August 09

Ok, I'm giving up on August. It was a fine start but I kinda faded at the end. I now have 'afraid to get out-played syndrome' and I make too many bad calls. I need to just watch a couple of videos and go back to the basics. I play too many small hands for big pots and worst of all, I play being out of position too often. I kinda got away from the basics and I need to stop thinking these regulars are exploiting me. I still need to make money from fish mostly.

As for the goals I set for August I failed spectacularly in every single one of them except the winrate, which is not much better than the 3BB I set. I was hovering at 5BB or so the whole month until the last 15k hands or so. Blah, I'm so disappointed right now at myself and my results I just don't feel like I'm worthy of any kind of improvement. Why the fuck am I so fucking lazy????

I'm still at 86k+ vpp this year so far. Not even supernova yet lol. If I can somehow get to 200k vpp I'll get 6k in bonus alone. That means I need 114k vpp and at 0.2vpp/hand, I need to play 570k hands before the year is over. That's almost 150k a month. Ok, I'm not gonna make it. Nevermind that.

A little update.

Looks like I'll be way off on my goals for this month. I'm only at around 33k hands so far with about a week left. I'll be gone for the last couple of days of the month to a beach too. So it looks like I have to get in those 12k hands days a few days in a row. I got a better chance winning the lottery than doing that.

I'm at over 5BB for my winrate tho. 33k hands, huge fucking sample I know.

And my holdem manager just broke down and I haven't done a backup in like 10 days.

Epic fail

I think I'm gonna miss my goal this month again, even though it's only 1/3 into the month. I planned on taking 1, maybe 2 days off during weekdays and grind all weekends. I totally failed the first weekend. After grinding for a few days I decided to take Friday off and play all weekend. Well, not counting the time I spent sleeping at home, I think I spent total of 3 hours at home all weekend.

But I'm running hot, so what the fuck do I care?

The changes I made to my game

First of all, the stuff I'm gonna say could all be a fluke. Maybe I was just running really good for about a 50k hands stretch so all these may not mean anything. But I feel like these changes I made are good for my game. They don't all just happen overnight. It's just stuff that I've been learning but somehow never really got them integrated to my game for whatever reason. I'll post the stats and graphs from my last 60k hands (hands played in July) and the hands I played in April. There's some significant differences in a lot of areas.

First of all, my stats:
1. Last 60k hands:
2. April:
First of all I'm playing looser now. I went from a 12/10 to a 16/13. I think one main reason I'm able to do that is because I play less tables now. I'm able to pay attention to more hands while before that I missed a lot of isolation chances and obvious spots where I can just raise and cbet and take down the pot against the right opponents. I play 14-16 tables on stars now. And everyday I spend 1 or 2 hours playing just 6 tables on ftp. I really try not to miss any spots. It's like my daily lab time for me to do experiments. I see things that could work and I just do it. If I think this guy can't take heat I'll 3 barrel him. I'll 3bet. I'll 4bet bluff. I'll resteal. I'll check raise turn with draws. I'll bluff shove river. I'll try everything. All that experiments give me an idea how often those plays work even though it's only small sample. How many times you cbet the flop with 89o in position on a 662 board and get raised by the bb and just give up? If the guy's fold to 3bet is 50 or lower, fuck him, I'm 3betting. They don't work all the time but what the fuck, gotta try it to see if it works right?

My 3bet is a lot higher. I'm just picking my spots better I think. There's a bunch of regulars at Stars that just don't fold to 3bet much even when they're stealing. I don't 3bet those guys light from the blinds much although more if I'm in position. I pick those guys who steals a lot and fold to 3bet 65% or more. I also 3bet more in position now. My fold to 3bet is a higher which is understandable. I'm stealing more so I need to fold more hands from steal position. No point playing a bloated pot with bad holdings. I call sometimes with marginal cards but it's with a plan to take it away post flop against the right opponents.

I cbet more now. It's just overall profitable cbetting the right flops against most players. I'm in position most of the time and it's just hard to play against aggression and against someone who has initiative in the hand. My fold to cbet is lower now. I float more and try different things more often lately.

My steal % went up nicely. I steal with any 2 sometimes on the right tables. Some of these guys just give up too easily. Fold to steal in both sb and bb went down. Against people who steal a lot I call with some hands that I used to just give up on and try to play poker post flop. W$WSF is higher as well. I'm sure that's the result of me not giving up as much nowadays.

The result of all these changes? A little higher winrate. Could have been a lot higher if not for those 2 shitty days.

The graphs next.
1. July:
2. April:
The redline is a little bit more in control unlike before. God I hate the last 10k of July every time I look at that graph.

However, even with all the changes my winrate is still not much higher than the one I had in April. I was playing 24 tables and making more money hourly with that style than the one I have now. Do I think the newer style is better for my long term growth as a poker player? Definitely. Do I need to get too excited about the differences in my game? Definitely not. I opened up my game quite a bit but it also means that I'll run into marginal situations a bit more compared to before. How I handle those situations is gonna be the most critical part of my game from now on. I won't say if the changes are good or not, even though deep down inside I'd say they are good, until at least couple of months from now. Who knows, it's a game of ever changing strategies. Can't always stay at one place and never move forward. We'll see and wish me luck.

Golf related

I finally played some golf last week. Went out to this 9 hole course near my house in Permas last Friday I think. Didn't realize how cheap that place is. 18 holes with a trolley is only 38rm. That's like 10 bucks usd. With a golf cart it's 58rm ($16usd). I played only 9 holes by myself and managed to shoot 58 lol. Everything was so rusty so that's kinda what I expected before the round anyway. It's not the best course in the world but for that price I'm not complaining.

1st post in a long freaking time

Sorry I haven't been updating this blog lately. There's nothing interesting happened lately and it seems boring to post just poker stuff. Although it can't be more boring than posting nothing at all.

July was great until the last few days. I don't think I've ever ran that bad in a 5k hands stretch. I made some changes to my game and at least in a short period of time I'm see some different result. My redline is a little under control now. I'm looser and not giving up as much as before. I'll make a post later about the differences in my game in terms of stats.



As you can see I'm way behind in all in EV this month. That happened almost all at the end of the month when I was on a 12 buy in down swing. My red line is no longer spiraling downward like before. I can still work on it at different areas. Especially 3bet pots. I don't think I'm near good enough to play efficiently in 3bet pots yet.

August goal:
1. Need about 110k hands to finally reach Supernova. I'm not sure if I'll make it but I'll play at least 100k hands this month.
2. Winrate of 3BB or more. My winrate was 5.6BB last month and it went down to 3.6BB in one day. And the subsequent few k hands after that didn't help much either. I don't think 3BB is that tough for me anymore so I'm hoping for 100k hands at 3BB. That's 3k in profit or more if I manage to get to Supernova. I'll have enough vpp to get the $800 instant bonus too if I hit it. August could potentially be a good month for me.
3. Watch one video a day! Omg that's like the hardest goal for me to do. I'm way behind on current videos and I need to re watch some of the old ones since I think I 'get' what they say so much more now. I also get 2 weeks free on Card Runners this month so I just downloaded a bunch of full ring videos and I'll concentrate on those for the next 2 weeks.
4. Spend at least 3 nights a week on Stox forum posting hands. I'm starting to have PM contacts with some of those guys out there and I'm learning a lot through posting and actually thinking about hands.

Wish me luck.