Letting the Month of March Die
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:12PM At the conclusion of Sunday night I decided not to play again this month (that’s like 3 days). I want to let this month die and never think of it again.
I have been thinking about the game every hour of each day pretty much even though I haven’t been playing. Also, I’ve been constructing a general guide-line for me to start off playing full buy in 50NL. By general guide-line it’s about 15 pages already, but yeah we will see. The completed guideline will consist of input from about 4 sources:
1) My personal experience from playing about 100,000 hands on full ring PokerStars. Yeah I was short-stacking, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t watching how the top players were playing. I still learned a lot. And much of my preflop play with short-stacking is still applicable to full-buy in play. Examples would be 3-betting and blind stealing. C-betting and value betting are also areas I've improved. Anyone who says short-stacking completely halts your poker growth is full of shit. Yeah it halts them from taking your full buy-in; that's what they really mean.
2) Reputable micro-stakes strategy forums (Mostly from 2+2).
3) Input from one of the top 200NL players that I have been in touch with the last month. He has been down the same road and conquered it. I can run my “guide-lines” by him to make sure I’m not drastically off anywhere. I want to continue to use him as a source. I don’t care what the dude’s win rate is. He has played 5 years, went through the same stakes, and has played over 3 million hands on Stars. He knows what’s up and I’m lucky he seems to like me and is willing to talk.
4) Reviewing the show-down history of the most winning 50NL full ring player so far this year on PokerStars. Yes I’ve identified the lucky son of a bitch. I think going through his hand histories will allow me to get a feel for correct plays in certain spots. This will be the most time consuming source. I want to review at least 50,000 of his hands. I haven’t even started on this yet, but at least I have identified the player and know my approach.
I think this is a good start, but if anyone has any “must add” sources please drop me a comment and let me know?
That being said, this will be a massive shift. I have learned how to comfortably 12 table short-stacking, but I need to improve on both formats. At first I think my plan will be to short-stack until I obtain Platinum Star status for the month (7,500 VPP or so). I should be able to hit that VPP mark in 24 hours maximum. The rest of the time for the month should go to playing and studying full buy in. Stars might screw with the buy-in amount and destroy short-stacking, but I have a feeling some sick hybrid of short-stacking will still exist, which I plan to use and still keep my Platinum Star for the month if possible in ANY WAY.
As for the month of March wow. Ok in a way I am sort of responsible. I mean if I started full-stacking at the beginning of the year I probably could have been comfortably 8 tabling and making profit by now. But instead I choose to wallow in the 180 SNG turbos and waste a month. Then I decide to base my poker livelihood on the likes of short-stacking two months. When I talked to my full-ring 200NL friend a month ago he specifically told me that he did not like my course, and that I should drop to 50NL full ring. But I’m a stubborn mother fucker and had to learn on my own. It’s going to be strange dropping to 1 or 2 full buy in tables and really figuring everything out again, but I have to take a step back at first.
Reader Comments (1)
I have to agree that. given your last month and your desire to start playing a full buy in, dropping down is probably a good move. Once you are beating that level consistently, you can always move back up. What is most important is to start winning again and stop the massive bleeding.