RLMSNGer: Veloblank

Listening to: King of Kings by Motorhead (King Leonidas Edition)
Watching: At Home with the Poker Superstars

I’m one to give credit where credit is due. Hollywood’s 1996 modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet has the line, “Romeo, thou art a villain,” in which John Leguizamo’s character Tybalt then spits on the ground. Seeing as I have been doing that since 2008 everytime I bubble in an SNG, I guess I’ll give credit where credit is due.

My last few games have been going pretty well. I no longer am throwing away the occasional buyin chasing down hands in the early/middle game of an SNG where I can just as easily fold and make my way to the push/fold game, where I increasingly am seeing an advantage for myself.

I played a few $5.50 regular speeds, got my money in good, but hated the fact that it took so long to get to push/fold. The little hole I dug playing those kept me busy at the $3.40 turboes for the rest of my poker playing today.

Finishing the $3.40s on a very positive note makes me feel very confident going into this week where I will be playing the $6.50 turboes again. My push/fold is constantly improving. I find more and more spots while I’m playing to push where I usually would have folded and missed a chance to pick up easy chips.

On a related note, I’m excited to be getting staked. I was able to find this post by Bones in which he describes moving up in stakes as 50% fear and 50% technical. I think getting staked will take care of almost all of this for me and get me confident in my game:

Bones:
I understand that they appear tougher. The point of my post is the play is still weak. Yeah, you might get called a bit wider and shoved into a bit more. We certainly want to help you guys grow and improve as players, but the adjustment to that is simply to put in more time with wiz and more focus on the changes in ranges. People are still making huge mistakes left and right. Look back at the 6 max vid I posted in the hitchhiker’s series. I believe it’s a 36 and people were chucking off ev left and right.

Moving up is probably 50% psychological and 50% technical. To those of you playing the 12s, think about the first time you lost 15 buyins at the 6s. Didn’t it make you sick? Didn’t it make you question whether you could beat these stakes? Didn’t the amount seem huge and the players soooo much better? After some grinding, after a few downswings, things didn’t seem so tough. It’s not like variance stopped hitting you or that players became terrible. You just got used to it and started noticing the mistakes of others.

I bet there are a bunch of you out there who feel like they’ve been beaten down by a particular level. I’m here to tell you that you can get through it. There is no level (below the 100s probably) that you can’t beat by just working hard with wiz and watching the vids we have up now. We can’t teach you to ignore the doubts that creep in on your first downswing at a level, or to approach your new buyin with the same critical eye as your previous one. Maybe Tommy Angelo can. It’s something that comes with experience and talking to people who are going through the same thing as you are.

All of that said, we will have more midstakes content in the near future. If you guys have questions on this stuff or on the psychology of moving up, I think we’re gonna do an “ask us” type thing for the final hitchhikers guide ep.