Barons Poker Blog

After starting playing poker in 2008 I started grinding uNL in my free time in the hopes of getting better. As I started to reach the point where I was getting better and was having some success at 50NL, the final year of school came knocking and even though I'd been offered an excellent coaching deal from an A-grade poker player I quit to finish school which I hoped was the sensible decision. School finished and I began playing again while looking for a job, but I'd definitely taken a few steps back and the volume was there and the improvement was not.

Fast forward even further, I found a job and have finally settled in. Which brings me to now. A couple of weeks ago I was digging around an external hard drive I'd used for backups and found my HEM archive folder. Curiosity caught me and I read a few hands, then I found myself thinking about them... and then I found myself at twoplustwo again, and then playing some 5NL. So here we are, back on deucescracked and studying the game. But before I let this happen I gave it some thought as to what my goal was and why I was doing it. The why was simple; I am a big fan of the game and in several ways. I enjoy the competitive element to it, I like the analysis when reviewing hands (something I really didn't do enough) and I enjoy the visible results of graphs and bankroll that come from the learning and effort.

Here I realised a big mistake I'd been making the first time I went through this loop, my focus was just on growing the bankroll and playing as many tables as I could, to make as much volume as it was going to take to make that happen. I'm annoyed I didn't spot this major flaw before, but this time I have decided that things will be entirely different. With a full time job my time's much more limited than it was before, time spent mindlessly grinding is time spent wasted. My goal now is to play 2 tables while fully focussed whenever I feel like playing. If I lose focus or start auto-piloting, quit the tables and maybe review a hand or just drop the whole thing and go and do something else. 

I'm going to use this blog to remind myself of the above and any new revelations, whether they're psychological or in hand histories, and probably celebrate milestones in progression and as a diary of my play and learning activities.