I feel pretty good as well – obviously nl5 is not the most challenging of levels, but I actually believe that I properly outplayed them and deserved every penny. The last 1k of that is nl10, and that’s going nicely too (a lot less passive, but they’re still moronic).

All I need to do now is not drift and put some volume in. Stick to the plan, keep a level head etc. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do since everyone else I know is splashing around nl25 – nl100 now, but it’s not a big deal. I’m still learning the game…

Didn’t go so well;

I did clear $5 of the bonus during that disaster though!

Everything I did seemed to meet some kind of resistance – flop cbet success only 45%, 3bets all over the place, and generally everything was awful.

I looked back over the hands, and of course there were some terrible ones – usually 3 barrel bluffs, but not too much that I should be ashamed of.

So I dropped down in stakes just to stop the bleed, and gave up on the bonus.

Instantly there was a difference – my cbets were working! They folded to my steals, they folded to my 3bet defending in the blinds, they even started paying off the odd hand or two;

Flop cbet success now at a reasonable 60%.

Small sample size (in both cases really), but I can’t believe nl5 should be so different to nl10. Surely they should be more or less the same?

Either there IS a difference, and everyone’s solid at nl10 (!?!), or I experienced a bad downswing – my opponents really did just ‘have it’ each and every time.

I also can’t believe I’m still writing about these nanostakes, but maybe understanding these swings is part of the learning process. I’ve never put in large amounts of volume, and over-reacting to swings in the BR like this has probably not been too healthy. Never mind, I’ll just enjoy the game for being a game for now…

My winrate also nose-dived, which was then further compounded by a quick go on Rush which of course also crashed. I returned to two tables on Cake, and then had one of my worst sessions ever (in bb, had worse in $$$). I spewed a bunch of stacks, and then ran some more stacks into better hands, and it just kept going. In the end I’d lost 7 buy-ins in just over an hour. To make it extra humiliating, the results charts was a straight diagonal line from top left to bottom right – this wasn’t a winning session ruined by some lost stacks, this was pure fishbowl territory

My game is clearly a disaster. I might have learnt a lot about poker, and played a lot of hands, but I’m doing it wrong. Very wrong.

Yegor suggested LeakBuster (is he the only one who suggests anything to me around here?), and we had a play with the trial version and it looked useful. It analyses your stats from HEM, and points out areas where you’re deviating from what’s commonly held to be sensible. The trial version pointed out a few things, but I needed to buy it ($50) to get the full functionality. Since I’d just spewed more than that in an hour, the price didn’t look too bad.

I’m aware these are just stats though – I saw a quote on 2p2 that was made the point perfectly; ‘Solid poker makes good stats, solid stats doesn’t make good poker’

If I’m going to make this program work for me, I’ll need to be careful to understand how to change my game in response to what it’s telling me. I need to change my strategy, which will change the stats, not play to change the stats directly.

Unfortunately it was telling me a lot! Everything was out of whack one way or another. It was almost overwhelming and not clear what to tackle first. The big leak that seemed to be costing me money was W$SD & WTSD% – I was seeing showdowns too often, and usually with not the best hand. I watched their video on calling light, but it didn’t really help (combinatrics!).

Then I realised that it was also telling me these things;

a) My opening range was poor – too loose and too many problem hands.
b) I wasn’t cbetting enough
c) I wasn’t folding after being raised on the flop
d) I wasn’t folding to flop cbets enough
e) I was calling 3bets too light.

If I corrected all these actions, then that would mean more folding during the hand, and would reduce my WTSD%. Which would then make my showdowns a bit more ‘quality’, and improve the W$SD.

So I’ve gone right back to basics, and created (shock horror) a starting hand chart! I then dived into some nl5 Rush and held myself to that chart, cbet loads more, folded loads more, and generally concentrated like mad on those 5 points above.

It was tricky to remember other elements of the game while concentrating on those key points – my defending of the blinds virtually disappeared (not a big problem in the short term though), and I found myself only open-raising or folding pre (PP’s being the only hand I called to earlier bet). I managed 500 hands (didn’t start until late), and it was reasonably succesful. Perhaps two hands I should really have let go (JJ overpair calling down to see QQ was one), plus a couple of bad beats (QJ 2pair seeing AA all-in on flop, turn & river were both 5). My WTSD% stat improved, but sample size is way too small. I’m going to play sets of 10k hands and then re-analyse with leakbuster. Might even blog my progress if it’s not too dull

Nevertheless, I seem to be doing ok despite what this chart looks like;

The dive downwards was the spewy aggrotard mood that I mentioned in the last post. Autostealing every blind and easily knocking everyone off their hand had made me a bit slaphappy, plus I really saw the $10 stacks as more or less worthless and so stacked off too light too many times.

So yesterday I returned to taking things a bit more seriously and thought that I needed to force myself to just ignore the 4 buy-in spew since it was going to take quite a few hands to climb back up. Somehow though I hit hand after hand and everyone seemed happy to throw their stacks at me. So I managed to win it back in less hands than I lost it, an incredible swing really.

Single tabling is still enjoyable (well obv when stacks are flying like this), being able to chat while playing is fun and action hasn’t been so slow as get boring. No desire to add a second table yet, and even if I did I think even one more table would negate the whole reason I decided to single table. I just imagine myself playing live and it all seems reasonable.

Less said about the cash games the better. As I said before, not going back there ever again (well, apart from the inevitable HU cash games I guess);

Feel free to shoot the ducks…

After 600 hands I was down $27 (NL10). I stopped playing and thought how familiar this was. Every 6max session lately has been a losing one. Not suckouts or bad beats either, just me being spewy.

So I went back to husngs ($10 ones – Monday’s always a bad day, so wanted to play for fun rather than pushing myself into $20s). Six games later I was still unbeaten. $57 from an hour’s play.

What’s the point in playing 6max? Obviously none at all. I’m down $180 this year playing that stupid game, while I’m up $460 playing husngs.

So, time to give up playing anything else other than heads up (well, apart from some MTTs just for the big event of it).

The bad was my cash games – I started out the month after some in depth revision of my play, and came to the conclusion I was pushing too hard with paired hands (not PP) – overvaluing them and trying to get too much value. I was doing well at all-in play, and making good value out of 2pair+ hands, but the weaker made hands were wiping out those gains.

So I trimmed down my game and initially it seemed to be working – a nice 12 buy-in climb. It then collapsed dramatically, and to be honest I’m still not sure why;

At the bottom of that dive Full Tilt bought out Rush Poker, and I instantly switched, lured in by the appeal of big rakeback and racking up a large volume of hands. I’m not a big volume player, and the idea of boosting the number of hands was to reduce variance, but somehow I became swingier then ever. I possibly could have worked my way back to zero, but I was dispirited with the whole thing. My new year’s resolution was to not care about the limits I play, and just go with my bankroll, which is still fine, but it hurt to be within $8 of moving down to NL5

However  at that point I switched to husngs. Which was the good half of the month

For some reason I’ve been unstoppable – $5 buy-in games went fine, enough to give me confidence with the $10s. I then won 75% of $10 games – 17/23! Yesterday I tried some $20 games (not january I know), and won 2/3, so early days there – however the cash profit from these is astounding. Furthermore I’m not feeling bad (much) when I lose a match, not like when I’ve just spewed 4 buy-ins at NL10 – however that could be because I’m on a winning streak, sooo I’m not going to make too much of that right now.

Final gains: $120 including Rakeback. $70 without rb – have to admit, rush poker did win in that respect!

February I’m concentrating on HU. Maybe this is a turning point in what kind of game I play, we’ll have to see…

ps. forgot to mention 21st in the WBCOOP main event as well

Also got two weeks of stox from trulyfree, better get watching some vids I guess!