Thursday, February 18, 2010

Things I have to learn about myself

Warning: This post contains a lot of whine/rant. So in case your a not in the mood for this just dont read it ;) Anyway I just want to use this post to look at it later and laugh about myself and how dumb I was back then.

Yesterday was one of those days which makes me wonder if I am ever capable to find my way in the poker world. I am not talking about variance. This is just a part of the game and I am happy I dont get mad too often about it. No, I am talking about one of my blow-ups I have from time to time. And when I steam its epic. You know the older TV coverage from Mike Matusow when he make one off those hughe donk bluffs for all his chips? In that case I am sure you got my point.

The problem is I do not realize I am in self destruction mode until it is too late.
So my first session yesterday already started bad. Pretty early in the session I turned TPTK on a paired board vs a 30/10 guy who limps/call pre. He c/r me on the turn (I just checked behind flop). Now I should realize that Baluga is Baluga since his theorem is never wrong lol. Needless to say I happily called his raise there and stacked him off on his river shove. Of course he showed the flopped full house. I ended the session like -1/2 BI down and felt pretty stupid since without that hand I would end it +1/2 BI.

Then I had a really good coaching session with Mao. and felt pretty motivated to start another session. I did so and was up ~$40 pretty quick after a guy limps / shove AQs for ~85bb UTG vs my raise from the BB with AKs. It is really sometimes just an easy game lol.

After that nothing too exciting happend and I was near the end of my session when I made the first stupid move. I c/r the turn from the SB vs a BTN steal with TT on Js8sxx. In first line the c/r vs this particular villain was no good idea but then I made one of the cardinal sins: I called his 3bet AI since there was already so much money in the pot. LOL. Even you get like 3.5:1 for your call never ever call there. You are never good dummy!
To be honest I have no clue why I c/r the turn there since my normal line would be to c/f it after c/c the flop. Smells like fancy play syndrome imo.
But obv not ended my session right then. Before I ended it I overplayed two times overpairs for 100bb each. Ouch. Find the fold button dummy!
I got "unlucky" in only one big hand where I lost a $120 pot. I called QJo pre and saw a beautiful TcKcAx flop 4 way. It got checked to me and I obv bet big there and got c/r from the SB who called my 3bet shove with TT. Turn a 9. River a 9. GG me. Well, he had his ~30% equity in that spot but LOL for his play here.

All together a painful -$167 session for a day result of -$195. I never lost so much in just a single day before. The fact wich really hurts is that I lost it all cause of my own stupidity. I could easily end up the the day at least break even if I could found the fold button!!!
I am really fed up with those blow ups I have. I can play solid for most of a month but in the middle of the month I have those 2-3 days where I just act like I never played poker before. Besides the money I lost during those episodes they just crushed my self confidence every time. I just stop myself to be the player I know I could be.
I should finally learn someday that if I am just patient enough and fold in the right spots there are still plenty of spots where I will get their money with not much effort. It is really that easy: just wait and while you wait make less mistakes than them. Finally they will make a mistake and you get their money. GG.
Hopefuly one end I will learn it and (more important) apply it.

At the moment I am not sure which way I want to go in the next time. Here are some ideas without a particular order:
  • Stay at NL50 until you hit your 5BI stop loss - Since I lost cause of mindset problems and not skill problems (even I admit I have some leaks in my game) this is not complete out of line. But like I said before my self confidence is maybe a bit too low for it.
  • Move to Poker Stars 50NL for a change of scene - Starting somewhat fresh on a new site is maybe not a bad idea. I could aim at the 100k VPPs for SuperNova . That would be a long way but with enough effort doable. But then the games there have the reputation to be harder than the ones on FTP. And there are a lot of SSer now.
  • Stay at FTP and move down to NL25 again - Another good option and maybe the right one. Just grind out some money and get a bit of confidence back.
So no real clue now what to do. Hopefuly I can decide what I really want to do soon. I think at first I will ship now the "Poker Mindset" to get my head back on track. Since this here is already way too long I wrap it up here.

So long!

r2w

No comments:

Post a Comment