are a student, if you are a full time employee at a day job, if you have a real life outside of poker, make sure you give everything to those things first.  Prioritize.  When you are at your job, when you are in class, when you are with your family, make sure you are 100% there.  That time is for them, don’t give them 80% while the other 20% is thinking about how many tables you’re going to play that night or a new line you’re thinking about for playing AK.  At the end of the day, when you’ve given yourself to everyone and everything else, you can sit home and spend your remaining time for you.  And you can devote 100% of that time for it too and not feel guilty or neglecting.  

So I was getting kind of bored of playing 12 tables tonight so I added 2 more.  14 seems about the pace I want to be at and I kept up pretty well.  I had one disgusting hand where I hit a set of kings on the turn and was fairly sure I was up against AK or AA and we got it all in for 125 BBs, and the river was an ace giving him a higher FH.  But all in all, a successful session.  After looking at my PT stats for the month so far (7,500 hands roughly), I’m making a crap ton in late position and barely profitable in EP.  It should be pretty obvious why LP is more profitable, but I think I’m going to really tighten up in EP.  Raising low pocket pairs just doesn’t seem to be profitable on a whole, maybe raising them occasionally for range balancing purposes, but I just find myself giving up too often with them, and rightly so.  

I was thinking of a cool idea earlier.  Kind of like how knights have the Knight’s Code, I would write my own personal Code of the Micro Grinder.  In other words, a “Guide for Life” in a poker sense.

The Code of the Micro Grinder

1. I shall always value bet and seek to maximize my expectation.

2. I shall never slowplay the nuts against a fish. 

3. I shall sometimes bluff raise, but always with consideration and purpose.

4. I shall not tilt, even when the cards disagree. 

5. I shall wait patiently for opportunities and never force situations unless they are profitable. 

6. I shall rarely call bets if I only beat a bluff, and never without a read. 

7. I shall believe what people tell me about their hand and always consider that before considering bluffs.

8.  I shall always have a plan.  

I’ll probably add more, or if anyone wants to comment and add some stuff they can.  Anyways, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!