It's been a while since I posted. Worse, I will probably continue to be a sporadic blogger for the next couple of months. Life is plain and simply a crazy beast right now, with lots of upcoming work travel, a publisher screaming for a manuscript, and family stuff that is snowballing into an ice ball freight train. I keep telling my wife that if we can just get through July, things should calm down to a manageable level....
....yeah, right....
....anyway, back to poker. At my last week's Wednesday poker lunch/strategy discussion, the Guru asked everyone to grade themselves on the 10 Commandments of Poker as a homework assignment. I took twenty minutes today and took a hard look at my play:
1. Thou Shall Be Prepared to Play. I'm doing better at this aspect of playing perfect poker, but by no means am I taking it seriously enough. I have stopped just trying to jump in and get 20 hands here, and 30 there. Instead, I'm only sitting down to play if I have time for at least 100 hands of cash. I've also curtailed my SnGs drastically, playing only about one a week. As far as warm-ups go, I've been pretty lax. There's a lot I could do better in this area. I'm not failing, but I'm certainly not putting in a real effort, either. Grade: C
2. Thou Shall Maximize Edge. Yeah, right. When it comes to cash, I'm playing primarily Rush games, so there is zero scouting involved. I'm not taking nearly as many notes on players as I could, but I have dialed way back on the number of tables I play at once. In fact, this past week I've rarely played more than one game at a time. I'm continuing to use PT3 stats more effectively, but not nearly as much as I could be. Grade: C
3. Thou Shall Play Position Poker. This one I've got nailed. In fact, I'm probably playing a little too much position, as in I tend to not defend in the blinds unless I have a really strong hand, knowing I will be out of position the rest of the hand. If I'm playing out the blinds, I either have a primo hand, or I've picked up some kind of read on a LP opener. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with my positional play. Grade: A-
4. Thou Shall Pay Attention. I'm doing much better in this area, but not as well as I could be. I'm reading board textures and game textures pretty well, plus I'm focusing on player types and tendencies. I could be doing better at evaluating stack to pot ratios in real time, but I am focusing a lot on overall opp stack sizes. Playing just a single table at a time has made a big difference in my win rate (16 big bets per 100 over the past 1000 hands of $25NL), but I still get distracted and tend to surf the Internet between hands now and then. Grade B+
5. Thou Shall Be Aggressive. I feel pretty good about this one. In fact, if anything I'm a little too aggressive. I've added lots of re-steals, 3-betting, and check-raising to my arsenal. If one or two players limp in front of me, and I have the button or CO seat with a top 30% hand, I'm often popping it up to steal the pot. I really try to be the one firing the gun and not dodging the bullet, putting the opposition to the tough decisions. Grade A-
6. Thou Shall Know (and apply) The Math. Again, I feel pretty good in this area, but I could work on a few things, including manipulating the pot size better, especially in terms of my opponent's stack size. I also need to work a lot more on recognizing RIO (reverse implied odds) situations and get away from those second-best hands. Grade B
7. Thou Shall Protect Thy Bankroll. Sigh. This is an area that I've melted down in the last few months. A big part of it is associated with the learning curve of Omaha, but I'm also guilty of just taking shots at limits I plain and simply shouldn't be in. My 'roll has gone up and down like a roller coaster as a result. This is one of my biggest leaks. Grade D+
8. Thou Shall Not Tilt. Depending up on the definition of tilt, I'm either nailing this one, or failing miserably. Tommy Angelo defines "tilt" as anything other than you A-game. I'm clearly guilty of doing this. Most text books, however, define tilt as succumbing to bad beats and then playing poor poker as a result, which is something I don't do a lot of. I do sometimes fall into Success Syndrome play, which has probably cost me ~1BB/100 overall. Grade: B
9. Thou Shall Keep Records/Be A Student of the Game. I'm really screwing up in this area. Not only am I not blogging about my play, but I'm sometimes not even turning on PT3 every time I play. I also haven't done any post-mortems on my play in months. Haven't watched a training video in about a month, either. The excuse is how busy my life is, but there are no valid excuses when it comes to the 10 C's. Grade F
10. Thou Shall Play With Heart. I'm trusting my instincts and I'm pretty much fearless playing poker. Loss Aversion is absent from my game, too. Well, almost. I still say a silent "oh, crap" whenever I'm dealt Kings these days, but overall I'm pretty happy with this aspect of my game. Grade B+
If I average my grades, I've got a middle C grade with a GPA (Grade Poker Average?) of just 2.5. Pitiful. Come July, I'm going to have to go back to poker school in a big way...
Allin for now...
-Bug
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