I’m afraid I haven’t played any poker since getting that NL10 kicking (well, almost – picked up $6 later that afternoon at NL5, but that’s it). I think making sure I played every day for the Take 2 promo, getting close to NL10 move up threshold again, and then getting beat back down has taken the wind out of my sails a bit. I’ll get going again soon I should think.
In the meantime I’ll babble randomly – Poker Shortcuts is working out really well for me. There have been a couple of misclicks where I was about to click elsewhere and a table suddenly pops up resulting in me clicking on the fold button. Nothing too drastic lost from that so far (a few PP’s preflop and a 2pair that was probably beat which maybe was a good thing), but going to have to be careful. I’m still a bit uncertain about the automatic betsizing, but warming to it – generally the size is pretty much what I want it. Sometimes it looks an odd amount though, like $0.67 or $0.53, but I’ve noticed some people commenting on the odd sizes and putting it down to bad play (why, I’ve no idea). If that’s the effect then it’s fine by me.
Despite my playing hiatus, I’ve come to the realisation that the only way to really win at this game is to play lots and lots of hands. I’ve been too concerned with the short term ups & downs, and need to put in the hours to see through the variance. I also need to do that to make the bankroll grow at a significant rate. Perhaps obvious really, but I was listening to a pokerroad podcast and the guy on it was asked for his most key advice – he said 3 things;
- Follow proper bankroll management
- Play lots of hands
- Don’t ever withdraw
Sounds obvious and simple, except that it’s easier said than done. It all makes sense too – play lots of hands to reduce variance and build bankroll quicker, if you downswing move down in stakes to avoid destroying all that work, and don’t take any backward steps by withdrawing. Obviously you will want to withdraw at some point, but not if you want to keep moving up. If I hadn’t withdrew 3 months ago, I’d be almost at NL25 by now (um, unless it went downhill of course, which it probably would have). So, that’s my plan now.
ps congrats to Kevin on the microstakes msn chat group – he placed 1st in a $2 MTT for $200 the other day. No idea if he reads my blog, but nice win buddy…
Ill-advised move anyway though really.
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