February Round Up

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Below I have posted my February poker graph and, as you can probably tell, it wasn't my best month to date by any stretch of the imagination. Between my winnings, rakeback and any other bonuses I made approximately $3350 (£1640) over the course of the month but only managed a pathetic 57 hours and 39,500 hands. Too often I allowed myself to become frustrated, tilted and then forced to leave the game. This month wasn't about bad beats but instead coolers and bad spots. I seemed to find my money in the middle time and time again with bleak prospects and yet I honestly do believe I was playing well overall.

I have now played over 150,000 full ring hands and have been beating the game by a level that is more than enough to make a comfortable living from and yet each month I seem only able to scrape by enough hours/hands to keep me from going under. It's the same mental issues that are holding me back and for that reason I'm going to be working hard on plugging these leaks as opposed to working on any new strategies or ways of actually playing the game. What is important for me is to learn to take beat after beat and cooler after cooler and still plug away putting in the hours. I need to learn to see poker in the long term and not to obsess over day to day or even week to week results or fluctuations in my bankroll. To this end I ordered the "The Poker Mindset" from the Full Tilt store and can't wait for it to arrive as it will hopefully provide insight into where I'm going so badly wrong. I guess the first step is admitting that I have a problem and hopefully acknowledging that my 'mental approach' to poker is truly fish like will help me move forward. I have been making some slow progress - the self-imposed chat ban for one - but I really need to get to grips with this.

In other news this month, my brother found a simply amazing freeroll in which 9 people entered with the first 3 finishers earning entry into the Great British Poker Tour events at the Edinburgh Maybury Casino. 1st = £500 event, 2nd = £200 and 3rd = £100 event. My brother and I came first and second respectively in what was the weakest field of players I have encountered in years. We both got nailed by three outers for nearly all our chips and some point in the tournament but nevertheless battled back with basically no showdowns.

Malcy failed to make it to the second day in the Main Event and I went out approximately 40th in a field of 146. I can't be bothered to recite all the specific hands but I was very pleased with my live tournament game. I quickly had the measure of everyone at the table and was employing strategies against them all and in particular abusing two week blinds as the levels rose. I worked my stack from 7500 to 22000 without ever putting all my chips on the line or having a significant showdown. Being Table 1 there was no risk of breaking, I was chip leader at my table (or thereabouts) and was settling into a routine of profiting from each round through stealing and re-stealing. Then the only hand of note from my tournament occurred:

I was in the BB and it folded to the SB who limped in. The SB had shown a willingness to attack the blinds in the past but had also shown a tendency to pay to see a flop but play weak thereafter. I looked down at AJo and elected to raise only to be quickly re-raised all in by the SB who clutched his stack and firmly stamped it down on the felt. I went into the think-tank and reviewed our previous encounters and the way he had thus far played his hands. I also considered his physical actions which were a clear attempt to appear strong and concluded that he seldom had my badly dominated in this spot. Furthermore, if he did have a dominating hand and had raised into me our stacks would have found their way into the middle anyway such was the blinds vs stacks structure. I could have folded with approximately 13k back, called and lost and have 7k back or called and won for 30k. I concluded that the 7 and 13k stacks would play almost identically in the current structure but that the 30k stack would really allow me to lean on and pressure the weaker/tighter players at the table. This was a spot to get my stack in calling and I did so to find villain holding a terribly played 95s. I hit an ace on the first card out but he went on to make a flush by the river. The levels progressed and I found no opportunities to attempt to steal or take down the blinds and I eventually died a slow and horrible death. I even remained calm despite the rage inside me regarding 95s boy's terrible play. I've not given you all the dynamics of the stacks/binds but trust me his play was stupid and he didn't have much fold equity unless I had a truly, truly terrible hand. His defence when questioned by another player at the table was, "somebody had to make a stand against him" which I find funny because with him being to my immediate right I hadn't stolen from him once and had even allowed him to limp in heads up a few times in the past.

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