Friday, October 17, 2008

Where have I been?

I have been absent in most blogger tournaments as of late, and the reason sounds insulting. It's because I am working on my game. No offense to the blogger games which are great, but they are usually 3-5 tables (never more than 10 unless there is some event) and I have been working on something that has completely TANKED my 2008 results. Big field Tournaments. I am so negative EV this year, it already will go down as my first losing year. Big losses too. Since I am playing a couple of $24s a day and when I cash its usually around $40 (somewhere around 100 out of 1000). So the money is DRAINING. But the irony is that my play is improving dramatically in these events.

Yesterday, I went down in flames at the 90 minute mark. But, I never got my money in behind. Not once. And this is part of the battle. I am working on understanding things like how to play TT on a Q73 board (it can be correct to CHECK here for VALUE). I am understanding chip utility and why we raise with TT when under 60 BB, yet we call with them when over 60 BB. Most of all, I am working on narrowing hand ranges of my opponent so I know if a bet accomplishes anything. This is so important to the level 2 play and we take it for granted sometimes because so many decisions are not mind benders that we get them right by accident.

I am working through some ideas around having a mentor. Not a trivial investment of time. and I continue to play, play, play to see the patterns, absorb the context of the hands, and to understand what makes a decision 'correct'.

Last week in my league game, Scott pwned me with A2S (any two suited) not because I worked out the hand wrong, but because I REMEMBERED it wrong! How stupid is THAT? I attributed a button raise to him when it was a button call and had I remembered the sequence right, I could have gotten away from 2 pair. But somehow with the blood flowing to my head, I made a grievous mistake. Stoopid, stoopid, stoopid. (hit head).

I have gone through and updated my 3 page poker guide (no its not posted) on how I play hands and made adjustments for what I learned so far this year. Really good adjustments.

I am coming for your chips soon...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

So good......

Anonymous said...

I remember you complaining about variance in the past (and 10+ table MTTs are more variance than 3-tables)... the new Full Tilt Matrix sit-n-gos reduce variance even further. If you do well (say, finish 1st-2nd-2nd-xxx) you'll win less than if you played 4 cheaper sit n gos, but if you do worse, you'll lose a bit less. Another way Full Tilt can help you lessen your variance at smaller games.