Tysun

It’s been a week since my initial post so I figured I was due for another one. The goals post I mentioned in my initial post will be along shortly. Since I’m writing this post from work I thought I would just talk about a few things that I have been kicking around in my head for the past week or so. After a good start to February, things have taken a downswing in the last 10 days. I know some of it is probably just a normal downswing, but some it is me trying to compensate for the downswing and not playing normally how I would. Here are a few problems that I believe have been affecting me lately.

1.) Forcing myself to play even when I am not in the mood. The time I usually get to play poker falls somewhere between 9 pm and 2 am during the week with the occasionally day session during the weekend if I have some free time. Playing at night doesn’t bother me because I am definitely a night person and have always stayed up late. It’s more or less the nights where I’m just not in the mood to play, but I force myself to play. One of my goals for the year was to play more than I did in 2007 so I feel like I need to play most nights. It’s pretty obvious that the more you want to play and look forward to playing the better your going to play. The opposite, which is my problem, playing when I’m not interested in playing which leads me to play at a lower level. So I guess the situation for me is to take an extra day or two off every once in a while to keep my batteries charged and my interest up.

2.) Chasing losses. This usually occurs when I take a bad beat right at the beginning of a session (first 15 minutes or so). Now if I happen to make up for it rather quickly then the effects usually aren’t that bad. It’s when after an hour or so goes by and I am still stuck that initial buy-in that my play starts to be affected. I’ll tend to take more risks and play outside my comfort zone. This tends to be multiplied the more tables I play, which is usually up to 8 tables at a time. Next thing I know I am down another buy-in or two and I’ve been playing for two plus hours. It’s the initial reaction that kills me here because I can go from playing in a good mindset to an average mindset or from an average mindset to a bad mindset or in the worse case forcing myself to play and starting a session in a bad mindset then going into a horrible mindset when the bad beat occurs. I’ve had a couple of these lately and when I finally decide to quit I just feel bad mentally and it will take me quite awhile to stop thinking about what just happened. For me I think part of the solution is to stop looking at poker as a bunch of individual sessions and to start looking at it as one long session where I know I can be a long time winner. Currently I have a habit where I constantly check whether I am up or down in a session. I tend to basis how I play on how much I am up or down. For me this problem is a mental one that I will need to work on to fix. My new motto, “Poker is a marathon not a sprint, play your game and everything will work out fine.”

3.) Not staying focused. This occurs because I usually try to do too many things when I should be concentrating on the tables I am playing. For the most this tends to be me trying to watch TV, play/mess with my cats, watch internet videos, reading and posting on various forums, reading sports articles, etc… This comes into play the more tables I am playing. Playing 4 tables I can pretty much concentrate on playing poker at a high level and do the other activities described above. The problem usually occurs when I am playing 6-8 tables and trying to do all those other activities that my play starts to be affected. I think the solution in this case is to have the mindset that I am there to do one thing only and to do it well. One of my goals for the year was to start taking poker more seriously and improve my game. Up to this point I have failed this goal and I believe the above reason is one of the major contributors I have failed so far.

Well I have wasted about an hour or so on this post so I will wrap it up. The overall message I think I need to get across to myself is that I need to take playing poker more serious and give it the time and commitment it needs so that I become a better player and am constantly improving. It won’t be an overnight change, but hopefully I can implement a few changes and my approach to playing and I will be better off in the long run for it. For me and everyone out there play your best and stay focused and in the end everyone will be a winner.

First, I want to thank Randy for creating this blog for me even though it took me a couple months to make my first post. Second, I want to thank Randy and ML and all the regulars for keeping the spirit of the original TightPoker together at the new site RidgepPoker. I look forward to watching RidgePoker grow and enjoying the interaction with the community of poker players that make RidgePoker such a special place.

Second, a little bit about me personally. My name is Tysun and I am married to a wonderful and beautiful woman named Carrie. No children at this point, but we have only been married for a little over 4 months. I am 27 years old and have been living in North Carolina for the past four years. I grew up in Maine so that makes me a big Boston sports fan. I went to college in New York and got a degree in Electrical Engineering. First job out of college is the job I still have and the reason I move down to North Carolina. My interests include playing online poker (obviously), playing computer and video games (just got me a PS3 a couple months back), watching TV and sports, listening to music (just about any kind of rock), etc…

Third, poker and the reason for this blog. I like most people back before the UIGEA went down got my start at Party Poker back in the fall of 2004. My poker experience before that was fairly limited to playing crazy variations of stud and 5 card draw with my parents and their friends for nickels and dimes. There was very little to no strategy in these games as they were played for socializing and having fun. When I started at Party Poker I had no idea what I was doing but figured it would be easy money and so I started off with an initial $500 investment. Not realizing that I had no idea what I was doing I jumped on a full ring $5/$10 LHE table and proceeded to lose half of what I started with. I eventually lost the rest of my initial investment playing similar stakes of LHE. Over the next couple months I made a couple more deposits of around $500 and proceeded to lose all of it. I would describe my play at the time as weak-passive and there would be times when I ran hot and doubled my investment, but I was still playing bad and I would eventually lose it again. After I lost about $2000 I realized that for the most part that something needed to change if I wanted to continue playing poker. After searching the web for articles and sites for strategies about poker I found my way to TigthtPoker and my transformation to a tight-aggressive nit was underway. I continued to play LHE and with my new playing style I was a small winner. It was at that time that I decided to become a bonus whore as I figured it was the easiest and least risky way to grow my bankroll. This went on for roughly two years until the UIGEA went down and things changed quite a bit. In those two years I watched my bankroll grow from $500 to close to $10,000. During that time I switched from LHE to NLHE. Originally I switched to the full ring NLHE tables, but it wasn’t long before I switched to the 6-max tables and I have been playing them ever since. When I switched over to NLHE I started at $25 NL and by the time UIGEA rolled around I was playing $100 NL and $200 NL regularly and had started to take shots at $400 NL. After UIGEA and Neteller went down, I withdrew most everything I had, but left $2,000 on PokerStars. Since then I play about a quarter of what I use to, but lately have been playing a bunch more. My bankroll is between $4,000 and $5,000 as lately I have been withdrawing to save up for a new car. Currently you can find me on the $50 NL or $100 NL tables playing 6 to 8 tables with my new dual monitor setup.

Fourth, goals for this blog. For the most part I want to use this blog as a poker journal and occasionally comment on day to day things going on in my life. I’ll be posting hand histories and commentary and look forward getting some feedback. I hope to post every couple days and more if time permits. Well this post is getting a little long so I will finish it up. My next post will be along shortly and will contain my goals for the year and for the month of February and my progress to date. Good luck at the tables everyone!