FeARFaCTs Poker Blog

January finally ends, and hopefully my rough sessions have as well. As you can see in the first graph, I started running worse and worse as the month progressed. Near the 90k hand mark I started tilting a bit and lost about 12 buyins total. I was still getting into some terrible spots, but I should have had a more focused mindset during those sessions. I was able to get myself together and finish strong at the end of the month, but I am displeased with my overall results. I did make substantially less money this month than last month, but at least I still turned a profit considering how frustrating January ended up being.

Another interesting thing to note is how I was able to keep my non showdown even near the end of the month. This is also where I droppd down to 8 tables and started focusing harder on my game. I am interested to see how February turns out. Ideally I'd like to keep my non showdown winnings around even, while still having strong overall showdown winnings.

Made a few more changes to my overall game. I noticed the other day that for the most part, 50bb min tables are all nit regs. There are very few super fish giving away money. 100nl is such a fishy limit that there is no reason I should ever be playing tables with just massive grinders. I Checked out the fast tables again and noticed the overall players were much much worse. I hate dealing with short stacks but I can table select much better and avoid them more so now that I play less boards. I also dropped down to 8 boards since fast tables run a bunch more hands/hr than regular tables. I'm doing 600 hands an hour now and make about $13-$14 an hour in FPPs. This is a bit less than the $22+ I was raking in before, but I'm also improving my play and enjoying myself much better overall.

I ran better yesterday but ended up being very frustrated after two sessions. In each session I was quickly up 4 buyins, then slowly teetered off to only being up one buyin. I ended up overall 2 buyins but was really annoyed at the fact that I kept losing back everything I made. I honestly felt like I was playing very solid during the first 1-2 hours of each session, and then started drifting off during the middle and end. This is pretty noticable in my holdem manager graphs as well. During the first 2 hours of each, my non showdown winnings steadily increased. However, after I started losing focus my non showdown winnings started to plunge. They ended up positive for the day but looked like some kind of roller coaster ride going up and down. I really don't think there is any explaination for this result other than the losing of focus during play.

There's a good sound clip on liquidpoker.net about tilt control (link below). The thing I learned most from it was about how important it is to constantly monitor your emotial and mental state during play. I frequently notice myself losing my edge during longer sessions, but continue to push myself anyways. After about 2 hours of play today I noticed myself slipping and decided to take a quick 10 min break. Afterwards, I felt charged and ready to play like I usually do when starting a session. I ended up winning quickly as I had the two sessions before, but maintained and further increased those wins this time around.

Decided to drop down to 9 boards and to really focus on strong play and moving up. I want to be at 200nl sometime next month. Made this decision partially on how bad I've ran lately, but also decided I've grinded enough for now and would enjoy playing higher. Was playing very well my first session until I fell apart a bit at the end. Did finish up overall. Second session I ran another sparkling 3 buyins under even. I'm now $1,700 under ev this month which is absolutely sick. I am still up overall but 17 buyins is a retarded amount to be down in just one months time. I still feel I played strong the second session and just need to wait until I stop running so awful.

Both of these sessions I managed to keep non showdown about even and am going to strive to continue this trend. I also greatly increased my vpip/pfr from roughly 13/9 to 18/14 now. I might push to play more hands but I am enjoying my current state too. There are many good raise spots I missed when I was on 20+ tables. I am also much more able to take advantage of fishy players since I have much better reads. I had two allins on the flop today where I correctly stacked off based on notes I had taken earlier. I think if I was 20 boarding I would have likely just folded. I did end up losing both spots of course but at least I made a correct play. Do hope to start winning soon or I may be on suicide watch.

Down 14 buyins last two sessions. Running something like 5 buyins under ev and everything seems to be going wrong. For 15k hands I was able to keep my non sd winnings even, and now it's fallen hard in the last two sessions. My bankroll is more than fine but I may jump down to 50nl for a day or two until I stop running so bad. I posted a bunch of hands but left even more out b/c bad beats just get old after a while and nobody cares.

Looking over all my major losing hands from the last session, I can maybe find $300 I could have saved from playing differently.. but I was still down 6.5 buyins. Most of my losses are just ridiculous KK vs AA or horrible beats/situations. Hopefully can turn this around soon.

Had to work in the National Guard this weekend, so I wasn't able to get many hands in other than Friday night. Friday itself was basically a debacle. I continued to run poorly and started tilting by the end of the session. Lost a few buyins in the end but nothing serious. I'll probably be playing a lot of poker this week so i'll make those losses up quickly.

There's a trend emerging on some of my controversial decisions where low stakes/losing players tell me how awful some of my publically posted hands are. Hand #615729 posted in the Other Hands section is a humorous example of this.

Been so tired lately. Apparently forgetting to eat may contribute to lack of energy. Going to look for a solution tomorrow. Did have a decent session... would have liked to run a little better, but only half a buyin under ev is pretty great for me lately.

Pretty gross day. I ran another 3.5bi's under ev.. which brings us to a grand total of -11.5bi's under ev for the month. Had a few weird hands and definitely made some mistakes, but I think I still handled myself somewhat well for the garbage I had.

Also in other news, it seems like Pokerhand.org deleted all my hh's from Nov 07 to Nov 08. I posted a ton of hands during these months, so they are basically gone now. I also noticed that the site has corruped some of my old hands. Apparently I was in a 25/50nl game and won a 10k pot. This was unknown to me, but wouldn't mind taking that pot if it's still sitting around somewhere.

Clearly haven't posted on here in forever. Not sure why I keep paying to host it. Any ways, I've actually been playing a ton since Nov 08. Trying to grind out 50 hrs a week while watching vids and reading hh's on the side. Been having great results so far and plan to push upwards. I'm going to start posting links to hands on here again, but I'm going to make all my commentary on the hand within the link itself. I'll be posting two different sets of hands for the most part. One set will be hands I don't fully understand and would like to analyze further; the other will just be fun hands. I'll probably be making quick updates to this blog several times a week.

Right now the plan is to grind 100nl for another month and then push onwards to 200nl in Feb. I haven't really set up time goals of when I want to be at certain limits, but I do want to be playing some much tougher games as the year progresses. I'm also going to make it out to casinos at least once a month, and may even play some tournaments later on. I'll be at the WSOP circuit in AC this March, and have no plans after that as of yet. Ideally I can get staked (lol) since I'm not thrilled about having to put up $300-$1000 a buyin at the moment, but we'll see what happens.