I played 100 HU SnGs today: 84 $100s and 16 $60s. I ran ridiculously hot by a tune of 12 buy-ins over EV. That’s a lot! Overall I profited ~15 buy-ins. I didn’t even know it was possible to run this good over a 100 game sample. I am not looking forward to the day where I run 12 buy-ins below EV 😛

I haven’t been playing much poker the last couple months, so today’s session was tiring. I only played around 3.5 hours total, but I feel really wiped out. Although it was all heads-up, which is definitely more intense than full ring or 6-max.

Tomorrow’s Sunday, but the only MTTs I plan on playing are the $55 Women’s freeze-out (aka the best tournament EVER) and the Battle of the Planets triple shootout. Then hopefully I’ll play another 100 SnGs.

I ran pretty hot playing 60s the last couple times I played. Even though I had an extremely small sample size at both $30s and $60s, I felt that I was competent enough to move up to $100s since I have the bankroll to do so.

I played my first session with $100s today. There were fewer people playing $100s, and there were more regs. This meant it was MUCH harder to open sit lobbies than at $60s. I ended playing 49 $100s and losing ~8 buy-ins. I ran around 3 buy-ins below EV. I also played 28 $60s and won a buy-in.

I felt like I was running bad, losing a lot of flips, and always running into the nuts, but I’m sure I could have avoided plenty of my losses. It was definitely frustrating because I felt like I was losing over and over again. I’m not sure if the frustration was amplified because I knew I was losing more $100s than $60s.

Another problem I likely had was that since $100s were so slow to register, I was frequently in two lobbies and having to 2-table. I had previously only 1-tabled, so I’m sure this didn’t really help my cause.

Will review tomorrow and hopefully plug some leaks that undoubtedly came to be during my foray into $100s.

Yesterday I ended up losing around 5 buy-ins. I definitely made plenty of mistakes and have a lot to work on. I did run almost 5 buy-ins below EV, so if I look at it from the point of view that I broke even, it’s not too discouraging.

I learned a bit about the perils of ego and how heads-up can get personal. I played one guy around 20 times via rematches simply because I felt he was bad and it annoyed me that he kept winning against me. While I am pretty certain I had an edge on him, it likely wasn’t big enough to justify rematching him that many times. Plus I was hungry and tired. So I should have just stopped playing way before it got to 20 games.

The good news is that I think I figured out how to beat him (at a decent clip) towards the last half of our games. The bad news is that it took me quite a few games to figure it out. I hope that playing more and getting more experience will help me figure these things out faster in the future.

I didn’t play poker today. Probably back at it tomorrow.

Played 82 HU hypers yesterday and things went pretty well. I profited 12 buy-ins while running 2 buy-ins better than EV. I think it’s safe to say I ran pretty hot.

82 games is a sample size that shows nothing. I reviewed with someone today, though, and things seem to be okay. Instead of folding too much I am now calling too much, but hopefully I can fix that today.

I’m not punting too much, so I’m gonna play $60s today. I’m gonna try to play another 60-80 games. Since I’m only 1 tabling at the moment, it should take me a good 3-4 hours to do it.

I did some HU review with a friend just now. Things to work on today include betting according to stack sizes and folding less.

I’m playing $30s right now while I plug my most massive leaks. I’m hoping to move up to $60s later this week, maybe in the next couple of days. Today I’m planning on playing 80 games, which should hopefully give me plenty to review tomorrow.

So I like PLO, but I was recently made to realize that I almost certainly shouldn’t count on it to make a steady income. I’m sure you already know that there’s tons of variance in PLO, and I just don’t play enough hands to overcome it. Running bad and losing for an entire year doesn’t really sound appealing to me.

Time to switch games again? Next on the list is hyper heads-up SnGs. I’ve never played heads-up seriously before, so it will probably be kinda fun at first. It will also almost certainly be super tilting. I’m gonna have to really work on that tilt control if I wanna play these games.

I still intend on playing PLO from time to time. It’s really fun and I’ve really learned a lot over the past few weeks. I would be good to at least become competent at it, so I will be trying to play it a few hours every week.

Real life has prevented me from playing poker this past week. There hasn’t been a lot of free time to sit and review the way I have to if I’m going to play a proper session. When there has been free time, I’ve been tired thanks to waking up early and not sleeping properly.

I’m feeling some slight financial pressure recently, which is kind of stressful considering I am learning a new game. I didn’t think that money would matter much when I made the decision to play PLO, but maybe I was wrong.

If I really need money, I could easily go back to sit-and-go’s and grind out a decent hourly, but I don’t want to do that. I think that PLO is a much better long term decision for me.

To make PLO work, I am going to need to get out of the micro stakes as soon as possible so that I can stop getting crushed by the rake. At least I can count on some rakeback while I learn to play profitably.

Gonna do some review and play a few hands. I hope I didn’t forget everything I learned during my week of no playing.

I only played a few hundred hands yesterday. Ran pretty good and made a buy-in. Ran above EV this time, though.

I think I’ve already briefly mentioned it in this blog, but one of my biggest problems from moving to SnGs to PLO cash is my bet sizing. I usually bet way too small, and I still have to work on this.

I’m going to play a short session soon and I will be trying to pay attention to my bet sizing as much as possible. I especially bet way too small in multiway pots. But hopefully not today!

I’m slowly getting better at PLO. When I first started playing, it was hard enough to know what hands I had, never mind try to figure out the ranges of my opponents! I feel like I can finally start thinking about ranges when I am in the middle of post flop hands. Obviously many of my ranges will be really inaccurate at this point, but at least I am considering them now. Finally I can move out of 1st level poker 😛

It occurred to me that not being able to achieve 2nd level thinking doesn’t mean that I can’t achieve 3rd level. Does that even make sense? I felt like even though I had no clue what my opponents had half the time, I was still able to guess what my opponents thought I had. Enough that I could at least pull off some decent bluffs and value bets where appropriate.

I played around 2k hands since I last wrote and broke even. The encouraging news is that I ran 4 buy-ins below EV in all-in pots. Never have I been so happy to run badly! Hopefully this small sample is the start of significant improvement and better results.

I’m going to play a short session right now and try working on some of that elusive level 2 thinking. Good luck me!

What a silly post last time I wrote. Today I smartened up and did some review 🙂

I’m going to play a short session in a minute, and this is what I’m going to work on:

1) Give people credit when they bet. People bet for value/protection way more frequently than they bluff (at the level I’m playing at)

2) c/f more often on the turn

3) 3bet more often when stacks are deep and I am in position

4) Stop being a nit when I have nut draws

5) Think more about raising in spots where people fold a lot

6) Stop calling the flop with (lots of) equity only to fold on the turn

That seems like a lot to work on. Maybe I shouldn’t have listed so much stuff but so much came up while reviewing. Hopefully today goes well and the next time I play, I can work on the stuff that didn’t get done today.