Monday, February 22, 2010
Awesomeness Tilt
Well not really. But I have been tilting more than I should lately (which is at all). What tilts me is when I know on some level that my opponent has a big hand but go ahead and call (or even worse raise) anyway with some bogus justification about "not being exploited" because I have a decent hand too. The fact is that when some random on a Euro network makes a play in a certain pattern (I'm not going to say what these patterns are for obvious reasons :)), he's not carrying out a super-subtle double bluff, he just has it. A year ago I would just pay him off, go "ZOMG, cooler" and forget about it. Now I have been putting a lot of volume in (especially this month) I can see it happening but I can't find the discipline to fold. So I swear at the other guy (verbally not in the chat box) for being such a donk when I'm actually angry at myself.
What I need to do is find it in myself to say "Thanks for letting me know you have a monster when you get all the money if you play it normally - fold". If someone really is making these plays without the goods then it doesn't take long for this to become obvious - often before you've even got involved with them yourself. It's definitely best to give them credit the first time and make a note. I think it was Goldfinger who said "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action". Not a bad metric to use.
Anyway, until I can master the tilt-tasticness I'm going to cut down to 6 tables. Pruning out the three tables I know I have lowest expectation in anyway doesn't cost much. I'm also going to try to avoid the type of game that I know tilts me more, including heads up tournaments and super satellites. I don't play a lot of supers but I did try an Irish Open satellite on Boyle last night which I managed to bubble. I still picked up E2100 so it wasn't all bad but I was really kicking myself afterwards because at least twice I had a big enough stack to switch off, go to bed and still win the seat for sure. Once again I found myself railing at the other players (at the time) when I only had myself to blame really. Still, maybe if I kicked myself as hard all the times I donk out of a regular tournament when someone is shouting "big hand ! I have a big hand here !" at the top of their voice I might stop doing that too.
Despite all that I'm $10K up this month ($40K in $50K out). $40K is great volume in basically three weeks, as it happens that's about it for February as I'm very busy this week and then off on holiday for a week from Saturday, but it's all good.
Update : Chopped on Full Tilt for $14K so yeah, that seemed to work :)
What I need to do is find it in myself to say "Thanks for letting me know you have a monster when you get all the money if you play it normally - fold". If someone really is making these plays without the goods then it doesn't take long for this to become obvious - often before you've even got involved with them yourself. It's definitely best to give them credit the first time and make a note. I think it was Goldfinger who said "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action". Not a bad metric to use.
Anyway, until I can master the tilt-tasticness I'm going to cut down to 6 tables. Pruning out the three tables I know I have lowest expectation in anyway doesn't cost much. I'm also going to try to avoid the type of game that I know tilts me more, including heads up tournaments and super satellites. I don't play a lot of supers but I did try an Irish Open satellite on Boyle last night which I managed to bubble. I still picked up E2100 so it wasn't all bad but I was really kicking myself afterwards because at least twice I had a big enough stack to switch off, go to bed and still win the seat for sure. Once again I found myself railing at the other players (at the time) when I only had myself to blame really. Still, maybe if I kicked myself as hard all the times I donk out of a regular tournament when someone is shouting "big hand ! I have a big hand here !" at the top of their voice I might stop doing that too.
Despite all that I'm $10K up this month ($40K in $50K out). $40K is great volume in basically three weeks, as it happens that's about it for February as I'm very busy this week and then off on holiday for a week from Saturday, but it's all good.
Update : Chopped on Full Tilt for $14K so yeah, that seemed to work :)
Monday, February 01, 2010
January Wrap
Another strange month ; I had 2 1/2 weeks off in the middle where I barely played a hand, but still managed $24.6k in buyins, which I only topped in 5/12 months last year. Unfortunately I only returned $6.7k winnings for my worst online month, well ever I suppose. Ho hum. I need to find the correct balance with the new 30" screen ; at the moment I think 9-tabling 3x3 works best. Apart from that I'm really trying to focus on increasing volume and keeping my game as close to "A" as often as possible. These are both much more important than making my "A" game better. Using the radical plan of staying up later every night (not just when I'm playing), I hope to be able to put in longer sessions, have a better choice of tournaments to play and be more alert while I'm playing them. We'll see how that goes in February. I intend to pump up the volume.
In other news, Pokerswat have sold up and transferred their videos to DragTheBar. All the videos I made on Pokerswat are now available there. If you had a Pokerswat membership, that should carry over. I don't know whether I'm going to make any more.
In other news, Pokerswat have sold up and transferred their videos to DragTheBar. All the videos I made on Pokerswat are now available there. If you had a Pokerswat membership, that should carry over. I don't know whether I'm going to make any more.
