Brags. Beats. Battlestar Galactica.

My plan to play more poker is going fairly well so far. Despite having a busy week with birthday parties, formals and other stuff, I’ve still been able to play a bit of poker, while the old me would have just said f-it and not play at all.

I started playing 6-max NL again and it actually seems a lot more natural than what I’ve been playing for the last couple months. I was able to 6 or 7-table pretty easily and I just felt confident about all the decisions I was making.

I’ve also been trying out some heads up. I’m still not used to the whole thing, I think the part about playing just one opponent makes it much more personal while in regular side games you can just sit back and disconnect a bit as you’re not the only person your opponents are focussing on. The swings are also much greater and I’m definitely finding myself in much more marginal spots trying to outmanoeuvre someone, which I’m not really used to. Although, my HU game is definitely improving leaps and bounds just by getting hands in and experiencing it myself rather than simply watching videos about it.

I played Joe for about 1k hands the other day at 50NL and ended down roughly $560, but I thought I played well for the most part. There were a couple hands I misplayed but I don’t think I was affected by tilt at all. It definitely was a good experience and will help me make adjustments to my game.

I also ran a hand history review session with James and Sean (from CUPokS) on one of James’ HU sessions, and some of the hands generated a lot of interesting discussion (even though Sean fell asleep half way through – it was at about 3am). I didn’t quite expect discussing hands with other people to be so rewarding, but it definitely is a very useful exercise.

I decided to deposit some money on Betfair, but I quickly realised that I can’t afford to spread my play across 3 sites. It seemed pretty fishy but I didn’t like the interface that much, so I decided to stick with FTP and PS for now.

My new graphics card and PSU arrived not long ago, but I realised that I don’t really want to install it because I’ll end up playing Dragon Age too much and my plan to grind out a lot of hands will turn to shit.

Recently I decided to up the level of commitment to poker, and I plan to do it by becoming more studious in my general off the felt stuff. I’m going to get back into watching a ton of more videos and I’m going to be concentrating harder and takes notes. Here’s an idea of what I mean:

From now on, I’m going to spend a lot less time doing nothing and a lot more working on my game, starting by rounding out the edges (probably the metaphor to use when talking about poker) of my NL game and move on from there. My goals (as alluded to in the screenshot) are primarily these:

1) Better control of emotions and tilt during losing sessions
2) Play more hands
3) Become a regular contributor on the forums, get involved in the community
4) Watch all the relevant new series on DC (and keep taking notes and stay concentrated)
5) Always look at things with a critical or objective eye
6) Play your A-game (crush the game)

I’m tired of this career standstill and I have no one to blame but myself. Ever since my big win I pretty much gave up in order to ‘book it’, but now it’s time to get back in there, ante up and play some quality poker.

My poker career has sort of reached a standstill recently, mostly because of the low amounts of volume that I put in, but also because I’m having trouble finding sure footing in terms. I decided to break down a bunch of different poker games I play or could play.

NLHE MTTs

Pros:
- I have a lot of MTT experience and have developed a pretty solid strategy over the years.
- MTTs are easiest to multi-table
- A lot of tournaments are soft where players play straightforwardly and weak.
- Most of my best results are from tournaments, by far

Cons:
- High variance and relies on big scores to maintain a good profit
- Takes up a lot of time and commitment, which creates a motivation issue
- Hard to move up

NLHE 6-max cash

Pros:
- Quite experienced at NL with plenty of material to improve with
- Plenty of games

Cons:
- Games are relatively tough: too much material out there to learn NL and players are fairly aggressive/good hand readers
- Gets really tough once you move up
- Can be boring

PLO cash

Pros:
- Plenty of good games filled with weak players

Cons:
- High variance, can be frustrating
- Still learning the ins and outs of the game

Triple-draw

Pros:
- Very strong 2-7 game
- A lot of bad players

Cons:
- Only a few games going at once, if any
- Very swingy (especially when I take shots at 15/30 or play heads up)

Mixed games (7-game, 8-game)

Pros:
- Very weak tables where people play like at least two stake levels lower
- I’m a good all-rounder and can play all the games pretty well, especially relative to the field

Cons:
- Multiple games make it tougher to multi-table, especially with the stud games
- Sometimes only a couple games running at a time
- Unbalance of the games can be quite frustrating (PLO plays too big)

HU NL cash

Pros:
- High winrates in HU
- Can bumhunt pretty easily

Cons:
- High variance
- Need to become proficient at HU
- The nature of HU is too personal for me

There you have it: my entire range of options. The problem right now is I keep mixing them all and I think I should have a clear idea of what my primary game is and then concentrate on it instead of playing a billion different things at once.

Having listed everything in such a fashion, it seems like tournament poker is the best way to go for now, but I really need to sit down and commit myself to some full days. Having said that, I have a really busy week next week so I probably won’t get into the full swing of things for a while.

Decided to go with a new funky title to my blog, as “Ken Bloggs” wasn’t quite doing it for me and was always only a placeholder until I thought of a better title.

Just to explain what the title means: I did not choose it because I am a Battlestar Galactica fan or that this blog will have any content regarding that show. It is a cross between the 2+2 sub-forum “Beats, brags and variance” and a quote from The Office, “Bears. Beats. Battlestar Galactica.” I think it does a good job of summing up the nature of my blog.