Folding Pocket Aces

Well I haven’t posted much lately. I’m blame laziness. ;) I’ve wanted to post about my 2010 goals and such but I haven’t really defined them yet and to be honest, I don’t really have any other then just learning the most I can and going as high up in stakes as I can.

With that said, things have been going well for me since the beginning of the year. I started off at 5NL, built up my BR to start taking shots at 10NL. My first shot at 10NL didn’t go so well so I had to move back down and build up my BR again. I went on a pretty sick heater and took a shot by the next weekend, had a good run and was able to stay there. With the help of my friend/coach Ryan I was able to start patching a major leak in my game; playing too passively. Playing passively works fine for 5NL and you can still crush the game pretty well with that style of play but once you hit 10NL it just doesn’t work.

My second shot at 10NL went fairly smooth and I was able to build my BR pretty fast to start taking shots at 25NL. Clearing two Stellar Bonuses and exchanging some points for the F40 Bonus helped a lot. I didn’t really want to stay at 10NL for all that long. I expected 25NL to be nearly the same skill level as 10NL so there wasn’t really any reason to stay there.

I was finally able to take my first shot at 25NL yesterday. I had already decided to limit it to 3~4BI depending on if I was playing horribly or if I was just running bad. My first session went well; I finished up by half a BI. Had one or two weird spots but nothing really special. I did win my second biggest pot of my poker life which was awesome. My biggest pot was at the end 2008 when I first started playing seriously. I reviewed that hand and to be honest, I should have folded it. I had hit a 3 outer on the river to hit a straight beating out 2 pair. I’ll be able to best that pot size sooner then later.

After a short break, I decided to start up a second session. This session was just a bad day on the losing side of variance. I lost a few big pots which put me down 4BI for the session. KK vs AA, QQ vs AA, both against the same guy on two different tables. KK vs 75s where he hit his flush on the river and last, top set of Qs against A7s and he hit his flush on the turn.

Overall, I think I can beat 25NL. Sure I only played about 1500 hands but I felt that the general game play at 25NL was somewhat weaker then at 10NL. It could have also just been the tables I was sitting at. But for now, I’m back in the 10NL camp till I rebuild my BR to be able to take my second shot at 25NL. Hopefully I’ll have a similar experience to what happened at 10NL and my second shot will be on the good side of variance.

I may try and build up to more then 20BI before I take another shot. Since 25NL is 2.5 times the BI for 10NL, the losses are greater when you move down. I’m thinking of building up to 24~25BI before taking another shot, that way I can take 5~7BI to take my shot which should make the transition easier. We’ll see.

That’s about it for now I guess. I’ll try and post a bit more regularly in the upcoming weeks.