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Sunday, September 23, 2012

WSOP-2013: Week #4

Today is Sunday, so it's time for a recap of this week's prep/progress toward WSOP-2013. (I'm leaving early this morning for a week-long biz trip, so things like my diet and my bankroll are in danger again. Sigh. I've got some ideas on how to address these things and, hopefully, not do any significant damage to either during the week of eating out, sleeping little, working long hours, and trying to squeeze in sessions here and there while jet lagged.)
  • Preparation:
    • Pregame. Have been doing a better job of warming up prior to playing SnGs. I think what I really need, however, is a tournament-specific preflight check-list, similar to what I discussed here. One of the things I've added to my to-do list is to create just such a beast.
    • Postgame. Meh. Did a couple of post-mortems, but for the most part I've not gone back and reviewed hands in depth. Plan is to do so on the airplane today.
    • Off-Table.
      • Forums/Hand-of-the-Day. Posted a couple of hands-of-the-day responses. I'm trying to focus on the tournament hands that get posted, but often I can't help but weigh in on their cash game questions, too, as those are where I actually feel like I know 99% of what I'm talking about. MTT questions are more like 70% at this stage of my development.
      • Books.  Still reading Snyder's first book. Also am looking back through some hands in the Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time books.
      • Videos.  Watched a couple of Splitsuit's new (free) cash game videos on playing 99-JJ hands and c-betting in multiway pots. Split's a really good coach/video-maker I've followed for years. He sells some of his higher-end vids on his website, but he also posts free ones on the poker bank (click here). The thing I like about his vids is that they're short, not "powerpoint" and/or "bulletted list" intensive, and zip right along, with lots of examples and hand replays. Try some out if you've got some free time.
      • Podcasts.  Listened to Bart Hanson's podcast on semi-bluffing and started a second one on weighted combos. As usual, this is really good stuff. I also subscribed yesterday to a new podcast that is starting up by a guy named Andrew "Foucault" Brokos, who blogs very regularly on Cardplayer Magazine. He's primarily a tournament guy, and does a nice job on his blog working through hands, so I'm curious to see how his podcast works out. Click here if you're interested.
      • Health.  Meh week, with only a little more than a pound lost. My weakness continues to be crap/junk food at work, especially in the late afternoons. I eat a good breakfast and lunch, exercise fairly regularly, and even do pretty well at night at home. The trick, however, is avoiding the buckets (yes, buckets) of MandMs and other candy/poison that people bring in daily to destroy the health of the workplace masses. Mr. Multi, I'm talking to you. ;-)
      • Other.  Like the aforementioned pre-flight checklist, I think I need to get a little better organized on all the off-table prep work; I'm kind of just bouncing around right now, reading some of this book, watching some of that video, etc. It's time to get a more organized framework in place, especially when it comes to MTT-specific REDi stuff.
  • Technique:
    • Preflop.  Haven't worked directly on my starting hand chart in a few weeks, but I have taken some notes. Hopefully plan to finish off the last cash-game post on the subject this week, and then see about tweaking it for tournament play (i.e., per Snyder's guidelines).
    • Postflop.
      • Evals (RED).  Read a couple articles on ICM and how it applies to poker. It's a really powerful tool... if you're a computer 'bot playing online. Not exactly sure how I can use it live, however, as the computations are ridiculously intensive for even a 4-handed game. I also played around with ICM Trainer, which is a free push-fold quiz program that isn't too bad. You can get it by clicking here if you're interested.
      • Line Implementations (i).  Did nothing in this area.
  • Emotional Control:
    • Tilt Control.  Had one "tilty" cash game session where, thankfully, I didn't lose my entire shirt. Otherwise did pretty well on this front.
    • BRM.  The 'roll is in OK shape and I'm playing within my limits, both tourneys and cash.
    • Discipline.  Meh. Did OK overall, but did a poor job of paying attention at times (often slipping into auto-pilot mode), as well as tracking results.
$ Results:
  • Tournaments (Online). Played six STSnGs this week, cashing in three of them (one first place, and two 2nd place finishes), and one microstakes 45-man MTTSnG, in which I took 3rd place.  Total added to bankroll was $36.85.
  • Tournaments (Live). No live tourneys played this week.
  • Cash Games. More meh. First part of the week was up and down a bit, basically breaking even for three days on end, but Friday and Saturday showed some decent gains. Didn't play as much as I would have liked (to build the 'roll), primarily due to heavy load at work, but I can't complain overall as I added $56 to the bankroll in cash.

Summary: As you can probably guess, the best word to describe this week's progress was "meh." Feeling a little unfocused and unmotivated, but also have a plan in place to fix that.

All-in for now...
-Bug

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