Special Bug Pages

Sunday, December 16, 2012

WSOP-2013: Week # 16

It’s Sunday, so time for a recap of this week's prep/progress toward WSOP-2013:
  • Preparation:
    • Pregame. This was another tough week due to biz travel, so I essentially did nothing on this front.
    • Postgame. I did spend a little time on HM2 looking at the previous week's results and post-mortem'ing a few key hands from cash games. The only thing significant that jumped out at me was the fact that I seem to dig myself a hole early in almost every session (even if it is a small hole) that I have to climb back out of. In other words, I think I've got a leak in my game in which I tend to get involved too soon in a session without taking the time to make good reads and "tag the cows." Perhaps a preflight check list entry that says to play only premium hands, even in late position, for the first 2-3 orbits of a table, would be a good idea. 
    • Off-Table.
      • Hand-of-the-Day. Read and voted in every HotD this week and had good agreement with the majority of poker players on my answers vs. theirs.
      • Blog Entries. Only time for two blog entries this week: one Bug Tip and the other an older HotD problem that the Guru sent me (here). He and I exchanged a couple of emails on this hand afterward, which got me thinking a little deeper about hand range as a function of bet size; i.e., the Guru asked, "If the villain had come back over the top, would this have changed our [range]?" The answer is yes, it probably would have, because (seemingly paradoxically) a larger 3bet from the bad buy would actually indicate a weaker range, not a stronger one. If villain had 3bet shoved, I'd be more inclined to get it in with JJ than I would against the smaller (but still pot committing) 3bet he did do. Interesting stuff.
      • Books. As before, I'm continuing with the WPT books.
      • Videos. None watched.
      • Podcasts. Had zero time to really listen to any pod casts this week, so I've got 5-6 backlogged again. Need to start walking more with the ear buds plugged in.
      • Health. This was a tough, tough week, with heavy meals and zero exercise. The good news is I'm back on the wagon as of yesterday, and I've got a couple of weeks off on vacation to try to find time to exercise and eat right.
      • Other. Been playing around with DD Poker a bit on airplanes and airports. One of the things I started doing is creating custom tournaments that match some real live ones I'm playing in so that I can practice ahead of time. (Thanks to SolarTed for giving me this idea). So far, I've modeled up a big live tourney I'm planning on playing in at the end of this month, and I'm using the software to fine tune how loose and/or aggressive I should be in each stage. Pretty cool stuff.
  • Technique:
    • Preflop. Been trying out lots of different starting hand stuff in the DD poker software, which has been very enlightening.
    • REDi. My focus in this area this week has been on D is for Decisions, with the emphasis on forcing myself to categorize what I'm trying to do with each hand before acting. If I can't answer that basic question, I'm trying to default my Decision to "Fold."
  • Emotional Control:
    • Tilt Control. No real tilt issues to speak of.
    • BRM. Nothing significant to report here.
    • Discipline. Played tired a few times, which caused some swings in the weekly profit. I also played the one SnG this week while trying to do two other things.
$ Results:
  • Tournaments (Online). Played only one $11 6max STSnG, and I busted on the bubble due to a lack of focus. Argh.
  • Tournaments (Live). None played, but with vacation underway, I'm planning on a road trip in a few weeks up to a casino in a nearby town to play in their "Last Saturday of the Month" tourney. It's a moderate ($160 total buy-in) tournament with T5K in starting chips and a pretty good blind structure. Per Snyder's method, I estimate the patience factor of this MTT to be 8.4, which puts it squarely in the "slower, requires much more skill" category. 
  • Cash Games. (Someone asked me recently why I'm still playing cash games if my overall goal is to go deep in a WSOP MTT. Good question, and there's really two answers: first, with all the travel I've been doing, there's been little opportunity to find blocks of time to play even turbo SnGs, so I'm playing cash to at least keep sharp; and second, playing cash games is a consistent way for me to build the 'roll so that I can buy into a WSOP event. Even if I only add $10 bucks to the piggy bank each week it will help.) Anyway, I did play a handful of cash session here and there. Real choppy results, as shown in the following graph. Most of the long downward slides were a result of me playing tired late at night in hotel rooms when I should have been sleeping. Not smart, but I did add $70 to the WSOP bankroll:
Very choppy, swingy results this week, where I relied far too much on showdowns to make money. The bb/100 and dollar per hour rates were similarly inconsistent and off my usual numbers.

Summary: Thankfully, the pre-holiday biz travel has come to an end, and I've now got two weeks of (mostly) vacation lined up. Tons of honey-do  and family stuff, but I should also have some time to get refocused on WSOP preparation. Looking forward to actually having time to slow down and smell the roses for a change.... well, at least until the second week of January, at which point I'm back on the road again for the start of 2013. Ugh.

All-in for now...
-Bug

No comments:

Post a Comment