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so...March in review...
well perhaps this more suited to a blog but here goes...
started March out real good, having nailed my 10k point target the month before (falling just shy of 12k), was dead chuffed with my priority club membership and even more so with my decent chunk of rakeback, tikay even hijacked my 'priority club pursuit thread', having forgotten all about my 12BI downswing, my confidence was good, and it showed on the tables, felt my game as top draw, getting good value of my hands, making big laydowns, making super thin value bets when i needed and making good reads and doing plenty bluff catching....so much so i Went on a 40BI upswing in like 2 weeks, which was like £2k, like an entire bankroll up!
...But then the tables started to turn, variance kicked in....seemed ppl were hitting sets for fun against, flopping monster draws and/or chasing and just hitting every time, and obv id look em up 'cos they cant hanve the nuts ALL THE TIME' but of course they all did, threw me off my game, n played some bad sessions, like...5-6BI down sessions, id lose like 2BI then spew 4 more....anyway went on a 18BI downswing over the next 10 days, was having 'some' winning sessions and far more bigger losing ones and, anyway in this time i did drop to 30+40nl even tho i was overolled for it to get my confidence back, and was crushing them for a bit, but then everytime id take a shot at 50nl again id get a beatdown!, desperation crept in a couple of times, where it was late at night...like 2:30am and the games were so juicy, megafish with monster stacks pot betting into 3 ppl with mid pair, and thinking i could play any2 cards with these in position and it would EV+ but when fish run good they run sick-good, then took a shot at 100nl, which to be fair started ok, standard wasnt 'that' much better n doubled up str8 away, but then got stacked with KK on rag-rainbow Q high board, i 3 bet from the blinds, dude called, i bet out he raised i shoved...he tanks it for ages then calls with Q7!! im like booom! 100 nugs coming my way...anyway river comes 7 then shortly after spew another buyin with 22 > my AA in a 3bet pot, he didnt get the right prices to set mine but he did and hit and i couldnt lay it down in my fury.
so what did i do, my target was 12k points i had hit 17.5k was gonna go for 20k but felt it was gonna cost me too much so i self-excluded myself from the site for 4-5 days and went back to studying, read Harrington on holdem again, downloaded loads of videos off cardrunners.com, id recommend anything by 'nikachu, brian hastings, irunlucky and leatherass9', and read a LOAD of stuff on 2+2, and then to re-evaluate my game, booted up poker-stars and HEM and logged about 8k hands and would review each session, ended up running 1.7bb/100 which was ok at 50nl, but more importantly i was paying way more attention to the tables, fortunately with HEM u can look at opponents VPIP/PFR, 3bet% fold to 3bet% and playing accordingly, and then pokerstoving marginal situations...i.e i raises KQs in cut-off and SB 3bets me and he has a 3bet % of 10 id stove that range n find i only have 42% equity if i flat in position.
anyway...my return, played my first session back tonight, felt my game was good and crushed the tables, ended up 6BI and at least another £100 under EV
so this month, aiming for about 16k points again, probs gonna reduce my number of tables played (sometimes i was playing up to 12-13 tables) to about 8max really, mostly 6-tabling i reckon. Need to work on my EQ (emotional intelligence) and try to learn to control my tilt more, and perhaps reduce my stop-gap-loss (i.e. quit tables after losing 2 BI instead of 4-5. other than that gonna keep occasionally playing on 'stars' just to keep my game in shape cos the standard is much better on there and most regs are sporting huds on there and the poker then becomes a stats game, but its a more shrewd preflop game, and then just review every session. Anyway hope i run good this month and probs will take a few more 100nl shots, i have railed a few of the games in the past and im confident i can beat them. wish me luck, see you at the tables
any1 else wana share their month's up n downs?
in before TL:DR
Comments
Hope you don't mind me asking.
I used to grind cash on another site for about 5 months last year when I didn't have a job. I used to play nl20 and nl50 (annoying that there wasn't a level in between!), this was euros btw. I didn't intend on making a living from poker, it just coincided with me being unemployed. I was still desperately trying to find work but poker sort of came to my rescue.
The first four months were great and the rakeback deal was also great. I seriously thought about not looking for work and doing this for ever. However, the fifth month was awful. Luckily, this is when I found a job! So things worked out well in the end.
I agree you should push yourself to play more, but it's a fine balance between too little and too much.
Great reading, thanks.
February was awful for me, a string of bad luck that put me on permatilt which turned a drama into a crisis. Lost about a quarter of my BR in 4 weeks so was determined to do something about it in March.
As of March 1st I spent a lot more time reviewing my game than I have done previously (and time at all is a lot more than 'none' of course), trying to spend 10% of my poker time reviewing sessions, watching vids, railing, etc. My results were still up and down but generally tending in the right direction.
By mid march I felt I'd spotted quite a few leaks, spots where I was losing value etc so I put it all together and made some small but fairly fundemental adjustments to my game. I'm being much more disciplined (perhaps too much, but that's better than the other extreme), working a lot harder at range narrowing through the streets, being more aware of and trying to use table dynamics, etc. All stuff I was doing before to an extent but I am approaching this a bit more seriously and trying to do it every single hand.
Results since then have totally turned around and I've been on a real heater for the last two weeks of March. Binked a few of the £10 tourneys, made the top three in a bunch more, nice deep runs in some main events and the primo (both times rivered by a 3 outer by an oppo who went on to make the final table, lol), all going swimmingly.
Last day of the month I was feeling very good about my game anyway, felt I was having a particularly good day, so took a shot at the 8 KDS sattelite...a big BI for my roll but I felt I was playing probably my best poker ever so if not now, when? Sailed through that and went into the main event very confident despite the sick field.
Ended up playing what is probably my single best session ever that night, felt like I more than held my own against very stiff competiton, and ended up bubbling the FT...AJ cracked by Q10 as it happens but you can't really complain when it's down to shove or fold. So that was a nice cash, then I went straight into the midnight £11 tourney after that and won that to cap off march nicely
tl;dr version: great month, really worked on my game and it's paid huge dividends, really feel like I've turned a bit of a corner.
I had a terrible month this month. I play a lot of cash and I play with a 40 buyin bankroll. I was down to 22 at the weekend and it was really hurting.
Somebody who I am sort of mentoring (God help him) said to me just take a break from cash and go back to MTTs for a bit as we both know thats my strength. I played a £500bh and won it for £150. I then played the primo that night and cashed 14th for £127. The next day I decided I would stick to MTTs and played the 8pm 8k bh, and went on to win it for £1300.
So I went from the lowest of lows, thinking OH SH!T if something doesn't change soon my bankroll could disapear, to then suddenly being £800 in profit for the month in 2 days.
Crazy game this poker thing!!
I'm going to have a quiet April I think, rather than grinding I'll just play what and when ever I feel like it. Probably going to drop from 9 tables of cash to 5 cash and the 8pm, I might start playing the TSP as well as I think there is good value in there.
then i had a +25bi day
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
48k c4p bonus too
All I know is I made more than I lost again
My biggest error this month was 4bet shoving into Thew's AA the other day in the 220. That was lol. But out of that came actually a nice realisation that my tilt is under control. I made that move with 55 left and still managed to narrowly miss out on the cash at 11th. Also at the same time I came 9th in the 15k BH for £190 so it wasn't a total waste of an evening and I played well. Tilt has always been one of the big big errors that I face and I feel like I've turned a corner somewhat in managing it.
But yeah so binking a few tournies and grinding some low stakes ones meant that I ended the quarter top of the TSP MTT League which was my main goal.
Mid way thru the month I started playing cash a lot more. Forgotting how good the games are, especially after 1am thru to 4-5am. Messing with my sleep patern again but since I'm up £1.8k from mainly 30-40-50nl in 2 weeks I think its worth it. Grinded to 11k C4P so am in Priority club this month which is a bonus. Oh an £275 too is nice.
I binked a tournie on another site for 2k$US too. I've played less than 20 tournies on there this month so quite decent considering the fields.
Live has gone ok. Played 4 live £110 tournies for 1 cash of £900. Dropped £200 at cash live twice but a recent visit to the Vic where I stood with a profit of £670 in a 1/2 game was a nice result. Means that for live this month I am £700~ .
Been happy with my game this month and looking forward to the TSP MTT qualifier, which was my main goal for the at the start.
Great idea for a thread btw. Would be good to get something like this going every month.
I'm fairly new here and not that experienced in poker really, as im 19, although i learnt the rules years ago i only started playing online about 8months ago.
Anyway, about 10 days before the end of march i put £30 on here, by the beginning of march i'd spun that up to about £500 i think, then from playing 20/30nl moving up to 40/50nl as my bankroll improved i got up to £1000 in another 10 days or smth. I then decieded to be an idiot and ignore bankroll management...
From watching mastercash on a saturday night i decieded to take a shot at 200nl, which was being shown on tv as oppose to the normal 300nl because people where in Luton. Was playing a little with scared money you could say but i was also fearless because it was such exicement and an adrenaline rush compared to the lower stakes, esp when i hit a set against nut flush draw, all the money went in on the flop and the flush came but then i filled up for a £400 pot. WIIIIIII. Biggest pot ive won by a long way.
Over the next week i played abit at 100nl and 200nl and my bankroll stayed about the same £1200. On the next saturday i again played mastercash and ended up winning a couple of biggish hands taking my bankroll to £1500.
Then the badness came.. my AA lost to 43s on a board of something like Q4x4x losing a massive pot, i then spewed another buy in at 200nl. Took a short break and noticed there was a 400plo game going, after taking £500 out and putting it in my bank i decieded to use my last £400 playing this... you can see where this is going, all in pre with AA and hurst had AA against lol_raise's 88tt, 8 on the river killed me.
I then took a little break from poker and played and money on some other sites, after this i decieded to come back here because its my favourite site and depoist £300, using this i got my points total from 7.3k to just over 8k in time before the deadline for a nice £200 bonus.
Now you can find me grinding my way back up at 20/30nl using proper bankroll management!
i had satelited my way through 2 games at the start of the month for the DS semi on the 30th which Imanaged to get through - it was same structure as final and probaly leanrt more in those 2 games than I have for a while as I was playing against players I wouldn,t normally play against and felt I was starting to hold my own
Also read a few magaines and looked at a cpl of other forums for advice
So my plan for April is to take forward what i,ve learnt from other players styles and adapt them into my own game and see how the month pans out
Defiantely more confident with my game now though
MP
This month I want to bink a tsp seat. Cash in an 8pm (one time pls). Go deep in a live tourney. Run as good as some people on this site.