Diary of a (disillusioned)poker addict

Put in a chunky session last night. At face value, apart from a bad hacking cough, conditions for grinding were perfect. Kids all feel asleep on cue and my wife was out with some friends. And to my credit, I played with good focus for the 1st couple of hours. The problem was I didn't take enough breaks and I just ran my session for too long. Inevitable result is i lost focus. I don't think I made any terrible plays but reading an old Justin Bonomo article in Bluff magazine, I had an appreciation for what he describes as "complacent tilt". The old auto-piloting devil. Watching season 3 of Enterprise and responding to tables as they pop up. The result is non-optimal play and its something I need to guard against going forward....

Hands-wise, very few exciting hands. 3 stood out for me. Bad beat but I got AK all-in pre cracked by AQ. Note: I don't blame my opponent for his play. He seemed a solid regular who was done in by the fact that I had been very actively 3-betting and he was making a stand. Then I got completely outplayed with AQ on a Qxx 2-tone flop. My continuation bet got min-raised and a year ago its a snap fold but I've seen so many players make this move on the draw that I flatted and when the board paired on the turn and he bet I competely misread him for a flush draw and jammed only to be shown the stone-cold nuts with his QQ. Yuk! Last hand of note was another beat and this is interesting because although I got it in good, I should probably - and with focus would have - folded preflop. KJo I open from the button and got 3-bet from the SB. I flatted and the flop came 2-tone KJx. I elected to raise the Cb and got jammed on by KQ. Q on the turn did me in. Bad beat sure but enivsage a focused Richard who just folded pre and moved on to the next hand.

Anyways, end result was a dastardly 500bb under EV for the night so pretty ugly variance as well. But I maintain that the focus or lack thereof was the real problem....

So 1st 2 days of the 10-10 Titan promo and I've done about 3.5k hands. Sitting in 107th place in the rake race so not really looking like a top 50 finisher for some cash. Not that the cash is the motivation. It's a nice little tool for me to keep myself;f motivated to hammer in some good volumes over the next week or so. I try and keep myself motivated by these volume-related yardsticks. So for example also made platinum on pokerstrategy now and going to be trying to hammer in a diamond performance by month-end - which I think is very possible if I can maintain the momentum.

Off the bat (the term I like to use for profits from pure playing) not looking too shabby week to date either. My game has been fairly solid and I've just focused on making the right decisions hand by hand in the context of the table flow as much as possible. I've made moves that haven't always worked and there've been plenty of mistakes made but overall I've felt that I have an edge in most of the games I've sat in. Where I didn't get that feeling - prime example was this evening when I sat in the 200bb NL50 table and after 50 or so hands just decided to leave because i wasn't feeling that I had a decent enough edge - I've just sat out and found a new table. I'm probably not table-selecting to the nth degree now that I'm 4-tabling again but I do think its important to do the occasional sqiz around the table to try and picture where the money is coming from.

Opponent read-wise an interesting thing I've started doing is actually physically envisaging my opponents cards when they make certain plays and then responding based on whether or not their line correlates with the potential ranges I've assigned them. This may sound like standard stuff to most people but for the first time I' feel like I'm actually making really good range assessments and as importantly my responses have then been independent of my actual holding. I know I'm probably not articulating that thought process well but effectively in the past these 2 processes have not necessarily gone hand in hand. In other words I would put my opponent on a range and then for the most part still try and play my cards for face value. Now I'm probably much more aggressive for one and when I put my opponent on a range I'm focusing heavily on whether to extract or push him off off his hand regardless of my holding. Not that I've been getting it right all the time. In fact there've been some seriously sheepish moments when I've gotten reads horribly wrong. But again thats been a change in my approach. As long as I'm getting enough reads correct enough to profit overall I'm happy. And that last point more than anything else is what's been keeping the tilt at bay of late when I end up in spots where I get it wrong or I get sucked out on.

Hammered out another 2.2k hands on Titan yesterday. Swingy as hell. Started off with the same heater I left off on Friday night, pretty much hitting every flop and ended my 1st session 350bb to the good. Session 2 was what can bets be described as a market correction and got some big hands cracked to drop a monster 700bb. Final session for the day saw me in early trouble again and somewhere around 400bb down before pulling back into a 300bb profit. End result for the day - ($17.70). Whats fascinating for me and I know its just an anomaly but in no session was I anywhere close to EV (more than 100 bb on either side for the most part) but my EV for the day was.......($17.10). Lesson: Its ALL variance!!!!   

On the Piggs front I still struggle with the roulette wheel that is NL20. The players are ridiculously bad - I say this from a factual perspective and not to be disparaging. I should be crushing but I'm down another 200 bb. I have a feeling that I'm probably bringing too much of my NL50 $ game to the table and that I need to start making more adjustments i.e. eliminate the bluff and just hammer in thin value bets like there's no tomorrow.

And then I looked around my study last night and its a complete disaster area. Can't beleive that this is an environment that's conducive to profitable poker. So time to get things cleaned up and organised. I reckon its important that I try and keep my play environment as organised and professional as possible as its probably a good reflection of my current mental state when playing.

On another front iPoker kicks off its 10/10 promo today. I'm aiming to do about 10k-12k hands over this period and I'm quite curious to see whether this will get me into the running for any freebies at NL50 level. Judging by some of the volumes players out there are grinding out, probably quite a slim chance...What does look promising though is that I should make platinum status on Titan shortly and as its linked to my pokerstartegy account, should hopefully go platinum there as well with a potential run at diamond level.....

Had an incredible run good session on Titan last night I'd like to take the credit for my superior playing ability but the reality was probably pure positive variance. Big cards, constantly and hitting every time. End result +600 bb in 500 hands. Now there's a win-rate I can emotionally deal with! AA -JJ +AK dealt 19 times for 210 bb profit. 

Streptococcal pharyngitis is apparently what I've been suffering form the past few days. Sounds pretty grim but the one positive (I think!) has been the sheer amount of time one has available when holed up in bed with nowhere to go. So today I managed 500 hands on Piggs and 1.5k hands on Titan. 4 tabling with breaks that took up  good 8 hours and it was quite a grind. 

To illustrate AA-JJ got dealt to me 37 times on Titan and I ended up dropping a full buy-in with those - courtesy mainly of KK<AA, QQ<AK (pre) and KK into 55 on a Q95 2-tone flop. All pretty standard of course and the flip-side saw QQ>AK which perhaps didn't quite balance the variance load for the day. On the bad beat: suck out ratio - again pretty much par for the field. I lost bigger pots on average from suck outs but there were a number of smaller pots - especially against short-stacks where I was on the receiving end of the goods. Happens.   Focus areas? Aggression - I got a tad too fancy in spots and I need to start making more considered plays. Things got a bit knee-jerk now and then and thats just a recipe for spewage. Point being that it was a fairly standard performance and I'm actually not unhappy dropping 3/4 of buy-in for my efforts overall. I think my game was solid enough for me to hold my own and to be +EV over a longer-term. As importantly, I started enjoying myself again today and that more than anything else is the big positive I'm going to take away.

Piggs was a similar proposition with a break-even performance over 500 hands. Felt a bit unluckier here though but more from a cooler perspective. Lost an absolute monster of a pot for 600bb when my set lost to a bigger set. Pretrty sick and I don't think I can ever get away from this hand at these stakes and for that pot. Check it...

Prima Network $20.00 No Limit Hold'em - 4 players - View hand 970025
DeucesCracked Poker VideosHand History Converter

Hero (SB): $62.24
BB: $26.12
CO: $19.48
BTN: $49.66

Pre Flop: ($0.30) Hero is SB with 4 4
1 fold, BTN raises to $0.80, Hero calls $0.70, BB raises to $1.40, BTN calls $0.60, Hero calls $0.60

Flop: ($4.20) 2 J 4(3 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $0.20, BTN raises to $3, Hero calls $3, BB calls $2.80

Turn: ($13.20) K(3 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $1.00, BTN raises to $15.40, Hero raises to $57.74, BB calls $20.72 all in, BTN calls $29.86 all in

River: ($125.44) 8(3 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $125.44
BB shows K J
BTN shows J J
BTN wins $45.10
Hero wins $12.48
BTN wins $73.88
(Rake: $-6.02)

That one could have changed the result for the day somewhat!!

In any case, that's my day in a nutshell. As we head into the weekend, just going to focus on plugging away and hopefully getting some momentum going.

Kicked off last night with a 500 hand Titan session which I was pretty happy with overall -results aside. There was 1 big hands which I felt was marginal and my gut feeling is that I should have gotten away from it. Essential TT on a low montone flop OOP - after a raise and call pre - with the flush draw and 100bb effective stacks, I put in a continuation bet and got called. Turn paired the board, I barrelled and got jammed. I called and he showed JJ with the flush draw to have me completely crushed. Did a Piggs session later in the evening which went pretty much the same way. First I stacked off JJ into QQ preflop after I button opened. Classic case of throwing the book at a situation without properly assessing the variables. My opponent was a 16/14 type player who WAS NOT getting it in with worse - or at least at best for me I was flipping.Then had a hefty cooler when my opponent got his A6o all in pre versus my KK but not many other notable hands. Observation here is that this is pretty much gambleville with guys calling down Q high given how insignificant the monies are. So pretty much don't bluff and value bet to death is the key. So not super-unhappy with my play so far but its going to be a long road. On other fronts, sick as a dog and been holed up in bed for the past 3 days. With the Job lurking on the fringes and work backlogging, coughing my lungs out and being doped up on antibiotics is not adding to the effectiveness of my game. But such is the nature of the addiction beast....

I don't have the mental or spiritual energy to rehash the highs and lows of the past few months. I'll sum it up by saying that I seriously question my ability to deal with the non-technical side of the game. I think it goes beyond tilt for me and there might be some deep-seated psychosis associated with the inability to deal with success because just when it seems I get my shit together and on track, said metaphorical shit meets emotional fan resulting in the most putrid and disgusting confabulations the sickest mind can conjure.

So where are we now. In my case, its the last roll of the dice - so to speak. I've crushed and spewed across most of the major online poker sites and I'm pretty much fucked off. So here's my last stab at this thing and these are the variables.

Bankroll A: $1,452.86          Location: Titan Poker

Bankroll B: ZAR 963.07        Location: Microgaming - 3 Piggs Poker

I will not be depositing another cent. Plan is to play NL50 Titan and NL20 on Piggs. 30 buy-in rules apply. Move up at 30 buy-ins, drop-down at 25 buy-ins. The only other income flowing in will be through an affiliates/bonuses/etc and will be minimal for the most. I'll use that to fund my DC subscription. I'll reflect my overall poker income statement and balance sheet in this blog every month be it good, bad or ugly. I have a training schedule in mind involving poker videos, forum involvement, post-mortems of sessions, making videos, sweating, coaching, etc. Its in a state of development and I will share progress on that front as this blog progresses. Get busy living or get busy dying...

 

Disciplines:
Tough weekend with several lessons being learnt (did I really not know them?) the hard way. Can’t seem to shake the chasing the money impulse and got into all sorts of trouble on Sunday night when I chased (fruitlessly) into the wee hours before calling it quits in disgust. With the need for some kind of intervention, I’ve turned to Mr Angelo and am once again working through the Eight-fold Path while I wait for EoP to land in my inbox.

Key spots and leak flags:
I did circa 4k hands with the following key issues noted
- TILT: The broadest and most common and most damaging condition known to poker players. via some note-taking in the throes of this thing, I’ve identified some key triggers in my make-up;
→Fatigue:
Major problem. As soon as I feel myself fading, I need to stop. Mental conditioning is not fully functioning and decision-making starts adding the irrational into the mix. This is an overarching condition. Action: Take regular self-assessment notes during session, limit session length and shutdown when I either note a problem or I see that I’m reachign a point where I’m not takign any notes.
-→Targets: Not making targets is an issue for me. The odd thing is I don’t set overt targets but despite this, I still have a need to show a profit over a session. This is a huge problem and I’m still not sure how to resolve this. EV focus is a potential solution but sometimes even EV runs negative. Action: Need to work through Tommy Angelo’s discussion on goals versus targets again.
-→Being outdrawn: This is cumulative and what I find is that I can rationalise individual incidents and deal with them (or so I think) but there’s an element of residual build-up which eventually accumulates enough so to taint my decision-making. Action: The key here is session length and time between sessions – regular breaks and reflections are essential.

So my next step is around addressing the above and for the next week I’m going to make this my primary focus.
Video plans for the week:
Tommy Angelo – The Eightfold Path
Tubasteve – Road to Robusto Part 4
Turning the Corner – part of the Mount Robusto project

-Good luck at the tables.

Disciplines:
I spent a lot of time at the tables yesterday and things didn’t start out great. I lost an early biggish pot when I ran my top pair into a set and a flush draw and I found it a bit difficult to deal with the early loss. Had some focus problems and probably played hands too hard and fast after that. My later sessions were much better but there were still some common themes and lessons coming out:
- Still too much focus on the money and where I am. This was especially the case in my last session for the night – becomes more evident when I’m more tired – STOP playing tired!
- I need to be careful about isolating my game world to only the maniac at the table – tends to result in me making very thin plays versus everyone else when I’m trying to isolate and only play against one player.

Key spots and leak flags:
I did circa 2k hands hands over 6 hours. I’ve posted most of my problem spots on the forums but there are 2 areas I really want to highlight and focus on as despite the limited samples, my leak flagging process is already developing 2 little spikes:

- Bluffing loose players: This is such a basic mistake and I don’t do it a hell of a lot but it becomes very costly to fire multiple barrels into players who WILL NOT FOLD. It’s an area I really need to work on and its really not nuclear science – poor discipline. Avoid! An interesting addition to this point – I’m finding that after missing and continuation betting the flop, the A on the turn is a really bad card to double barrel. K on the turn and we get them to fold all day. But soooo many players seem to be floating with A-rag and end up making aces-up or even floating with big A-type hands seems to be a new fad.

- Missing value bets and not charging draws: Its sort of the opposite side of the point above. Here I am letting loose-passive players in for too cheap. On draw heavy boards especially once my commitment decision is made, I need to be betting bigger against these players.

There are other learnings coming from yesterday but I think these 2 are going to be my real focus areas for the rest of the weekend.

Good luck at the tables.

Not much poker this week so far. I had a live game on Monday night where I missed the money in the tournament but made hay in the cash game afterwards which was quite enjoyable. Apart from that, the Job has been keeping me busy so only maanged another NL50 session this evening.

Disciplines:
Not great this evening. Its been a tough week and I’m pretty drained so I didn’t feel focused enough and I pprobably autopiloted the last few minutes of my session. Must just not load any tables when I feel like this!!!

Key spots:
I did circa 270 hands and ran 2 bluffs which i think for one was fine preflop – raised a small blind limper from the big blind> I then stabbed a continuation bet post-flop on a low flop and after getting called, made a mistake of stabbing again when the A turned. In retrospect I think this is a really bad doubel-barreling spot as A-rag forms a huge part of these guys’ ranges. Of course he raised and I had to muck.

The 2nd bluff was a squeeze play but I didn’t pay enough attention to the original raiser’s stats. A 70-VPIP folding?? I then made it worse by firing the continuation bet against a guy who folds 20% of the time in those spots. As I said, not a good focused session.

Got lucky in 2 spots where again my play wasn’t great. Flatted 65s MP to UTG open versus a loose player and somehow managed to pick up 4 more callers. Hit a low pair on the flop which was checked around and caught 2 pair on the turn on what was by then an uber-wet board. I then jamemd the original raier’s lead and took it down.

Similarly, I got into a min-raising sandwich holding T8s with 2 players and ended up in a vastly iinflated pot with 1 short-stack all-in. Fortunately my other opponent decied to check things down and politely handed me a runner-runner flush for the scoop.

Next I flopped a boat and did a guy’s stack when he flopped trips. This was an interesting hand in that we both slow-played to the river and then went to war. Not a great play on his part in my opinion as the river completed a straight, a flush and the possible boat was on board as well.

Worst beat was a flopped straight versus top pair and the NFD. We obviously got it in on the flop and he hit on the turn – standard stuff. Pretty much balanced by me winning KK versus AK all-in preflop.

Leak flags:
Basic
- Bluffing calling stations x 2
- Loose calling OOP x 1

On the training front, I’ve just finished Episode 2 of ‘Road to Robusto- NL’ by tubasteve. I’ve also finally gotten my “orders” in the Mount Robusto project that DC is running so I will definitely be doing much more video studywork.

Good luck at the tables.