lol ru serious?

Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2008

Kind of follows on from my previous post...

brb, going to set fire to things. :)

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Chillin'

Date: Sat, Apr 12, 2008

Not too much grinding been going on since my last post, just lots of chilling and drinking which has been wicked. Had a quiet one today though so put some hands in from midnight-2am, prime Saturday night time for soft games. Ran really well and had my most profitable single session to date. Ship ship!


Vegas
In the final stages of sorting out the house now, picked a place and finalised the other 3 guys that I'm staying with. I'm really happy with the house... It's a spacious 4-bed place with a lot of cool extras and really good surroudings, about 8 miles from the Strip. Will post a bunch more info on the place over the next few days once I finalise the booking. Suuuuuper excited about Vegas and the WSOP, 2 of the guys staying in the house have already won Main Event seats, I'm gonna set aside some of my roll to play sats on Stars.

Cheers for the comments on the previous hands (Marc), always appreciated. I'll be reviewing them over the next few days.

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Some hands

Date: Wed, Apr 9, 2008

Not really blogged any hands over the last month... here are a few of the toughest spots I've got into recently. Comments please!

Turn double barrell?
Do you fancy firing $140 on the turn? Are we folding out enough? I'm putting villain on a middle pair type hand. I guess he could have A7 or a set too.

Another double barrell turn Ace vs good player
Good spot to against a 21/17 reg?

Minraise then weak turn bet
Bleh, what does this mean? I don't get it, I mean a weak lead here would probably mean like 87/89 something like that. But he could just check behind here, I guess he's more likely to have a strong hand now? What do u reckon?

QQ preflop line check
TAG 3-bets me, shortie 4-bet shoves. 5-bet over the deep TAG here to isolate against the shortie? Can I fold if the TAG 6-bet shoves me this deep?

Check/fold, his 22/33 is good?
Guy is like 11/7 so I think this is a pretty easy muck given his line.


Here's some Down for BTimm, the gig was awesome!

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Better post something I guess...

Date: Mon, Apr 7, 2008

Well... not played too much so far this month. Seem to have a lot going on despite not being at work that much. Spent pretty much all of last weekend hanging out with friends and drinking so missed out on getting hands in then.

Out at a gig in Glasgow tomorrow night, then taking the next couple of days off work as my bro is coming over to hang out. Gonna get out and play a bunch of sports and get into the studio to do some jamming with some guys from work which should be fun.

Vegas House
Been doing more work on the Vegas house, I would post some pics and links but I don't want anyone nicking the houses I'm after. ;) Moving towards having a house booked for the end of the month. Some of the places are reeeeally sweet!! Got to find a place that's close to the strip, affordable and that everyone's happy with though. Should still probably have room for another person, so if anyone's interested in staying with a bunch of poker players (we're aged 22-25) over the series, give me a shout!

Training Sites
I don't want to jump on the CR bashing wagon... I'd still recommend people starting out with a training site join CR. The main reason for this being that the community is fantastic and you'll be motivated by a lot of smart and dedicated people. Their SSNL videos are good too, the Brymstar vids are a great place to start.

However... I've been a member at Leggopoker for a month now and I'm really happy with my it. The frequency and quality of the MSNL videos is WAY ahead of CR. The videos are much more fun to watch and I just feel like I'm getting a lot more out of them. How much you learn is really going to come down to the ability of the teacher to articulate his thoughts in the video and the Leggo coaches do this REALLY well. Finished watching all of aejones videos which were fantastic, he touches on concepts I've never even really heard being talked about before. The SEABEAST videos are awesome too, he's just such a good teacher, I'd definately pay this guy the $300/hr for coaching if I was playing 3/6. Overall, I'd happily pay $200/month for this site, It's f***in amazing. If you play 1/2+ get a membership now!

Anyways, here's the lame amount I've played so far this month :) I'm running bad at 1/2, and hot at 2/4... which is nice. 2k hands? :S

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March Results

Date: Mon, Mar 31, 2008

Proud to announce my biggest earning month in poker since I started playing... finished up around $3,800 including loyalties (bankroll now $11.4k). Ship it!

It's great to see some big results as I think I've been working pretty hard and my game has moved on a ton. I know I've still got a lot of work to do and that this is over a relatively small sample (10k hands) but I'm still really happy with the result... I really feel like I broke into MSNL this month. I don't really have any outgoings this month either as I didn't receive any training, and I stopped my CR membership. Just $25 out to Leggo.

It's pretty clear I am progressively more nitty the higher limit I'm playing. ;) This is fine as I'm trying to stay out of the way of regs, and just play pots with the big fish that are at my table. It's also a lot more low variance.

Big period of negative variance at shot-taking in the start of the month was pretty tough to take, particularly losing over $1k in an hour in 2/4 and 3/6 games. However I understand this is just variance and after a days break was in the correct mindset again to continue playing optimally.

Overall I ran pretty bad at 2/4 despite playing well, big 3/6 win was really due to table selection. I only played on tables with at least one superfish and not too aggro players to my left. Very comfortable at 1/2 now, just need a few preflop tweaks and maybe tone down my aggression a bit postflop.

Next Month

• 20k hands
• More 2/4 and 3/6
• Book WSOP house
• Study focus on 4 and 5-betting preflop
  

I'm pretty much 30x rolled for $400nl now, however I want to be a bit deeper before moving up fully. There are also a bunch of areas of my game I'd like to tweak so I'm going to continue with the bulk of my play at 1/2 but play a larger amount of 2/4 and 3/6 than last month.

With work now much quieter I can get more poker in, yeeeey! Will be able to play 20k hands this month, so hopefully it'll be a big one.


EDIT: 100 blogs posts!

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Life is good

Date: Sat, Mar 29, 2008

Been busy with a lot of non-poker related stuff over the last couple of weeks, and also sorting the Vegas trip out. Here's what's been going on...

Cash
Only got 10k hands in this month due to all of the other stuff going on, but they've been a quality 10k. It's been a rollercoaster month due to the 2/4 and 3/6 shottaking but it's ended up real good. March is in fact my best ever month in poker, will post the results in a couple of days. :)

Work
3 years of work on are finally coming to an end and GTAIV is due for release in a months time. It's awesome times at work at the moment and everyone is chilling out and looking forward to the launch party and a ton of time off. Can't wait for the game to hit the shops, really looking forward to seeing what my family and friends think of it. New trailer out, i'll stick it at the bottom of this post.

Got a ton of stuff coming up...

Blonde Bash
This is next month at Dusk Til Dawn in Nottingham. It'll be the first Blonde Bash I've been to, there are loads of players going down from Scotland so it'll be great to get to meet people. Managed to get in Geo's Scottish team for the football tourney too, lookin forward to that!

Europe
Got 5 weeks off work, including the whole of May. This was a nice surprise, still not figured out what to do with it yet, tempted to hire a car and roadtrip europe. Anything interesting going on anywhere in May? I'm eying up the Irish masters in Dublin, and probably the Olympic open in Riga. Tempted to go to NY for a few days with some friends from work too, and I'd like to spend a couple of weeks as a full-time poker pro to see what it's like.

Vegas
Another 4-5 weeks off of work from mid-june to mid-july for Vegas. Couldn't manage to get in any Vegas houses so I've decided to set one up. Should be 5-6 guys, all msnl/tourney players around my age, really looking forward to it. Will be finalising things and booking the house next week.

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Overtime > poker

Date: Mon, Mar 17, 2008

As expected had to focus on work last week so didn't get many hands in. Good news is that I should have a lot more time for poker 'til the end of the month!

5.5k hands in so far, still aiming for that 15k target although it's going to be tough as 4-5 tabling slows me down a lot. Definately won't be adding more tables though, I really think I'm optimal at around 4 tables.

Brag
Crushing 1/2 at the moment, game selecting really well and running well too.
I feel much more at home at this level now, a lot more comfortable and now able to beat up on a lot of the regulars. My game seems to have naturally progressed to more 23/20/5 kinda style which I'm happy with. I do a lot more 3 and 4-betting preflop now and I pick my spots really accurately, credit to the aejones videos on Leggo and lots of hand discussion with Dave. This month I'm focussing on improving my double-barrelling. Trying out making moves in a lot of spots, so far they've been fairly unsuccessful. :)

Beat
Setups, suckouts and coolers galore while shottaking.
It's pretty frustrating but the variance isn't surprising and has to be accepted over such a small sample. I'm still very comfortable jumping in soft 2/4 and super soft 3/6 games if the chance arises. Been playing quite a lot of 2/4 recently which I'm happy with. I'll basically play 2/4 so long as the tables are the same quality that I'm playing at 1/2.

Variance
Will post some hands in a couple of days...

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Update, and $1,249 pot

Date: Sat, Mar 8, 2008

Whoosh!
Don't think my skillset is really there for $3/6 yet. I'm getting pretty good at flopping the nuts, but I need to do some work on having it hold up. Wasn't really a beat, any hand that's gonna be getting it in with me on that flop is gonna have around 40% equity.

Update
Work is sick busy at the moment as expected, so not much time for play. Here's the month so far...

...so shot-taking is going well... lol. Obv the $3/6 hit is due to the pot above. The $2/4 hit is due to this hand which I'm happy with the way I played. So just running bad at shot taking at the moment really, obviously the variance is really high over such a small sample.

$1/2 is going well over the ickle sample. I feel MUCH more comfortable there now than I did last month. Feeling really confident in my game, playing only 4-5 tables at a time is really helping too. Helps a lot for putting opponents on ranges as I'm usually free to give big hands all of my focus.

So overall the month is going well so far. Obviously running over $1k under all-in expectation doesn't help but that's just short term variance. I'm game selecting really well and really making strides forward with discipline. Taking loads of breaks, quitting well, and never playing tired.

GBPT winner update
This tourney ended up being chopped 3-way for £20k each. Blonde article.

Non-poker update
Life is gooooood.

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Vegas Baby!

Date: Wed, Mar 5, 2008

I'm looking to stay in Vegas for 2-4 weeks during the WSOP. I don't fancy hotels at all, would be much more fun renting a house with a bunch of grinders. I've been looking for a house to stay in for the last couple of weeks, but can't seem to nail anything down. I don't mind sorting out renting a place if I can get a bunch of people together. If anyone on here is interested in joining forces to stay in a sweet house during the WSOP, or has a room free for a couple of weeks... give me a shout.

My rough criteria is:
House during the series for between 2-4 weeks.
4+ people staying there.
Would need to have air-con, mostly en-suites, high speed internet with space to grind, good tv for xbox/wii'age, quiet location but close to the strip.
Would like to have a poker table, pool table, pool & jacuzzi. :)
Type of people I'm looking to stay with are preferably MSNL grinders around my age (24) but obv would consider any folk.

Considering going to California on the way and road-tripping it into Vegas, maybe through LA. Then maybe NY on the way back. If anyone UK wants to do a similar thing gimmi a shout.

Cheers

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February roundup

Date: Sun, Mar 2, 2008

All bonuses and expences accounted for I finished my first month at $1/2 up around $1,200 (bankroll now $7,866). Here's how it broke down...

• My 2nd in the OfficePoker tourney paid for my GBPT stake with $100 left over to put in the roll.
• I made $733 from online cash games.
• RB/loyalties made me enough to cover my $500 coaching/DC/Leggo bills with money left over. I like the idea of spending the RB on education each month and keeping the true $$$ made to pad the roll.
• I'm going to have some additional $$$ each month from affiliates which I think I'll withdraw and keep in a seperate account for tourney buy-ins, trips, etc.
  

Next month:

• 15k hands is fine, not gonna get as many in due to work being busy.
• Play 4-6 tables (instead of 6-8) and focus on analysis and study.
• Crush.

Not too much on the live tourney schedule next month, will likely just play a couple of OfficePokers and the Circus £165 on the 16th.

Also really need to get my ass in gear and sort out a WSOP trip in July, thinking about going for the first couple of weeks. Maybe going via CA, and back via NY. Any recommendations for anything?

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GBPT Edinburgh - trip report

Date: Sat, Mar 1, 2008

Played in a main event of the GBPT Edinburgh festival tonight. Today was day 1b of the £550 freezeout, and had 90 runners (the first day had 84), generating a ~£87k prize pool with £20k to the winner.





Cheers to my stakers for this event, who had £350 of the £550 total buy-in between them, leaving me with £200 riding. I'll definately be looking for more staking into events like this in future as - despite the weak field - I can't justify putting up $1k of my bankroll, the variance is just too high.

First Table (deliciously fishy)
My starting table was really good. Had a couple of guys across from me to my left that seemed like good players, but the rest of the table were really soft. With 200BB then 100BB stacks for the first and second hours I really wanted to get involved in a lot of pots and take a lot of the dead money that's available at the start. I'll post a few hands, as basically they were the only interesting hands I got in all tourney...

KK vs maniac
Very loose player limps from HJ, SB calls, I have KK in the BB. I make it 6x, HJ calls, SB folds. Heads up to the flop of 988, I lead for 3/4 pot, he calls.

At this point his range is pretty wide, he's really LAG/tricky postflop he'd happily have called pre with a small/mid PP, SuitedC, or 2 high cards.

Turn is a 2, board is rainbow.

I can fire again here but there's not really much I'm going to get value from double-barrelling, my hand is WAY strong against his range, and he's an aggro player so I check as I feel he's gonna bluff at the turn a LOT as he thinks I've given up with my AK.

I check, he bets 3/4 pot, I call.

He bet immediately after I checked, and he bet really strong, staring me down as he made it. He most likely has air, I feel he's drawing slim to between 2 and 4 outs. Once again if I raise here he's folding and I'm not getting any more money in. I feel like I can let him peel another card and maybe he'll bluff me on the river. I take my time and do the standard pained call. ;)

River is a T. I check, he bets 2500 into the 3500 pot. I call.

So JQ/TT/67 got there. But they only make up a small part of his range. I feel like his range is about 10% hands that have me beat, 40% small pairs, 50% air. Again I can't really value bet here, there's just not much he's calling with, so I check again and hope he bets. He bets aggressively again, and it's an easy call. No point in raising as there aren't really any hands in his range that he'll call with that I have beat.

He tables 55, I take down the 8.5k pot.

AK into AA
HJ (maniac from last hand, now has like 3.5k) limps, and BTN limps for 200 (2.3k behind), I'm in the BB with AKo.

HJ and BTN have been reeeally loose, limping with loads of trash... no-brainer all-in here.

I ship it, HJ folds, BTN calls with AA. His aces hold and I now have 11.5k in chips.

Rigged :(
Folded to BTN who makes it 2.5x (who's the AA guy from last hand now at 5k), he's playing really out of line LAG.

I call with 99, BB calls.

If I 3-bet here he's calling me with pretty much anything and playing 99 OOP against a shortstack calling station will be a nightmare. If I hit my 9 and he catches anything I will get his stack in, so I think calling here and passing up some immediate value is fine.

3 to the flop of 9TQ with 2 diamonds. I lead for just under pot, BB folds, he shoves, snap call for me. Pot is around 11k, he tables AQ and I have him crushed.

Turn J.

River K.

3.5% shot runner-runner. Brutal.

I head outside fo a few hands to take a break, and when I get back Barny Boatman has been moved in directly to my right. His banter was ace, was pretty great to get to play with him. He raised a guys 1/2 pot river bet with 7-high in one hand and took it down, was pretty sick.

Anyway, not a lot else happens at this table... and we get split after 20-30mins.

Table 2 (looose)
A bunch of stuff happened at this table which is all really fucking boring as the stacks got down to the 20-30BB point. I basically just got no cards.

About 5 hands after sitting down a guy made it 1,400 at 100/200 blinds and I shoved AQs from the SB for 5.6k, took that down.

The only hand I really regret the way I played was this one. I've been at the table for like 1 orbit so don't really have any reads. 2 MP players limp. I have AK in the SB and raise to 6x (1200), both players call. Flop came T92. I fired a 1800 c-bet but should have absolutely just check-folded. Was a pretty bad mistake.

This put my down to around 3.5k. Doubled up 88 vs A6 or something, some utterly stupid call from a lone BB who was on tilt.

Then pretty much just got dealt nothing. I was hovering in the 10-20BBs level looking for spots to resteal but nothing came up. The table was just SO LOOSE as well that I felt I needed to tighten up a bit and couldn't steal/resteal so loose. Also I had Joe Beevers in the BB when I was BTN, which sucked! So basically blinded down to like 5k.

Buffet Report: This buffet was a solid 8/10 for sure. Proper unhealthy shit, pies, stew, sausage rolls, chicken, little sausages. Good buffet game Gala.

Table 3 (Hendon Mobbed)
Pretty happy my table got broken up as I want to be able to push looser. I've got about 5k at 200/400-25 blinds.

Pretty happy the get Beevers out of my BB steal position too. I get up and go to the next table, who's sitting to my immediate left? Beevers again, ffs! Unbelievable, and he's got >average stack too. It could be worse though, I'm in pushbot mode anyway so it doesn't really matter. Barny Boatman is 2 to my right also, which makes for an interesting table.

Interesting Hendon Hand
Joe/Barny got involved in a really intersting hand where Joe opened from EP, Barny 3-bet from the SB, and the BB shoved. Joe wound up folding JJ, Barny called with QQ, and the BB had AA. They chatted for a while afterwards about the BBs range, was pretty interesting. Basically if BB's range is AA/KK obv it's a fold, but if he plays AK the same way and his range is AA/KK/AK then QQ has 40% equity, so it's a clear call. Joe was talking about calling with JJ because he knew Barny would have to fold everything but AA, and Joe would have been ahead of villain's AA/KK/AK range. Cool to hear some analysis from 2 guys with over $3.5m tourney wins behind them.

Nothing much happened at this table for me. I shoved 77 from the HJ and picked up blinds. that was about it. Mucked K2s with a 9BB stack to Mr Beevers, and he slyly exposes the Ace of spades to me as he tosses his cards to the dealer. It's a trick I like doing a lot live. When you show an opponent a strong hand it'll stick in their mind more, and they'll remember next time they think about raising your blind light. So that could make him think I might tighten up my steals against him, and with the fact I gave him a walk that hand I was all for giving his BB a good shafting over the next few orbits... unfortunately though we broke table again.

Table 4 (The death table)
I sit down at the new table, glad to see that I don't recognise many players. However I've got 2 shorties to my right and everyone else has a big stack, which kind of sucks as I've got less than 10BB. I need to start shoving wide soon and it's difficult to do that with a bunch of loose bigstacks to my left. Oh, then Beevers sits down 3 to my left again, fairly standard now.

Blinds go up shortly after I get to the table, giving me 6BB. I muck 47o UTG, then muck 2 trash hands in the blinds to raises. Next hand folded to CO who's got 8BB, I've got 5.5BB. He limps. Now if I have fold equity over anyone at the table now, it's him... and if I shove over a limp it's gonna look a little stronger too so I might be more likely to fold out the blinds. I shove (K9s), BB and CO call. Flop blah, turn sadskajd, river busto.

Overall
I'm real happy with the way I played, except that AK c-bet. But that was the only real mistake I reckon. The blinds structure got pretty steep, which I don't really mind, but when I'm getting cold carded through the 1/2 2/4 and 3/6 levels then there's just not a lot I can do. Just one of those tourneys.

The field was even softer than I expected, and I expected it to be soft. It's amazing how these live fields are made up. Stick "Main Event" on something and it just attracts all of these awful rich players, that combined with the sattellite entry folk makes up for a field with about 40% dead money. If I enter a $100 tourney online there isn't that much dead money in it, pretty mad considering this is a $1,100 buy-in.

Tells
I don't really base my game on reads too much when playing live, but I picked up on some pretty good ones today. Watching players hands closely as they bet is really telling. I identified players hands trembling twice today when they put in raises pre, and both times they had AA. Strong betting and stare down is another obvious one, amazing how many players still do this lol.

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Finishing Feb early

Date: Thu, Feb 28, 2008

Not been able to play much poker this week due to a sharp increase in my workload at work. Work's taking the priority as always, and I'm staying away from the tables. It's best that I just don't play at the moment as there's no way I'd be on my A-game due to getting back late after working 12-14hour days. It'll all die down over the next couple of months and I'll have a lot more time to play poker.

So... I'm wrapping up February early this month as I'm just not going to get the chance to play any more NL. I'll do a proper big "February Review" post when I get the chance next week.

$1/2nl
I played 17.5k hands at $200nl and took a few little shots at $400nl which didn't come to much. I ran at 1PTBB/100 at $200nl, making around $800, and then probably that again in bonus/loyalties. So probably around $1.5k from 6-max cash for the month.

1PTBB/100
I really don't like that figure, I'm not used to running that low. I associate 1PTBB/100 over a decent 17k sample to not playing well enough... so to be honest I feel really pretty down about my earn rate for the month.

However
I watched a Brian Townsend $400nl video a couple of nights back and he said that moving up to the mid-levels is tough. Over the first 30k hands of **well that licked balls, I typed a bunch of text here and lost it, grrr blogger, here goes again at 2am...** $2/4 (the equivalent then of $1/2 now) he played, he logged a winrate of under 1PTBB/100.

Movin up to the midstakes is not easy... I can see that the play sharpens pretty steeply. In my opinion the jump from $100nl to $200 is much tougher than the jump from $50 to $100. The play at the midstakes is much more aggressive, and it's taking me a while to get adjusted to this. You get put in a lot tougher spots, more frequenty. With more aggression overall it makes for lots of tough to play raise pots postflop against aggro opponents. Good preflop play and a rough understanding of postflop is enough to beat $100 for a good winrate, but not at $200. Your postflop game needs to be a lot better.

I'm not trying to downhearten anyone thinking of moving up though lol. Despite $1/2 and $2/4 being tough to move up to it's reported that once you're crushing them the transition to higher stakes is much smoother and requires much less adjustments. Just gotta put the hard work in to get my game up to midstakes standard!

So...
I'm not going to let the 1PTBB/100 stat get me down. This month I moved up, I was profitable, and I'll be continuing to play at $200nl next month. So the month was a success. It was a tough one to take due to much bigger variance than I'm used to, and a much lower winrate than I'm used to, but it was a successful month.

Next month
I'm gonna put a ton of work into improving my game, to improve my winrate. I'm going to get Dave to work out a weekly coaching schedule for me to focus on different key aspects he thinks are important to crush the midstakes. I'm gonna continue to work real hard on lots of different aspects of my game using all of the resources available to me. I've already signed up to LeggoPoker and DeucesCracked, looking forward to using them. It'd be great to see an inproved winrate over the ~20k hands next month.

GCBPT
This live festival at the Maybury in Edinburgh is taking place just now. I've missed both prelim events due to work, but I'm not too fussed about that now as I noticed they chopped the 1st one 13-way due to the casino having to close... which is pretty much the gayest thing I've ever heard. A 13 way chop? loll

Congrats to Geo for taking 1st place in the £100 freezeout, and a free ME seat!

I'm playing on day 1b (Saturday) of the main event this weekend, which is a £500+50 ($1100) freezeout. The majority of my buy-in is kindly staked by a few different people, I'm putting up £200. Will post a trip report over the weekend. Spending the little free time I have between now and the weekend watching Adanthar's awesome MTT videos on CardRunners.

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Grinding

Date: Tue, Feb 26, 2008

Not had much time for strategy on the blog this month. Been putting a lot of hands in, and doing a lot of hand analysis including work with Dave in private sessions. Gonna try to get more strategy posts in though, so here goes...

Tips for Grinding Effectively
I'm trying to play a lot of hands this month, and with other commitments I don't have that much spare time to play them in. So often I'm going to have to play when I'm not feeling 100%, or not fully focussed. I've been trying to adjust my view on sessions recently, here's a few observations I've made.

Pre-session Focus
Before sitting down to play it's good to get into the habit of checking that you're in a good enough state to play. Check that you're not too tired and that nothing's life tilting you that could affect your game. ;) Before starting play recap over your goals for the session, for me these are usually adjusting issues that arose in previous sessions. For example... "don't tilt when an opponent 3-bets you repeatedly, instead find a good spot to 4-bet bluff-shove", "dont complete so much from the small blind", etc. Write your goals down if it helps, and re-evaluate them throughout the session.

Sets
When playing a session I'll typically open up 7-8 tables using SpadeIt, and settle for the fishiest 5-6 tables based on my seating position, etc. I normally play evening sessions for a few hours, one thing that I think is important is Tommy Angelo's notion of "sets". You can play a 3-4 hour session, but you can't multi-table effectively continuously for 3 hours, it's too much brain strain. The idea is to take a break approximately every hour, removing yourself from the game and moving your mind to something else, even if it's just for a couple of minutes. Or if you've taken a few beats, end the set there, take a break and evaluate whether you should play on.

Autopilot
Ed defines multi-tabling syndrome as an inability to think outside of the box, you're playing on autopilot. You're not normally going to realise that you're doing this until it's too late and you lose a big hand. You look back at the hand and find that you weren't really analysing the villain's hand well enough and didn't take things into consideration on previous streets. Autopiloting is death to your winrate, it's important to notice yourself doing it and stop. That brings me to my next point...

Quitting
When you realise you're playing on autopilot, or that you're not profitable in a game, or if you've taken some beats and you just plain aren't enjoying it... you must quit. Tommy Angelo talks about quitting at lengths in his new book Elements of Poker. He views quitting as another strategic decision available to cash game players. We can increase our edge over opponents by making better quitting decisions than they do, just like making better flop/turn/river decisions than them. So quit better than your opponents and increase your winrate and your $$$ edge.

... hopefully these points will give you some things to think about that might help your multi-tabling game. :)

Ref: Avoiding Multi-tabling Syndrome ~ Ed Miller
Elements of Poker ~ Tommy Angelo


Quick update
More variance last night, finished $800 up for the session. Would have been a $1k session if I hadn't been 2-outered in a $250 pot at the end. It's nice to finish a session $800 up despite running $450 below all-in expectation. Played 17k hands so far this month, gonna struggle to get the last 3k in for Friday, work/life is busy.

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$1/2 do I play bad?

Date: Sat, Feb 23, 2008

Worst day $$$ at poker today since I started playing a few years ago. That kind of tilts me. Sick of these swings. Last 3 days I've played I've finished down $700, then up $700 and today down $870. Pissed off.

I'm still up a decent amount for the month (mainly due to RB), but I'm only beating 1/2 for a gay 1PTBB/100 over the 16k hands I've played. I'm disappointed with that, I guess it's not that big a sample, I dunno. I just expect more. Maybe I'm looking at things wrong, or being too results oriented, or expecting too much. But I'm just disappointed that I've put a lot of work in this month and don't have as much as I'd like to show for it.

I'm not sure if the way I play I should be earning morning and I'm just running bad... or if I'm not playing well enough at this limit. I feel like I'm playing well, but postflop I still have some things to work on. I often experiment with different lines and make different plays just to see what happens, I occasionally stack off when i shouldn't... but I think I always learn from it, and it's rarely ever from tilt.

My table selection is really good right now, but I'm going to study Verneers article and new video to improve it still. My multi-tabling game feels pretty good. I'm feeling comfortable playing 6 tables at a time while still developing reads on players, using hud stats, etc. Maybe trying to put a set amount of volume in today messed with my game or something.

Bleh, I'm gonna go read a bunch of peoples blogs to re-enforce that everyone has swings, and mine are pretty tiny in comparison.

EDIT: Just looked at my PT stats for today. 2,200 hands playing 19/16. 22 WTSD%, 52 W$atSD% is losing 4.5 buy-ins even possible with those stats? lol fffsss

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