Not all Girls are Created Equal

After starting back up again with poker in June, I can feel myself getting sucked in again.  I really enjoy playing and have a high level of sustainable focus, so end up playing/thinking about/studying the game a lot.  Even when I'm not doing anything poker related, my mind will often drift to thoughts of poker. The downfall of this is that I tend put my other interests and projects on the back burner.  As a web developer I want to keep expanding my skill set and as an artist I would like to keep creating.  I tend to cycle through feeling really good about my time spent at poker with feeling bad about neglecting my other pursuits.  This trend is then compounded if I am having a bad run.  Been there done that, don't want to do it again.

As we enter July, I realize that I will need to make some kind of effort to keep things balanced so I don't fall into that pattern if I start a losing streak.  Last month I logged about 67 hours (not much compared to the reg ginders) but it's a good chunk of my time after FT landscaping M-W and doing web dev. work the rest of the week.  

On a side note, how cute is this?  I don't necessarily agree to keeping wild animals as pets, but this little primate is something else.  (credit to my bf for sending me the link)

I'm a penny pincher and some how manage to play poker.  Don't ask me how.

After a pretty successful first month back at the tables I have been preparing myself for the inevitable downswing, but it hasn't come.  I struggled for so long at the full ring micros that it's still hard for me to believe that things might be falling into place.  My mental game really matured over the months off and a change of circumstances have take some of the financial pressures off.  I think that was a huge tilt factor for me before trying to make up losses.  With that said, I've had a nice start for July, +8bi over 1600 hands at 100NL.  Running hot, I know.  I don't want to dwell on hitting that downswing, but am prepared for it.  I am going to stick to a 3bi session stop loss, which is something I've had problems with following through with, but realize now how important it is.

While winning at a non-sustainable rate, I think my stats reflect some solid play overall.  I LOVED the Coaching Kristy series and I think I've been able to stick to the game plan I developed from watching them.  I think I should start to loosen up as I get more comfortable at 100NL, but I'm keeping things a bit tighter as build my bankroll and get some volume in.

If anyone has recommendations for a coach, please let me know.  I've sent in a request to DC, but haven't heard back yet.

After writing about July, I figured I should summarize June.

June 1st: Started back at 25NL 6 max

June 17th: Took a shot at 50NL and stayed

June 25: Took a shot at 100NL and plan to stay until I'm fully rolled to play 200NL.

Results:

I know that this month was a heater, but I still feel good about my play.  I don't think I had more than a few totally spewy plays.  I feel pretty good about my volume for my first month back and think my efforts in making good decisions paid off.  The fact that I feel comfortable at 100NL also really tells me a lot about how far I've come with the mental/emotional side of the game.

 

It seems like the arbitrary start to a new month brings to us all great hopes and aspirations.  It's all one big session, but it's still nice to compartmentalize our success/failure into neat little bundles that span 30 days.  So here's to the new month!  Actually now that I think about it, acknowledging the new month might be a mental leak of mine.  The subconscious pressure not to "start off" neg + the renewed focus on analysis/play = out leveling myself.  So I am actually going to poo-poo any July resolutions.  I also don't think I believe in New Years resolutions. One of the things I'm working on is not setting up rigid goals that just set me up for failure.  Instead I just have 4 points that I will try to play by this month.

1. Go through the process (thanks Baluga)

2. Control SPEW tendencies (accept that it will happen from time to time)

3. Keep perspective

4. Have fun

Outside of poker, my plans for July include designing/building my site for www.curiousjunkie.com.  I'm a skill learning junkie and am going to start a blog-like site for documenting/sharing my learning endeavors.  I want to get some good scuba dives in at the local sites, maybe some wreck sites in the Great Lakes.  I also will be training for the epic and rather random physical competition my bf and I have set up for the end of July : Best mile, push ups in a min. chins in a min, sit ups in a min, 10 rounds of "Run Wild"(card game), and flexibility.  Haven't decided what's at stake yet, but it will be something good. 

Goodbye June 2010.

I've been feeling pretty comfortable this month with my play and with my new found zen I have made some aggressive moves, but not without a plan.  It's strange, but I feel like my mind has just done a 180 in how I see the game after taking a few months off.  

Things I've done differently this time around:

1. Moved to 4tabling 6max from being a FR multi-table grinder
   
2. Not depend on my money from poker so much
3. Limit my sessions to a few hours (no 8hour marathons)
4. Realize and accept my own emotional (my major weakness) and mental tendencies/reactions
5. Let myself just enjoy the game and decision process
6. Have a plan, but realize that things change and my goals aren't a be all end all for my success as a player.

With that said, I am taking a shot at 100NL.  It isn't quite as drastic as it might seem because I was a regular at 50NL in FR, but I started off at 25NL this month to get back into the swing of things.  I am not rolled for 100NL, but have enough points to get the $285 bonus on stars, so my plan is to see how it goes and if I drop 3BI, I'll move back down to 50NL and buy the bonus to replenish.  Looking pretty good so far.  Had one rough session at 50NL, but I have been making good decisions at 100NL.  I have controlled my spew tendencies because I really don't want to have to drop back down.  There are definitely some better players at 100NL, but I haven't noticed it being hugely different from 50NL.  So much of the game is a mental game with oneself.  Wish me luck.

 

I like hard work and I like to break a sweat, so one of the many hats I wear is that of a part time landscaper during the summer.  I do a lot of poker thinking between all the pruning, weeding and shoveling.  Today I found myself buried in a 9 foot hedge, giving it a mid summer hair cut and thinking about hand ranges.  As I look back on my last year as a poker player, I can now recognize some of the chronic fundamental problems I was having as a new player. 

One significant problem was my inability to embrace the concept of ranges.  My superficial understanding of a 'hand ranges' would lend me to very narrow conclusions and often the wrong decision.  I would assign ranges that conveniently fit the given situation or would regurgitate some catch phrase in my mind of how "regs" play in common situations, without seeing the forest for the trees.

I hated the open-endedness of "ranges" and loved the sense of finality I got from putting people on a specific hand.  I don't think this was a conscious perception, but after taking a break and stepping back from the game, I can see the fault in my decision process.  I think this is a common mistake beginning players make, which is why you see the fish typing in the chat box "U had AK?"  It is also a hard one to fix because it's fluid and requires you to respond dynamically to each situation.  Any tendency to auto pilot also compounds this.  I have walk this road before and it only leads to losing sessions.

This is obviously nothing new to the world of poker players, but it's a concept that I have just finally realized in full clarity.   I guess it's rather hard to explain, but I feel like I'm finally seeing the whole picture.  It's like I was wearing toilet paper tubes for glasses - seeing only a narrow part of the game.  It's becoming more second nature to play vs ranges and to adapt those ranges based on actions, rather than locking down on specific hands.

Lets hope I can hold on to this 'ah ha' moment and leverage it in my game.

In the expansive realm of female identity, I imagine that being a poker player pops up on the radar about as often a being a fire fighter.  Not having much, if any, contact with other serious female players makes me wonder what brings them to the table.  It also makes me wonder what keeps them away.  Is the nature of the game just better suited to the male psyche/societal grooming?  Do the women who play share some wild genetic mutation?  I think a lot of it is due to lack of exposure, although that's changing with the growing popularity of the game. 

What ever the case may be, this girl plays poker and likes it.

I don't have a drop of gambling blood in my body, so I might be doomed to be a low stakes player.  Never the less, I am setting out on a quest to move up as far as I can.  In my day to day life I consider myself a sensitive and creative pragmatist.  By definition there should be some fundamental conflicts with this, but I think it describes me like a well paired wine.  While both complementing and contrasting, my personality traits have been the glory of my game and the Achilles heal of my tilt.  Having played on and off for the last year and a half, I think I'm finally ready to make a committed run at reaching my full potential as a player. 

I hope that keeping this blog will help me with reflecting and keep me accountable for my intentions.  I also hope to meet some other female players along the way.  I recently watched the Coaching Kristy series and was really able to relate to the emotional and analytical hurtles she was going through as she moved up the ranks.  I hope that my journey can encourage other female players and help develop the female community out there. 

Where I am right now:

50NL 6max on Pokerstars (previously a full ring player but fell in love with 6 max)

How I've been doing this month so far:  I feel pretty good about my play so far this month.  I have made some clear mistakes along the way when I made the switch from 25NL to 50NL, but I am making less and less of those poor decisions.