Busy busy
Well as you can see my goal to regularly update my blog has gone to shit. I'm getting real bad at that lately. Lots of stuff going on. Somehow it seems like I have even less time as a pro poker player than I did sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours a day? Weird huh...?I think I might have lost touch with reality a bit... or maybe I'm just taking on additional responsibilities. For the last couple weeks Missy and I had been dog sitting her parent's mutt named Roscoe. For the most part he's a good dog...doesn't bark too much, generally has a pretty clueless demeanor about him (which is hilarious), and is fairly loving. Before meeting Roscoe I basically hated dogs, but for some reason he loved me from the start. It tends to make some people jealous though ;-) Here's a pic of Ros:
Who knew such a little dog could be such a handfull... of course most of the blame goes on me for being freakishly paranoid about him having an "accident" in our new house.
So besides that, my uncle and I are in the early stages of our own Internet business. I won't get too much into the details of it, but suffice to say it's going to start taking up a major part of our day if we actually make it happen. Jason and I have always wanted to do some sort of business together, and I think this one might acutally make it off the ground. Him being the database/data modeler guru and myself being the programmer, we can definitely make any website/application happen if we put our minds to it. It's a huge undertaking though, no question about that.
Oh yea, poker. Been playing a lot of that too... Poker is irritating me this month. I ran decently well for the first few days but it's been all downhill from there. The downswing started when I decided to follow a hugely known FTP fish and play some higher stakes. At first he sat at a 10/20nl table (which I've been wanting to take shots at anyway), so i quickly got a seat two to his left. A good place to be. Another seat opened and I had my buddy (jalexand42 on 2+2) snag it. He usually plays 2/4 and 3/6nl so understandably he didnt want to put up $2k to chase a fish. Well being the +EV bloodhound that I am, I offer to take half his action. Not after too long, he gets into a sweet spot vs the mark, with top two pair. Naturally the clown flopped bottom set so bam - jalexand gets stacked and I'm down a grand. Add in a few more missed flops and all of a sudden jalexand is down 2800, which means I'm out $1400. Oh well no big deal...then the fish sits at 25/50.
So I get on the waitlist for the 25/50nl table. There are a couple well known sharks sitting there as well, which makes me even more uneasy about taking a shot at stakes 5x what I normally play. I decide not to sit unless I get the seat directly to the fish's left - ie the "jesus seat" as it's known. Sure enough I do.
I went in with the plan of playing super tight, but as the game progressed I pretty much played my normal game preflop, and took one or two "variance reducing" lines postflop, and 251 hands later I was down just under $8,000. Great. Most of the pots I lost were medium-sized $3k to $4k pots... stuff like I reraise 2 guys with KK, flop comes A high and I shutdown after a bet. Or I have JJ vs KK and I lose the minimum (which is still like 1500 heh). Or I just reraise pre and miss the flop all together. Standard stuff.
So obviously that puts a dent in my month since I'll have to make it all back at 5/10nl. As the month stands now, I'm at 28,560 hands and $8,177.75, which is pretty terrible. About 1/3 of those hands are at 2/4 and 3/6, the rest at 5/10 save for 500 or so hands at 10/20 and 25/50.
So after the shot taking failed, I ended up running terribly at 5/10nl as well. I've made a few bad calls and bluffs, and I've played a little more LAG this month which has made me more inclined to make some additional speculative calls, throw in a day where I lost 5 different stacks on beats of 3 outs or less (not a fun day) and you have my current monthly total. Oh well, as the saying goes "that's poker!"
I need to try and get away from 8 tabling once I get into a big hole. I did that last month when I was down so much at one point. I've become very good at handling 8 tables at once, but I really think I'd play better if I stuck to only 6. It's hard to justify to myself playing fewer hands after losing to a bunch of beats and setups though. At that point, I just want to get to the "long run" that much quicker, but I need to learn to be a bit more patient. There are some people that think it's simply impossible to have a good grasp on the table dynamics when playing so many tables. I would agree somewhat, but with practice I think I've done a good job at it...That said, playing so many tables doesn't help me learn and think through every situation as closely as I could on only 6, and if my ultimate goal is to make it to 10/20nl and higher, I think I need to get back to playing fewer tables to concentrate on playing perfect poker.
Here are a couple fun hands for you to ponder. I think I played these pretty well, but without some well thought out reads and history, I wouldn't advise trying this at home:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?897712
http://www.pokerhand.org/?897717
http://www.pokerhand.org/?897732
Let me know if you have any questions on those hands.
Mom and dad are going to be in town this week, and on Friday Missy and I are road tripping to her family's house in North Carolina for the week...which means I'll be without Internet and poker for 7 straight days. It's going to be tough, but I'll have the laptop with my latest pokertracker db to analyze some hands while I'm away. I'll try to throw an update before we leave, but honestly with Mom and Pop in town, I probably won't get too many hands in anyway.
Run better - Play better,
Aaron
posted by WiltOnTilt at 2:26 AM
3 Comments:
Aww, you just being up 8k for the month just pure breaks my heart man! You fight through that shit :).
Interesting stuff though, donk chasing up to 5x the stakes. A shame you didn't have a friend to stake you there.
Good luck with the business!
kristian, I can understand the sentiment about only 8k but it really does suck for the number of hands I've put in.
Maybe it will break your heart that I'm now even on the month :-/ I'm going to make another post before I leave town... ugh.
Sorry about that. I wish you better luck soon, and I am sure it will come to you.
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