Monday, March 9, 2009

Clawing back

Back on the upswing, still in the red for the month though. Have felt a lot better the last few days - still tilting, but to a much smaller degree, and my results were break-even before tonight as opposed to losing $500+ per session. It's so easy to lose confidence and just give up, but in my experience all it takes is getting back to the fundamentals, studying more, playing more, and trying your fucking hardest to stay level-headed. My arms are feeling pretty strong from all the pushups I've been doing. Knuckles are a little sore.

I have a feeling a lot of the tilt comes from the fact that I've been trying to 6-8 table as opposed to my now 'normal' 4-6 tables. I feel %100 fine following the action, but it's a little harder to tell how much the tilt factor is increased with the added tables. It was starting to feel like 40k+ hands per month was going to be a breeze 8-tabling, but after this past week or two I've realized I have to work with at most 6 tables for a while longer, and that means either the same hours and lower volume per month, or I'll have to kick in some more hours to make up for that.

I've gotten to rereading and reviewing some material I hadn't touched in a while, and am comtemplating rereading Elements of Poker again. Stosh also contacted me about doing a second Stoxpoker video with him, this time with his hands, so that should be fun and will no doubt refresh my poker mindset. Sweats with Fredrik have been great too, it's just a little coordinating it sometimes even though he does a great job of freeing time for them.

On a side note, the videos entitled "Sweat session with Fredrik Pt. 2" and "Taylor Sweats Fredrik" sparks a little bit of confusion with the girlfriend. She jokes about my homoerotic side :/

Can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I've been trying to find myself a really good rakeback deal on another medium-volume site. That includes some form of prop playing, but so far nothing's worked out. I put $500 on BetOnBet (prima) and like the software (even bought PrimaEye for table selection), but there are a ton of small problems that keep popping up that keep me from moving more money there and putting in more volume. I got an offer for a really awesome %40+ rakeback deal on ipoker but it turned out I already had an affiliate tagged to my account, bunk. The tables are so incredibly soft (even the regs!) on ipoker/prima/any other site other than PS and FTP, but even so I'm starting to think it's not worth the hassle. Who knows, maybe I'll try in another few months or something.

Thinking about more coaching, but to be honest I'm just not in the right state of mind and my game isn't sharp enough for me to be learning new shit right now. DeucesCracked and Stox are enough for me at the moment, on top of my regular studying and rereading old material.

Errm, that's about it. Here are some more interesting hands from today:



Against wwwBTHEREcom who's a solid winning reg. Don't think I can fold given I was playing a loose 30/25 game at the time, and the fact that there are just so many draws out there. I dunno, it could be a fold utg vs btn, meh. Don't hate stacking.



tee hee.



Against a good but tight (postflop) reg. Not so sure about the push; a lot of my decision was just tilt, I was desk-slammingly tilted at the time. Don't think it's terrible, but he had really low raise cbet stats.

Other than that, been paying more attention to my value betting and have been experimenting with overbetting (bluffs and for value). Things are looking up again :)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

If she ever gets jealous, just show her this picture of me and I'm sure she'll never feel that I'm any competition ever again:

http://fredrikpaulsson.blogspot.com/2008/09/da-comrade.html

Good to hear you're clawing your way back. Personally, I've played maybe a grand total of 3k hands this month, and I seriously need to try to set aside more time for it. I've been on a crazy reading spree, devouring books left and right, and I just haven't worked up the will to play. Did get a session in last night, playing 6-8 tables of 2/4 and managing to end up ahead $300, but I need to play more. I think I'm up maybe a buy-in total for the month, which is OK for the volume I've played, but... Yeah, I need to try to get at least 20k hands played this month. Chop chop, Freddie Boy.

Icemonkey9 said...

March seems like a tough month bud for a lot of people. But I always say that about every month. Anyways the last hand, the double barrel with the 4 on the J high flop ... ballsy shove there.

Anyways stick with it. Keep the level head. We're all rooting for you.

The Spore said...

Man that was one funny post.. even the hands were funny. Villain got counterfeited for a stack, you hit your gutshot for a stack, i have no idea what your opponent was thinking about that third hand, but whatever it worked!

Glad to see things looking up for you. I'm about a month into my brankroll experience (only about 5.5k ring hands though) and I'm only breaking even. That's micros. I'm a bit disappointed in myself I thought I was a better player than that. Oh well. I just gotta keep working, I'm not losing money so it's just about finding problems with my game and fixing them.

Anyway, good luck for the rest of the month!