gloomy update w/ a gleam of lightby remember87, November 12
Its been a while since I updated and I finally got it together to write something. If you dont want to read it all I made a short version at the end of the post
So, what has happened pokerwise?
Since my peek in August I have gone pretty much down down and down, both playwise and bankrollwise. I guess I could blame it on a downswing or something but I wouldnt be fair to myself if I did that.
When I play I have zero confidence and very bad timing in almost every aspect of the game. I get it in bad, I get outdrawn and I cant draw out myself. This has made me loose almost all of my patience in the game, which I need and actually is the thing I miss the most (compared to before). Before I could just say "hey, it happens all the time that someone draws out", but now I go on tilt immediately.
It got so bad I almost could describe my state of mind as a degenerate gambler. I want to get the money in in a lot of situations I shouldnt, I want to make really thin valuebets and call down light. I have also become a callingstation, both in the sence that I want to herocall most of FI bets on the river, but also float too much on the flop etc so I can "outplay these bad players". It took a while before I realized I was the one that played bad.
The worst thing is that I havnt been able to shake these feelings of me. Everytime I sit down to play I "seek action", no matter if its a good play or a bad one. If I want to be a player that lives of my winnings I need to make the correct play, no matter what. This has been the exact opposite for me now for a while which is a bit hurtful. In many situations I know what the best play is, but a gambling-side of me just want it to look exotic and really advanced and I end up making the "fun" choice instead of the good one.
I also sit and am angry at all the bad tightass players that just sits and plays the nuts, never bluff and dont do anything crazy at all. My whole body wants to improve, play more creativly, more loose and more aggressive. But at these low limits I am playing at, noone invites me to do these moves. So instead of adjusting to the plays they do and just take their money I want to play like a NL1000 reg (a bad one ) and looses money.
I think it all roots in my quest to play a game similar to 26/22/3. I force myself to play hands I dont want to which leads me to end up in situations I am not too good at solving and then I do something stupid instead of just continue to the next hand. What I should do is just relaxe and let the game come back to me. I should be playing just 21/19/2,5 until I feel I love the game again, I can make the correct plays and then the motivation will come back to me! Then I play looser again.
The first half of October I played like 12k hands at NL200 and lost a little less then 3k. After that I have been thinking some of the above things (and most of the time tried to not think about poker at all) so I havnt played a single hand online in almost a month now. I know all this stuff sounds just like a lot of complaining but I need to get it out somewhere. Its like therapy to write it down and here I can be perfectly honoust with myself. I actually think that since I can make myself to write all this down I have come a long way to "heal" as a pokerplayer. I can face the problems I have with my game and then I can change the things that are wrong.
So, hopefully I can get my love for the game back. Without out that I dont have any motivation to play, and if I dont have any motivation there is no point in playing. Maybe I have come to a point in life where I should quit poker and do something with my life. I dont know...
Until I know the answer to this question I dont think I will update this blog too much. I need to find what I want to do without feeling any pressure. But when I have decided I will let you know!
What have I been doing instead of playing poker?
Much of my time has gone to my violin, or rather viola (that I play in the orchestra). We recently had a concert where we played music from a lot of famous movies like Pirates of the Carribean and Forrest Gump, and since I love that kind of music it was really nice to play.
Now we are setting up Gustaf Mahlers 6th symphony. Since the concert is already next week we are practising 4 times a week, and since its pretty advanced music I also have to practise a lot at home. So it takes a lot of my time, but its worth it. We will have a little more then 100 people (!) playing in the orchestra on the concert so its going to be really magnificent! I am really looking forward to it!
Here is a small peak at the symphony (the piece starts at 0.25):
Not to boast or anything but the quality of the orchestra is so good that it sounds like this And our conducter has atleast this much energy!
Short version
I suck at poker and instead of continue to loose money I play a lot of viola in the orchestra. (The piece above is the one we are setting up next week.) Hopefully I can find the joy for the game so I can continue play, otherwise its time to move on with my life!
small update cuz i feel bad by piratematerial, November 12
huge downswing? lost 15 bi's today, 2k or 3k hands i think.. playing a mix of 100nl and 200nl from now on, for now no regs, have to relieve the pressure from my roll a little. unless i played them in the last few days and have a TON of notes..
don't think i tilted at all. just get raised a lot on the river. maybe i'm laying down a little bit too much on the turn. underestimating what how wide they'll get it in but most of the times im looking up.. it hurts.
probably a standard downswing with a few hundred hands against better opponents mixed in.
ai ai ai this hurts a little. ok back to fighting will make a hands update when i played some more.
ps
shoutout to Staxx - one of the guys who took some off me today, before really downswinging - hey man good match. would like to play again against you when im doing better again. if you feel like it PM me some leaks you think i have
ps2
im not ruling out just getting destroyed by the opposition. i haven't been gameselecting at all. joining regs tables untill they play etc. probably the better % doesnt sitout instantly. maybe a few tables too many.
Arrive in Vegas tomorrow for a week. Some work, some drinking, some poker, some more poker. Not necessarily in that order.
If you are playing mid-high stakes poker over the next week then you are safe. However if you are playing 1/2, 1/3 and maybe a bit of 2/5 and you see a mid 30's English guy with v short hair and mistakenly assume he is a 'older' nit and he check raises you ass aaaawwww eeeeeennn then it may just be me....I'll buy you a drink (as long as my play works ).
Can't wait. Although I think it's going to be cold, which doesn't seem right....
im thinking about getting a stake
anyone interested in staking me 2/4 - 10/20 and online tournaments
80% HU
across 2-3 sites
maybe for 6 months.
graphs, details, positive recommendations and everything availiable on request.
get in touch.
went through the hands of the last 2 days. i selected some winners and loser based on potsize. so they are a little bit of a random selection.
many were against the same guys though as i played some long cool matches were i got down a lot, sometimes as much as 6 buyins but usually managed to get back to being up or down only 1 or 2.
imo i had an edge on all my opponents but they usually weren't total fish. for example DirkyD has an awfull tableratings but he is not that bad he just works under the Peter principle (i.e he plays 1 or 2 lvl's too high)
RandomCrayon was a fish imo. but a very agressive one with a superhigh variance style. it scared me but i felt the edge was sooo large i had to stay.
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/765361
DirkyD seemed to be 3betting more then the 16% i have him on in a larger sample. so i started defending more wide. i figured with the draws and the agressive match i should get it in on the turn. in retrospect most of my actions seem a little light and i lost a big pot because of it. let me know what you think about how i played this.
DirkyD overbets the river on me. at first i thought he used overbets in a very nice way but ive come to think they are weighted too much to value. http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/765368
against Randomcrayon. I thought this guy was pretty bad but he got up a ton on me. i remember him as very agressive and not folding to any 3bets and 3betting 90% of hands himself. basicallyl he played everything by 3betting and by calling 3bets. it was amazing to me how i wasnt crushing him just by being a little more selective. there were some sick pots.
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/765364
here i pay off because it didnt make sense he was very agressive and a K was unlikely. some missed draws obv.
i get down a lot to him. http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/765362
i floated the flop because my A hi was most likely good and i had some outs and a LOT of implied odds.
he hero calls me down. though i have to say it was more standard behaviour then skill and he payed for it in other spots. this one was hard to swallow though.
to me this was a very sick match. he ran up a $1400 stack on me on one point. almost all of it my money and i was a little tilted. but i had identified what i considered weak spots in the process of losing a bunch and decided to try and play through.
this is one of the hands i regret losing so much on. he was just not agressive and loose enough to put it in here with anything but K10+ and K10 is really the only thing i beat out of a whole range of hands beating or crushing mine.
i moved my money to ftp yesterday and against some of your advice started playing nl25. im rolled for it , its not like im playing superhighstakes and im okay with it even when i luckboxed my way up there.
1st session - what can i say , im probably just running hot:
i started 4-tabling and ended up 9-tabling most of the session. ftp feels much more loose and aggresive but i think thats only because of that betpot button. the fish just slams it from time to time and leaves me in weird WTF-moments whereas on stars they just minbet because they are too lazy to bet.the fish is just more active in general and thats probably quite good for me :D
one of my biggest leaks is that i cant fold my marginal hands to those damn 3bets that appear alot now at nl25. its too tempting to flop big and stack him because people NEVER EVER fold 3betted hands there...
anyways cant wait to get my 1st rakeback on friday - wooot!
Ok just ended a greaaaat session, not. 3K hands and down 8BI. Just see some results, made some bad 'tilty' plays and calls near the end. lol should've quit around 2AM not 4 I guess.
Nice QQ stats as you can see. Most of them pre all in vs KK/AA idk if those were foldable i hardly ever fold QQ pre unless w/ crazy nitstats which none of these had.
On a more lighter note:
Not the best guitar performance imho but still very relaxing after this shitty session. Luckily I'll be getting these losses back from RB so NL25 is still very safe.
Greets Ted
Decided to finally buy a gi and start adding it to my training. Spent the day figuring out it's a completely different game when a gi is involved, the extra grip the added control of having sleeves/collars you can grab on to and it was slightly annoying having to readjust my top and belt after each roll cause people kept pulling on it. Surprised me just how much it shrank in the washer it went from an over sized blanket to a solid fit in one wash cycle.
In 9 days I went from $410 to $1070 + like $50 equivalent in RB while taking a NL25 shot at 30BI - by running hot, watching a vid before each session and especially applying brutal table selection techniques at 4 tables.
Table Selection
I set myself a goal of having a strong catalyst at the table or at least a very aggressive player/reg to my right who gives me IP action, and the results are WAY different from 9 tabling random free tables.
Shots in the past
When I took a successful shot last time to NL50 I did it with 20BI. I know I could do the same this time and that I would be at 80% successful unless I'd hit a cold deck (I still consider NL50 my regular limit, and I think I am in a shape to beat it at 6bb/100 as I did for about 60k hands before I started working and having the hypertilts issues, which I have tamed for 9 days now.)
Lesson learned
But I will not do it.
I set myself a very cast in stone 30BI rule. I believe that this will train my discipline and make me think less about higher limit and let me focus on my play, hand by hand.
I am also still prone to tilts as my working hours are getting longer and longer, as my stress levels and tiredness are quite high, and I need to go through at least 60k hands and at least one decent downswing where I spew only couple BIs and don't stop thinking about all my plays before I can start taking focus off my tilt issues.
Plan
I will stay at NL25 until I reach $1500.
13K FPP to go to my $800 bonus, and when I get it by the end of the month I will be seriously over rolled for NL50 when I move there, which can't be bad if I don't start spewing around as I will have 40BI again.
View on NL25
I found the limit much harder to own to its core for me than NL10. At NL25 people start first experimenting with aggressive bets and play, but they do it in such random ways its unbelievable. At NL50 there comes logic at least into the aggression of regs to a certain level. But at NL25 its sick how weird hands people showdown with. I was actually bluffing way more at NL10 than I do at NL25, because you never know who will try to discover the raise option with completely illogical hands.
I think almost any good player can run at 10BB/100 long term at NL10 as people play so straight forward, but NL25 is best beat by simple solid style, and I doubt it can fetch more than 7BB/100 for the best players.
Okey, since I wrote last, three days ago I think, I've been impressed of the swede Isildur1 who have been playing durrr alot the last days, and I met a guy from a swedish forum who played HU against me and said that I was doing well. I have like never played HU before, so I decide to try it out. When I find out that I didn't got a book who explained HU in a good spot, I choosed to get an account on dueces cracked. That's one of the best thing I ever done, I meen, it look like its gaved me an edge at the HU tables already. I've been playing 10 guys HU at ongames NL20 level and showed profit against everybody of them. Its not that many hands, maybe like 2000 or so, but its fun. Its really fucking fun haha.
I know that I have been runnig good as hell, when I showed a profit of around $180 which is 9 buyins. So I think I will try HU out for the next week and se how it is then. Are there anyone else who have tried HU in microstakes and know what a normal bb/100 is there? How much should it be before you can say that a player crushes a level?
Well, in my last post people said that my english wasn't that bad. Please make a call to my english teacher and tell her that. Or maybe my english in this post is one of the worst youve ever reading. Whatever, I think I'm learning alot of writing a blog in english.
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And our conducter has atleast this much energy! 
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