Day 2: improvement!

I actually recorded today's brief session, but scrapped it after it took ages to render and also after I had second thoughts about people actually watching an hour long video of me doing breathing exercises and only playing for 1/2 the time.

Although I lost about a buyin today and nearly hit the tilt threshold I've talked about before, I'm pretty happy now that everything's blow over. I did everything I planned on doing: pre-session warmup, laid down goals, paid close attention to my mental state, learned from my mistakes and ran the post-session warm-down too. I'm also happy because my computer problems are starting to get resolved. SavagePenguin and PCMech.com have helped me isolate what was actually a virus on my PC, and Telescope fixed itself after I reinstalled it. Haven't tried running the opener yet, but I'm finding that opening each file separately isn't that bad anyways, I might just forget about using the opener.

I realize most of my readers probably check my blog for actual poker progress, so here are some of the interesting hands from today:



Against a 70/2/1 (or similar) fish. I had one note on him from several hands earlier when I isolated him with suited crap, double barreled my top pair, then check-called a blank river expecting him to bluff his missed draws, and he bet really tiny with a slowplayed AA.

I'm not sure that note is indicative enough of his play for me to make a really solid fold on the river there, but I know that calling down light is definitely one of my bigger leaks.

This hand, I don't think I can fold the turn, but I definitely think it's possible on the river. Let me know what you think about that one.



Against a pretty passive tagfish. I would have shoved any 5/heart river, but I think there are a lot of AJ/AQ/QJ hands in his range that make my two pair look a little uglier. Not sure I can fold here...



Against a tagfish regular. Funny how spazzy they get when you simply 3bet light. I was actually a little worried about AQ, but I don't see how I can fold with the flush draw out there.



Villain seemed like a pretty bad 30/20 lag, but he really surprised me with that one. Just odd.



I have to admit I don't balance this enough with my big pairs; it just seems like I'd get folds too often. Plus since I 4bet bluff so much I love 4betting with my monsters any chance I get. Maybe stop 4bet bluffing so much? Doesn't seem to work half as well as it used to a few months ago. Not sure if that's variance or if it's actually the game changing.



Awesome when you get a reg to spazz out this much. This was in the middle of like my best session ever - I think I made like 1600 in 200 hands or something. I think I 3bet light like once before this, then went on a mad card rush. I picked up hands like these non-stop, and every time I did someone went spazzy with a bluff, or had a hand good enough to stack me with.

That's that, I'll be off the tables tomorrow as I have shit to do.

I'm not sure I expect to play 30k or even 20k hands this month. I'm going to take things really slow. Build up the habit of running all that mental game stuff, slowly get myself going to the boxing gym, enjoy some time with my girl before she starts working full-time in a week or two, and just hope the poker goes well. I think if I really work hard with this mental game stuff, I'll be playing at the very least 30k hands in March.

I'm also thinking about running a prop bet just like Mr. combuboom is. That would provide awesome motivation.