Special Bug Pages

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Waiting (Im)patiently

First the whining: Life, work, travel, the book, etc., are still all seriously getting in the way of me playing any significant poker or blogging about my exploits on the felt. There's a pile of to-do things on my list, but I can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel. Figure another 3-4 weeks and I'll be back on the poker bandwagon full time.

So how's my game when I do play? Ugh. The short answer is I've been playing too sporadically lately, and not really very focused, either. One day I'll play a couple of turbo SnGs in whatever little free time I find, and the next I'll squeeze in 15 minutes of Omaha cash. Then I'll go and jump into a Rush 135-man tourney the next day without really planning or preparing. My results have not been good. The first commandment of poker says to prepare, and I have not been doing that at all.

Okay, that said, I did manage to play some good poker yesterday for about an hour. I should have been working on my book, but I was feeling really burned out. Also, I had the entire house to myself, so I figured what the hell, why not get in some hold'em? But what to play? I wanted some action, but I also might have to bail out at a moments notice if the wife came home early, as she said she wanted to go out. Ergo, SnGs and MTTs were out. Omaha? Nah, I wanted to guarantee a win (or at least have a serious chance at making some money). I'm still barely breaking even at Omaha, so that was out. Ergo, hold'em it was. So what form? Obviously Rush, as it's completely and forever ruined my "normal" hold'em game, and it's the only cash game I play these days. So, full ring or 6max? I settled on 6-handed, as I hadn't played that style in a few months and figured it would be a nice change.

So, with that settled, I warmed up the tired brain by doing a couple of on-line puzzles. Then I watched ten minutes of a good Deuces Cracked 6max video to get in the proper frame of mind. I then opened up a single table of $25NL 6max. I told myself to ease into the game and not get silly. Fold, fold, fold was the mantra for the day. The old adage, "if you're not folding the occasional winner, you're not playing perfect poker" was my focus. Whenever I was in doubt, muck was the answer. Why make thin calls when the next possible winning hand was just a few seconds away? Patience, folding, getting off losing hands, not drawing dead.... you get the drift. Caution would be the better part of my valor.

So did it work? Here's the results of 1.5 hours of play (yes, the graph says 3 days of play are shown, but it really is only just yesterday's results shown; i.e., there are only about a dozen hands from the previous two days shown on the graph):
Not bad. Over 28 BB/100 and nice profit to add to the bankroll. I'm 90% pleased with my play. I was super aggro, but also super cautious when I got resistance.My VPIP was a little on the LAGgy side at 22.5%, but my PFR supported that at 17.5% My position stats are also pretty solid, including a pretty loose (but apparently effective) Attempt to Steal percentage of 40%.

The 10% of my game that I'm not happy with came at the very end of the session, when I got a little too ahead of myself and let Success Syndrome take away about $10 in profit, bit by bit. You can see the roll-off in my win rate in the upper right part of the graph. Fortunately, I realized I was SS tilting and managed to log off without giving any more back.

In other words: woo hoo! A good day playing poker. Imagine that? Now if I can just get past the next 3-4 weeks, I might be able to find a few more good days like yesterday. I can't wait.

All-in for now...
-Bug

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