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.

On to the next entry in the WSOP journey...

All-in for now...
-Bug