Thursday, November 19, 2009

Continuing to run bad but feeling good about it

Recently, I implemented a new strategy. I have gotten out of the habit of checking PT every few minutes to see how I am doing. I also do not immediately check to see if I won an all in. I wait until the end of the session to review hands. (unless its a tricky hand and I need a read) The reason I do this is because I want to stay in the moment. It effectively allows me to stay off of tilt and also leads to more hands per hour.

So really, I have no idea how I am doing in a session. Once I get in the amount of time I have scheduled, I sit out next blind and then do a review. It seems to be working very well.

I am really glad I have been doing this, because it has been cooler city for the past 18k hands. Set over set more times than I can count, getting all in so many times and then the miracle river card coming for the villain. The biggest annoying scenario is being called on the flop by a villain with no hand, no draw, then turning a big draw or hitting a set on the turn/river. Welcome to 25NL I guess. In a lot of ways, the play is even worse than 10NL. People have no clue about pot odds or how to bluff. Bad bluffing is rampant so far in my 25NL experience.

The reason I feel good about the downswing (14 buy-ins at the low point), is that I can count on one hand the times I have gotten the money in bad without a huge amount of equity at least.

My stats also seem to be improving (imo) in the past few sessions. I have polarized my range a bit more and am now running more like 13/10.5/2.5. My turn and river aggression has doubled and I feel I am squeezing that extra bit of value out now where I never was in the past. Times I would have checked behind or pot controlled the turn, I am now B/Fing. Its amazing what hands people will call big river bets with. My ATS is now in the 35% range which I am very happy about. I am now breaking even or a slight winner with the red line.. which is very nice.

Other improvements I have made recently is bet sizing the flop, (ie. going more for value on dry boards and betting harder on wet ones), using SPR to manipulate pot sizing for later streets, and choosing the proper spots to commit based on stack sizes in relation to the pot size. I have also gotten much better at adjusting while 24-tabling. I guess my gaming background is coming in handy, I can pretty much follow what is going on in regards to the action in hands I am in and remember how a villain sized his bets etc over time.

The things I still need big improvement on are c-betting, barreling, and 3-betting. My 3-bet % is an abysmal 1%ish. I have a good feel for what ranges to 3-bet, I just am having trouble pulling the trigger while 24-tabling. I have a lot of work to do on reading board textures for c-betting/barreling. Its taken a long time to accept the backwards logic of betting harder with marginal hands when slightly weaker, and pot controlling more when stronger.

I will be working on setting goals for the rest of this year later on today. I will post again once I come up with something.

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