Doin' the job

I’m taking a couple of days off playing, as I mentioned in my last post, so I thought it would also be good to go back and review my fundamentals, so I’m re-watching tubasteve and n0whereman’s awesome series ‘From The Ground Up’. It’s probably been the most helpful video series I’ve watched so far on DC. I LOVE episode 3, where the guys go into so much depth about c-betting, board textures, bet-sizing on the flop and so on. It’s helped my flop game tremendously; where previously I would c-bet pot into 3 opponents on a T98 two tone board, now it’s finally dawned on me that it’s OK to raise preflop but check/fold horrible flops.

I think that was one of my biggest leaks – trying to take down every pot I was in, refusing to just let it go and move onto a better situation. Plus, playing on Full Tilt meant I was getting lazy and just hitting ‘pot’ every time I wanted to bet. Now I’m thinking about my game a lot more, always wanting to have a reason for betting (thanks BalugaWhale) and thinking about how much the bet should be, and why. Tubasteve, n0whereman and WiltOnTilt (in his Real Life Micro No Limit Grinder series) have all mentioned something that I think is interesting – you can alter your betsize based on the strength of your cards at the micro limits. Betting for value? Make it bigger. Just trying to take down the pot and pick up the dead money? Bet smaller. The fishy opponents that I’ve faced at 10NL really aren’t picking up on it.

So, when I can get back to playing in a few days, hopefully my game will be more solid, I’ll be more focused and thinking more about every action, rather than just 6-tabling on autopilot, playing for rakeback and to grind out 5ptbb/100 to move me up to 25NL. I’m going to play no more than 4 tables and really think about every action on every table.