Fresh Start with Blogspot

So, I've decided to move my blog back to blogspot... reason being that I want to recapture the original reason I started blogging, which was primarily to help sort out things in my head after sessions, review hands, talk about adjustments to make etc etc.

Having the blog on leggo made me kind of not want to bore people with things like HHs, and I'm kind of averse to getting flamed by 25nl players when I post the really bad ones. Having the same group of 4-6 micro players commenting on my blog every time isn't really helpful either, and as such it just became a glorfied, personal, brag post spot where I could post my monthly graphs and have said micro players make me feel good by saying 'omg the red line is like sooo steep how man how???'

This month has gone horribly so far. I say horrible, I've been up $6k, down to -$1k, back up to $5k, and after today back down to -$2k. Such swings should not be occuring in 5k hands of 400NL, and I fear that I've let humungous leaks creep back into my game. What I need to do now is re-evaluate my overall gameplan, and get it down on 'paper'.

As part of my fresh start, I'm going to start playing exclusively on my somewhat 'invisible' UB account, as opposed to my AP one. Reason being, all the other regs do it anyway so the moral argument doesn't stand, and the constant levelling wars+ history are quite frankly something I could do without on top of everything else to think about in a poker hand.

Hopefully, being an unknown, I'll be able to get away with a bit more just like the old days!

So, gameplan: first of all I need to remember how much importance I USED to attach to mental toughness and concentration, and get that back ASAP. Autopilot just doesn't cut it (I believe at any level > 50NL), and certainly never has for me. Every hand, I need to be thinking levels and levels ahead to make the right decision... this takes concentration, something that it's easy to forget about when ur seemingly on a 200k hand heater.

Every session I will review here, and I'll award myself marks for concentration. To facilitate this, I have had my chat banned by UB support (lol) to minimise distractions and so I won't be tempted. Its frankly unacceptable that as a professional poker player I can still get so tilted by a fish saying TY after sucking out, but that's the way it is so I have to deal with it!

So, as part of my session review, I will award marks for concentration... my scorecard will also include marks for other typical (technical) leaks that I have identifed that have crept into my game. By thinking about them and scoring them after sessions, I keep them in the forefront of my mind. I may add other scores as and when I consider them something that I need to think about. Thus:

Concentration (includes timing on big decisions) x/10
Preplay Preparation (awake, done exercise, eaten or had Lucozade) x/10
Avoiding RE (Reverse Equity) Situations x/10
Cbetting strategy ~ as per Bobbo's bible x/10
Game selection x/10

I just want to talk a little bit about what I mean by reverse equity... these are spots where either:

a) I have a marginal hand OOP vs a good aggressive regular, with the initative whose range is wide. Example, 66 on 3410ss... I am NEVER getting to showdown cheaply with this hand, fold it early.

b) I have some sort of top pair hand vs a reg I deem as bad and passive, and simply not capable of bluff raising a dry flop and following thru with turn and river bets. Some regs ARE just incapable of such mindless aggression, and for example K10 on 6710r can just be a straight flop muck to a CR, especially OOP. I've already identifed and categorised such regs in a separate document.

I need to remember that professional poker player means that I must be professional, no more fucking around with regs for the hell of it... I'm doing this for money and personal pride and need to get it sorted!

Apologies to anyone who actually read this far, it may lighten up in future blogs :-)

dan