Secrets of the Amateurs

Quite a lot happening lately. I've hit a bit of form on Pokerstars and Full Tilt with some nice results in the last 2 weeks. It's very interesting playing those games at the moment ; in my opinion (FWIW) the regs in the bigger tournaments on Stars and Tilt are making some plays that are quite exploitable. It's funny how they all copy each other as well. Obviously I'm not going to say what these plays are right now. Plays might be the wrong word, it's more strategic than tactical in some areas. All very cryptic, but you'll just have to work it out for yourself :)

I have also decided to step it up online, push for 30-35 hours a week rather than my lazy 15 and see how that goes. If you look at the really big winners on the databases, one thing you notice is that they rarely pass up an opportunity to play big field tournaments for decent stakes, meaning Sundays and festivals. Now, I have a major problem with the way Stars run their festivals because structures are too slow (you heard me) and many tournaments run for 18+ hours at a stretch, which I think is just plain unhealthy. FTOPs, which run every 3 months now, and the various Euro festivals are something I will be focussing on though, with of course ECOOP coming up on Boyles next week.

As for Sundays, I think I have been leaving money behind by not extending my Sunday sessions. I played till 5am last Sunday and still felt good till the end, albeit I was one-tabling for at least the last 3 hours. So the plan is to play later sessions Friday through Monday, with Tuesday to Thursday as recovery time. Again, this is similar to how some of the big winners seem to operate. A couple more decisions I have made are not to talk about stats and numbers on here - they're all out there if you look for them, start off on Pocketfives under 'Bonified', most of my screen names are on there, then you can check other databases ; and I'm not going to the WSOP. Definitely. 100%. Well 95. Don't put me in any of your prop bets or fantasy teams anyway. I am thinking about trying to track a reasonable number of players at this year's WSOP though, now that so many people are on Twitter and such and there are no rebuy events, it's a lot easier to track buyins, so it would be interesting to make some kind of measurement (statistically insignificant though it might be) of ROI.

Anyway, I shall be modelling myself on Phil Ivey for the foreseeable future :). Tough call, but you have to aim high ! Basically STFU and get the money. If I get annoyed with everyone in poker who wants to talk the talk without backing it up, the least I can do is set an example to myself.