A Full Circle

Where to start, where to start... It's been two months since I last updated my blog. Maybe this was just laziness, since I have had much to talk about, or maybe I just didn't really want to be honest and talk about the issues.

Short recap for the last two months of my poker career:

I stopped playing Pot-Limit holdem, in favour of starting NL holdem again. Yeah it sucked quite a lot to go on a huge downswing because of the nature of plo with most of the pots being near 60% vs 40% equity. I had to admit to myself that I was prone to tilt - even thought I didn't ever go monkeytilt and spent half my fortune, I did tilt and it turned my play to shit. So I guess one could say plo is suited infinitely better to people who never tilt, because every pot is coinflip and you will lose 15 in a row at some point.

Which brings me to my transfer back to holdem. I guess I wanted the security of good equity in my strong hands. I missed the familiar feeling of flopping a set and stacking a donk without him rivering me each and every time. I missed the part of playing poker again, since obviously my metagame in NL was much stronger and much less straight card oriented. The good things that I can say about my PLO experience during those months, was that they let me see new levels in poker I had trouble grasping while playing NL. For example, in NL I got into the habit of trying to put a villain to a single hand, and even thought I knew I had to think about his whole range - I had difficulties incorporating that into my game. I finally managed that with PLO, because it's a much more visible aspect in the game (multidraws, set, AAxx - or a combination of thereof).

Next, I learned how to better milk value, mostly by figuring out how to slowplay, and other concepts from there on. Basically, my old approach to NL was to always reraise when I hit the nuts and prepare to go allin. Or just bet aggressively throughout the hand, any flop, bet ANYTHING just to make my opponent pay - so I could have an excuse that I played well if he sucked out on me. Well those suckouts happened, but most times I got to complain to my friends that I didn't get any action for my strong hands that session. Trying to get money in as soon as possible in every possible hand when I flop a good hand is just not max EV poker. So as I said above I started thiking about my opponent's hand ranges and figured out better lines for getting bigger values from those hands, turned me into a much better player.

Skip to current moment, I'm currently playing 200nl and 400nl. Btw, Ignore the bullshit previously in my blog about moving to new levels. That 20 buyin rule just prevents you from going broke. The real truth about moving to levels is: Play your old limit to grind money. Multitable it. Learn to play more tables while playing up to your best ability. Then once in a while you take a 1-table or 2-table shot to the next limit, while you try to play as perfect as you can, and you make that a LEARNING SESSION. So that's what I'm doing now - I'm grinding 200nl for a profit and occasionally when I feel great, I take shots at 400nl and so far I've been doing great at that too. The difference is that the regulars at stars 400nl are much better than other levels and it's hard to squeeze value out of them. So while learned how to milk out the fish, I don't know how to crush the good regulars yet. And that's what I'm learning - something new every session.

I made it to 400nl, later than I thought I'd be at one year ago - but faster than I thought at the end of the summer. It feels great that after reading so much books, watching so much videos and going through infinite amount of 2+2 threads and generally learning a lot about poker - I finally stumbled on to the thing I was missing from turning me from a marginal winner into a clear winner. Sure I've had bad runs here and there - my spring sucked on party and my summer didn't accomplish me much money-wise, but I can honestly say now that if I had the skills and knowledge I possess now half a year ago, it would have been different. Even despite the bad runs. So it wasn't just bad runs, but also bad play. As I stated in my previous entry a few month back, I feel I'm absorbing a lot of poker theory, but kinda missing the one thing to push me to the next level. And now that I finally catched it - I can't really pinpoint what that was. At the time of this happening, I believed it was that even thought I knew how to play great poker, I wasn't in fact PLAYING good poker. There's a big difference between those two. A few things that helped me a lot during the last month or so were:

-BoostedJ cardrunners video

-Fixing up my preflop play. I often posted hands and people told me to fold preflop, yet I asked them to focus on my postflop play. During some of those 1-table sessions I finally started getting rid of my habits playing marginal hands OOP (mostly because I was taking a shot at 400nl and it felt expensive to call :P) which turned out to be the root of my problems. It's hard to look into your closet and then ask a room full of people "why do I suck so much?". You should get this honesty fast, and not a year after you started poker. You need to be able to have the courage to look at your pokertracker stats and not go "not enough hand sample on 79s, and I got rivered in this one...". Very difficult for a man with big ego.

-Starting to put my opponent on a hand range instead of one hand.

-Generally playing better. Not just wait for a hand to hit, but always keep thinging about your opponent's hand range and where/when you can take advantage of that.

-Taking my play to further streets, without always having that stupid fear that I have to get it ALLIN NOW, or he WILL suck out. This one was tough for one who believes he's living a permanent downswing. I always played under that the ossumption that if the river card fills a draw - my opponent has that hand. If it doesn't - he flopped top set. Or something :)


I guess this month is going to be my biggest yet, many times better than any previously. And most importantly I finally feel that I've stepped past the break-even part and it's pure + from now on. I'm looking forward to all the free time in the upcoming xmas holidays, with plenty of time to play. I don't feel like posting graphs or figures anymore, since the point of this blog should be to just reflect my learning process and the difficulties encountered on the way. I'll try to find energy to post that NL->PLO guide I was so keen on posting on so numerous occasions. I have it all figured out in my head but I'm too lazy to type it out. Maybe next month ;P