Saturday 30 June 2012

Poker Rust -- Possibly Burnout

I haven't updated in a while until my previous post today regarding the WSOP Ladies Event (see below). I've had this nasty cold/flu that's been lingering for the past 6 weeks. I've been completely exhausted, although I am actually starting to feel much better this week.

It kind of put a damper on my poker volume this month. I believe there was a 6 day stretch in there where I didn't even sit at my computer at all nevermind log in to Stars. I probably haven't spanned more than 36 hours between log ins at any point in the last 5 years until this month. I just didn't have the will power to put in any sessions.

My break was somewhat mentally refreshing, but now that I'm back at it I'm feeling either a bit of rust, or perhaps it's cash game burnout. Either way my tilt meter has been off the charts and I haven't been able to get back in the zone I was in the past two months and decided I needed a change of scenery.

As per usual when I feel like this, I somehow immediately think PLO is the interesting choice only to be quickly reminded that this is not a game for someone looking for stability. So I've been dabling in SnG's again. I think what I like about them is that it negates the waiting game that you usually experience in cash games with rising blinds forcing the action. I like MTTs for the same reason but the time committment with usually nothing to show for it is a game breaker for me. I also seem much more capable of compartmentalizing a beat in an SnG as well and not letting it affect my other games.

I started with the $7 turbo 9-mans and ran like absolute death. I don't know how accurate or to what degree to trust the HM2 Luck Adjusted Winnings, but over my first 50 games (lol sample size) I was at +3% EV while at -65% reality.

I then decided to drop down to the $3.50 turbo 6-mans. I always did reasonably well converting FPPs into T$ in the 235 FPP Sunday Million satellites before Stars made the cash bonuses much more managable (yay result of my March IOM meeting presentation! toot toot!) and these are the closest thing I could find without playing the actual hyper-turbos as I wanted something with a bit more depth and ability to multi-table. I instantly flipped the switch and ran like god. My EV line is matching my results but I started getting dealt premiums left and right and getting them AIPF and holding a lot. Currently running at 26% ROI in those games over about 100 so far. I think I'm going to stick it out there for 1000 games and then move back up.

In that short time span the one thing I've learned so far is to really get a feel for how the final three is going to play out on top of the standard push fold strategy. With the $7's I think I was much too happy to push a tiny edge against wide range donks and maniacs only to end a ton of them in 3rd place on a 55/45. I've realized for this level I can abuse the weak tights to no end, but can sit back and outlast the shove calling fest of the people donking around and then outplay HU and tailor my three handed play accordingly.

I've created a spreadsheet with every 6+ man NLHE SnG variant which I'll add later tonight. Super handy if you're trying to figure out where to start by filtering for game formats, speeds or buyins to see what's available in that stream as you move up.

I'm sure I'll inevitably go back to cash games assuming the VPP fever catches up to me again. It just seems like right now games are super nitty and there's not much running between the European segregation and Zoom splitting the pool. So I'm not finding cash all that enjoyable which inexplicably makes me want to force action against nits -- a bad idea leading to tilt and punting more stacks.

Ideally I would like to put in a solid 5k games a step or two up the ladder before deciding which way I want to go.

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