Mid Month Update

Just a quick mid-month update. I've binked off about 16K vpps so far this month in about 48K hands and 75 hours. I got 9K vpp left for the bonus. I have been grinding hard and haven't had a day off this month, although I have played 3 or 4 half days. I figured it would be better to taker easy over the holidays in the second half of the month and bust my ass in the first half. I have been running and playing good, maybe a bit too nity at 18.5/15, I want to get it up to 20/17 territory and will do this by opening more in the cutoff and button. My att to steal is at an embarrassing 28%, so I really am missing some +ev spots. I usually run this stat around 32%.

I have played a few K hands of 1/2 nl and have had it go really well, recouping my 1/2 nl losses from last month and adding a few buyins in the green. So my roll is well over my 1/2nl threshold, however I won't now all of the sudden just start grinding 6hours a day of 1/2nl. I'll still mostly grind 100nl and mix in a 200nl session when I'm really feeling on my absolute A game. My main goal is still grinding out this bonus, as I badly need it to throw down on my visa card. I'll worry about playing more 1/2 nl after this goal is achieved. I actually have really been enjoying the 100nl grind lately, it is a good limit.

Life outside of poker has been good.. Getting most of my workouts in. Occasionaly partying with friends. Really enjoying playing beer league hockey with all my highschool buddies. And Getting So Damn Excited for SLOVAKIA and BEATA. It keeps getting better - now we have our own apartment right next door to her old apartment. So instead of being squished in a 3 bedroom apartment with 6 girls, I will be in a 2 bedroom apartment with just my girlfriend - this is great since we'll use one of the bedrooms as an office. It is also awesome that it is right next door to her old place since she is really close with all her roommates and we're only a few steps away from chillin with them..

Some Hands

I play a ton with this villain "Beta77" 18/16 nitty guy,, only cr flop 5%. I actually found this spot very gross because although I have a very sexy hand, I really think most of his range is 2pair and sets here. We hold both the Ah and Kh and with lower flushdraws I think this player usually calls. With that said I decided to 3bet get it in on the flop thinking I have good equity regardless what he has and I do think it is possible he does this rarely with air or worse flushes just not often. I also though if I wait until turn and he fires like 3/4 pot I would be in such a gross spot - I guess I would have to fold! Can I really fold in that spot?

http://weaktight.com/1762843



Here is a spot I found kinda interesting. I like my play but want to see if others agree. MP is 21/18 and cbets 70%. Co is 33/25, raise cbet 15%

http://weaktight.com/1762847

November Wrap Up

This Month I stuck to the same routine/schedule as last month (see "October Wrap Up") with some minor differences. I only took only 4 days completely off from playing -the 1st, 14th, 15th, and 28th. I had one or two days where I only played for 2-3hrs and the rest were all between 4-7.5 hrs per day.

I knew that to achieve the milestone bonus I would need to go big in November in terms of volume. And that's exactly what I did to to put up my biggest volume month ever - 138hrs -- 91K hands -- MT ratio 7.18 -- 663 hands per hour -- 31.5K vpp's. My bb/100 is okayish considering getting massacred for multiple buyins in a rough 1/2 nl shot, and then shortly after going on an 18 bi downswing at 100nl. I'm actually happy with how I handled this bad run - I know it would have affected me much more a year ago than it did now. The work I put into my mental game allowed me to grind through this storm. It just shows me that being able to grind through sick variance is a key ingredient to success. I think one of the reasons why I didn't make any money this summer was because I would hit a downswing and then not feel like playing and only play like 20K hands in the month, this killed my overall volume for the summer which killed my bottom line. Anyway I have already ranted about volume see "Volume Is Underrated Imo"..

So I got 25K vpp's to make in December to get my 2k milestone bonus. It won't be an easy task - Xmas will surely make this more difficult in ways I won't even be able to anticipate, and I am feeling a little bit burnt out tbh. So to make this happen I gotta go big at the start, but if I do decide to take a day off I gotta make it count being productive (urg xmas shopping) but also making sure I give myself the rest I need to function at the optimum level.

QQ 140bb deep vs 4bet?

This hand just feels gross to me. Just looking for advice, criticism, comments and better lines to take. UTG is a 19/15/2.9 who I have 5K hands on. From utg he is 19/19. He folds to 3bets 58% and 4bets 16%. The sb is fishy and Utg can definitely think I could be squeeze a hand like ATs here to make him fold, but also for value vs the fish.

Ugh just Butchered and embarrassed to post :p

http://weaktight.com/1728226

Mental Toughness

Don't usually blog at this time of day - usually save it for at night when I'm tired - but I gotta get this down while it's on my mind. I was talking to someone yesterday about being mentally tough. They were asking me about it in the context of marathons and triathlons and wanting to get into doing them. It is true in those activities you have times when you have to push through pain to achieve your goals knowing to could stop and give up at anytime and stop the agony. However I told them that this is actually the easy part to "mental toughness". The part you have to worry about sounds simple but isn't. This often underestimated aspect of mental toughness is consistently doing what needs to be done day in and day out in your training. It means not missing workouts no matter what BS excuses your mind is telling you that day. It means not returning to workouts too soon after an injury even though you are dying to get back into it. It means properly doing ALL your stretching before and after every workout. The reason all this seems hard is because there is no reward what so ever for doing it, you only get punished when you don't do it. If you are the last 5 miles of a marathon and are in pain there is a huge reward for pushing on. You know at that time that the finish line is close, your family/friends are waiting for you, other runners are cheering you on, and you know you will feel awesome for accomplishing it. You don't get any of that for doing your stretching that day!

So this ^^^ conversation leads to a light-bulb moment for me today when I am playing. Basically I had a strong hand on the river and villain checkrasied shoved. I didn't snap call (I have done well with this), I went through the hands he could have in my head - slowplayed floped sets, backdoor flush, worse two pair, air. I was getting 2.7 to 1 and called with my toptwo he had the set. What I should have done is actually count the possible combos of each type of hand - 9 sets, 6 reasonable backdoor flushes, air maybe only 1 combo because of the line and my read on him, worse two pair say 12 combos but really he will just call with most of these fearing all the hands I have already listed so say 3 combos. So looking at this I actually lose to 15 combos and beat 4, so should fold.

^^^Up there is two levels of hand reading --what I did and what I should have done. I know that if everytime I face a big river bet I take the time and try to count all the combos I will get better at doing it. And If I get better and more consistent at this I will become a much better hand reader and thus a much better pokerplayer. But doing this is feels alot like stretching before a run does. I'm not very good at it, I don't see the immediate benefit of it because I haven't practiced it enough for it to be really effective, so sometimes I lose my mindfulness of how necessary this is and just do what I did - I beat two categories of hands and lose to two categories of hands I'm getting odds so I call.

So basically consistently being mindful of this and DOING this EVERYTIME I face a big river bet is my challenge to myself. I don't care if I don't do it right or if I time out - I just need to do it and the benefits of this practice (just huge imo) will just start to click one awesome day in the future.

Tides Have Turned

The doomswitch got turned off a couple days ago and I have been running/playing much better. I'm not fully out of the woods from that downswing but I am close. The downswing consisted of 9 red sessions in a row and I now have played 8 green in a row. Whenever I go through something like this it always shows me how sick the variance in this game is. People think they know, but they don't - Including me ;-) And I am sure I will relearn this lesson time and time again in the future :p My goal is to handle it a little better each time.

Other positive news - I cashed out a bonus I badly needed to though down on my visa card. One of the few superstitions I have is the cash out curse - it seems to always get me. However this time I was already doomswitched so I figured cashing out couldn't make it any worse and it didn't. hehe.

About 3 months ago I lost my money clip and have just been rolling around with cash and cards floating in my pocket. On Halloween I lost/drooped (litterally) $80 at the bar it was gone like 20 min after I went to the atm. So I decided to order the custom stainless steel money clip from the fpp store and am stoked for it to arrive. They have flashy gold and rhodium plated ones for more but I opted for the basic one - it was already costing $80 in fpp equity, and I would just feel like a douche with the flashy one anyway. I also order the stars scarf/beanie (in Canada we call them tuques ;p) I had it last year/ really liked it and actually got alot of compliments wearing it. It is one of the few items that doesn't actually say "PokerStars" but just has the spade logo. This is way better because it is more subtle - people who are in the know may say something - but idiots who arn't won't be like "do you play for real money? my brother's friend went to the WSOP etc etc etc -- insert random badbeat story" lol.

DoomSwitch

Wow -- I have just been getting housed the last couple days. After the failed 1/2 shot I took I was able to keep playing well and broke even for about 20K hands. The 10k hands after that stretch (where I am now) is when the doomswitch got cranked to full ;-) So far it's an 18 bi downswing and I am running at least 9bi's below $EV. That doesn't really matter because I have run above $EV before too so I can't really complain about it now. My mindset remained strong yesterday where I finished the day -5bi's but +1 in $EV. The icing on the cake came this morning, I lost 5bi's and about 4bi's in $EV. The sick thing about this session (1500 hands) is that I won a stack and lost a stack, and other than that all the pots I played were for 50bb's or less. This has got to be the most soul crushing way to lose alot of cash =0 It did get to me and I made a couple bad plays towards the end. One bad 4bet bluff where I opened in Mp and the CO 3bets and I 4bet bluff with AJo, he only had a 6% 3bet from the CO and a 33% fold to 4bet overall, so he shoves and I fold.. Total spew. And the hand I got stacked on I have 5h3h board is 2h9h6s I cbet and get peeled by a nitty Tag. turn is a Ac I barrel he raises 1.5x and I shove, he calls with 66. TBH at the time for some reason I thought my straight draw was a double gutshot instead of just a gutter. Either way against this player it is still a way better play to call and try to hit, since he has such a strong range for raising this turn and I got very little fold equity here.

After the session I took the time to review every hand where I lost more than 7bb. Other than the ones mentioned above I didn't see any mistakes - Some marginal spots where I usually chose the consevative option, and a few spots I felt I played really well and saved bets or got away very cheaply. Some spots that made me feel dirty - example I have AQ and isolate limping fish - flop in 885 rnbw he checks I cbet and he minraises and I fold. This fish only folds to cbets 33% of the time, but I hadn't yet seem him checkraise the flop either. Probably the correct play but it just makes me feel sick knowing he could be owning me on such an inexpensive bluff.

So I'm going to cut down the tables and be hyper aware of tilt creepin on me. Other than the initial disgust I felt looking at HM right after I feel better now and am just going to keep grinding.