mathare's Poker Diary

[mathare]

27th May 2010
Business as usual then. Two Rush Poker tables for a couple of hours trying to get through 1500+ hands, rack up at least a hundred loyalty points and see what happens. And what happens is I lose a couple of buy-ins with some poor play and some poor luck. Overall I think I played reasonably well, making good decisions the vast majority of the time but I did get frustrated a couple of times and make bets I could have made smaller or even kept back but generally speaking I am happy enough.

The biggest losing hands I had were:

AKo v 33 - villain flopped a set, I flopped top pair and as the board started to come non-threatening I thought I was ahead and put in more than perhaps I should have
KK v AKs - I flop a set and eventually suck all the villain's stack into the middle on the flop only for him to hit a runner-runner straight. I was 95% to win that hand but these things happen

And that's about it as far as significant losing hands go, not too bad really.

One thing I have noticed when I play is that I often try to avoid building too big a pot when perhaps I should be betting more, and more often. If I raise pre-flop and get a couple of callers the pot is around 10xBB when the flop comes down. A c-bet of 6-7xBB called in at least one place gives a pot of between 20 and 25xBB. On the turn I tend to hang back and if I bet I may bet only 10xBB or something, when I should be looking at more like 18-20xBB if I have a decent hand. Maybe I am letting villains off too lightly. Maybe I am actually too scared to risk a big chunk of my stack on this one pot and that's something I will need to overcome if I am to learn to play this game properly. It's something to bear in mind. I'm not going to have big wins unless I am willing to take the risks with my chips. Not silly risks mind, but betting proper amounts on the later streets.

[mathare]

28th May 2010
Another day, another losing Rush Poker session.

It's beginning to dawn on me that I'm not going to crack this game in a hurry, if at all. I am winning fairly small pots but losing some big ones. Not too many big ones, and to bad luck admittedly, but the combination of small wins and big losses all adds up to an overall loss.

Today's slices of bad luck include:

KK v 97s - I was building a nice pot with this hand on a non-threatening board only for the villain to pair on the turn and make trips on the river. That damn river did for me again! I had him crushed till then. Ah well. That was a painful pot to lose too.

AA v Q9o - cold-calling a re-raise pre-flop with Q9o, what was the villain thinking? I sucked all his chips in with aggressive bets and raises but he turned a straight on a board of K-T-6-J-8 and that was the end of that hand for me.

I've got nearly 45,000 hands of Rush Poker in my database now and the figures don't look that promising, truth be told. The last few days I have been hopeful of turning it round but for whatever reason I just don't think NLHE cash is my game. I have been browsing my PT3 database and my own spreadsheet records and am unable to get away from the fact that it's SnGs that seem to be the money-maker for me so why aren't I playing them? I want to finish off that initial deposit bonus which should take me another week or so if I play Rush Poker and then that's me done there, I'm switching to SnGs again. I have just over 500 $5 SnGs in the database and I want to get that up to 1000. At least that's the latest plan but am I not now changing a plan I made only a few days back? So we'll see how the SnG plan changes once I get started, eh?

[mathare]

6th June 2010
Don't talk to me about poker plans! I've changed my mind yet again but this time I feel pretty confident that the decision is the right one. I've said that before, I know, but my reasoning this time is sound and solid so it stands to reason that plans based on such thinking must also be right, no?

It was while playing a few SnGs the other day that it hit me. I had my moment of clarity if you like. Before I get to that, why was I playing SnGs? Wasn't the idea to unlock the bonus through Rush Poker, quit that and play SnGs for profit? That was one version of the plan, yes. Then I had yet another really rough Rush Poker session, crunched a few numbers and realised I could still unlock the remainder of my initial deposit bonus playing $5 SnGs, which would get be back into the swing of things before I stepped up to $10 SnGs for 'proper' play. So I spent an afternoon at the SnG tables, broke even and had my epiphany.

I had anything up to 4 SnG tables on the go, which is not unusual for me when I play these events. But I was barely paying them any attention. My focus was on my spreadsheets, on Betfair, this forum, my email and everywhere but the card tables. I was flicking back to them when they beeped, taking my action and then moving back to whatever I was doing when the beeping poker table so rudely interrupted me.

If I could give the game my all, focus properly and play the game to the best of my ability I could do quite well I reckon. But for whatever reason I can't do that at present, and haven't been able to for some time now. And it's not just SnGs, it's any form of poker. I just don't care enough about the game I am playing to give it the attention it deserves and requires. Maybe it's the stakes that are the problem. I can have $10 on a Rush Poker table yet have a couple of hundred quid at risk on a horse race - where's my attention going to be? Yes, I can influence what happens to the $10 far more than I can the result of the horse race but my attention follows the money.

So what am I to do? Isn't it obvious? I'm giving up poker for a while. How long? I don't know but I know this is the right decision. If I can't give the game the focus it needs then I am just throwing money away by playing. And wasting my time, time that could be better spent elsewhere. So that's what I will do with it.

I finished off that bonus this morning though, and surprisingly I had a fantastic session at the Rush Poker tables. My best ever in fact, winning a little over $40. At one point I even started to consider reversing my decision to quit the game but no, I know that taking a long break from poker is the right decision. The fact of the matter is I got hit in the face by the deck this morning. In 1630 hands I got dealt pocket Aces 16 times, over twice as often as I 'should'. And I was blessed post-flop too, taking down a lot more hands than I expect to in a session like this. I know not every session will be like this, far from it, and that this was just a freak but a nice way to end things. My records show way too many big losing sessions and when I do have winning sessions they are small compared to the losers. Winning small but losing big is not a good way to play poker.

I think I also see cash and tourney stacks differently. I know how to move my tourney chips about and how to use my stack. I'm not sure I do in cash games, at least not as well. Perhaps it's the fact that each and every cash game chip has a set value whereas that's not the case for tourney chips. In an SnG I know the value of my chips changes with increasing blinds and I know how to take appropriate risks and when to step back from a pot. I can't find that approach so easily in cash games. I am left guessing too often, perhaps reluctant to build a pot that represents a large portion of my stack even though a few dollars is hardly here nor there in the grand scheme of things. It's a mental barrier I just find hard to break down so I am not getting full value for some of my big hands and losing big pots with some more marginal holdings. I'm a better tourney player than a cash player, I have come to accept that now.

So that's me done with the virtual felt for a while, hopefully a long while. No point throwing more money away on something I'm not concentrating on properly. I don't put random fivers on horses picked with a pin so why take an analagous approach to my poker? At some point in the future when things have settled down a bit with my other gambling activities and I have a nice regular income I may sit back down at the poker tables and play for small sums, just to keep my hand in. But I have other, more important things that demand my attention now. And unlike poker, the things I have planned can be interrupted, picked up and dropped as and when. I can give them attention in small bursts and not really suffer as a result.