Friday 27 February 2009

Month End Heaters Tradition Resumes

Update: I've run pretty decently most of this week. Actually, I shouldn't say that. I've actually played really decently this week despite running what I believe to be average. 18ptBB/100 for the past few days, but super small sample: 20ptBB/100 at 100NL and 17ptBB/100 at 50NL since Tuesday. 8ptBB/100 for the week in total.

Project: I've done a ton of thinking about my game and strat in general and I've been trying out a few things very successfully like adjusting bet sizes more and really really thinking through hands and maximizing against ranges. The less tables I play, the more I can put people on narrower and narrower ranges which is huge for me. So much of this game is counter-intuitive.

The one thing I am definitely working on right now is blind defence. I think this is one of the bigger leaks in my game right now and I'm watching a 10 part series (long yes?) by Ed Miller regarding this topic.

It's probably not the most important thing out there in the micros since there's so much value to be had in other spots that make up for it by far. But my goal for this year is to improve each part of my game wherever I am finding leaks and trying to plug them. There's probably much bigger leaks that I have than giving up blinds to easily, but I've been thinking about this topic and this week it sounds interesting to me, so that's what I'll be working on.

I'm trying to put together a list of skillsets and theoretical topics that are involved in this game. I'm in the process of organizing everything into categories right now and how they inter-relate. Then I can go through them and rate myself on each skillset and figure out how knowledgeable I am about each topic, then pick one and read and watch and study everything I can find regarding that for 1-2 weeks. Then put it into practice, re-rate that skill, and move on to the next.

It gives me a sense of tangible/optical progression, rather than seeing a 1ptBB/100 increase in winrate and thinking, gee, does that mean improvement or am I running good? I won't know for another 50k hands without something tangible to back it up. Build confidence in your game regardless of whether you are running good or bad.

Kind of like leveling up your characters' skillsets in the old SNES RPGs for those that were born in the 80s like me. FF3 (FF6 to you non-N. Americans) FTW. Level 80 Mog is going to kick ass regardless of whether or not he takes some unlucky beats. I want to be a Level 80 Mog.

Monday 16 February 2009

Quick Update: Thoughts on Multi-Tabling

I haven't posted an update in a while. Basically because I've felt like not much has been going on. I slacked off way too much in January and didn't get my 10k points in (lol) to maintain Supernova, so I can't miss another month or I'll lose it.

I'm back on track for that now mostly by playing a good deal of 50NL. I've finally also accepted that my priorities wrt my goals are actually backwards. Thanks to The Data Kid for pointing a lot of this out to me. He's helped me out a lot with discussions on improving and tilt and all sorts of other stuff.

My goal is to be reg'ing it up at 100NL and 200NL by the end of the year at which point I think I will have found my full ring home. So in order to achieve that you obviously need the bankroll for it. My take on this until recently has been to mass table (18-24) to build the bankroll. This is just wrong, because my game is not up to standard to be able to be a 100NL-200NL reg and even if I do achieve the required bankroll by mass tabling, it won't help me anyways because the skill is just not there yet.

So I've cut down on tables to work on improving my game. I dropped down to 8 at first and ended up getting really spewy because I had too much time to think about decisions and I was outleveling myself a lot and making a lot of FPS plays. The change was too drastic. So I went back up to 12 and I've found that to be relatively comfortable and I'm picking up on a lot more spots where I can bluff profitably without it involving FPS.

Other than that, I thought I was running fairly decent lately. I have obviously broken the habit of looking at my graph and cashier box due to the fact that I had no idea until yesterday that I was on a massive breakeven swong for 35k hands. That's oddly discouraging and encouraging at the same time. I'll just look at the positive =) Most of it is running hot at 50NL, downswinging at 100NL, and breakeven at 25NL.

I can honestly say that I've only spewed 2 buyins this month which is also encouraging and after reviewing my database pretty much everything else is coolers and beats, by far the majority being coolers (set over set, KK vs AA, flush < flush). So overall I'm starting to like the mindset I'm in of the graph/money doesn't matter as long as I feel like I'm playing well and improving.

Oh and I'm almost finished clearing my $1500 bonus so that will be nice to have. I suspect a bout 1/2 of it my be going to new tires on my car though which I have been putting off for a while.