Updates: Life, Running Bad; Playing Average (10/11/2013)

For the month of October I now find myself running really bad, while playing average.  I’m about break even so far. 

Looking at my session for Thursday I lost -$185 in 6 hours.  I had very little chance to make money, but I didn’t play to the best of my ability.  I had four spots where I could have taken squeeze spots to fight for dead money pre-flop, I only took one, which of course failed.  I could have at least taken one out of the other three.

I also missed a very easy bluff spot against a regular multi-way which would have resulted in +$200 over 80% of the time.  I actually recognized each spot while they came up, I just failed to pull the trigger.  Sometimes I recognize the correct play, but don’t take it because it’s still somewhat out of my comfort zone.  Also, having a bad month makes it even harder to play optimally, you naturally miss more spots.  Your instinct becomes to tighten up and just wait for value, that’s what got me to where I am.  But that doesn’t always work anymore, it’s not that easy anymore, I feel I’m running out of time in general.  I’m not trying to grind mid-stakes for the rest of my life. 

I have to keep my foot on the gas-pedal.  I don’t get enough value spots, that’s not me, I have to go to absolute war to earn anything .  I’ll sit there for 8 hours and not get dealt QQ+ or hit a set, that’ fine my life sucks, I’m used to that.  But I’m going to go down kicking and screaming, I won’t go easy.  I have to push my game to it’s limits right now.  I don’t have time to wait for value spots, I don’t want to play live poker 180 hours per month.  That's not in my blood, I'm not passionate about playing poker like that anymore.   I’ll go to war to jack my win-rate up by any means possible.  If that means I lose this month fine, but I’m not taking my foot off the pedal, that shit is not happening.

Since it’s been such a horrendous week I’m trying to look at leaks in my game which prevent my win-rate from being as high as it could be.  Instead of sitting there in misery waiting for live hell variance to turn around I’m trying to proactively improve.  At least I’m trying to improve in certain areas, I think that’s the only way I can stay sane playing live going forward.  Proactively try to improve my game weekly; that has to be the goal, not the money.

In addition to trying to improve, I recognize I’ve had some off the table leaks as well.  My schedule is chronically messed up, so I’m not sleeping enough, which leads to me not playing well enough.  Also I haven’t worked out enough the past few weeks because I’ve been so busy.  That has to change going forward.  I need to have a more normal sleep schedule, and I need to work out twice per week minimum.  That was screwed up at first because moving took up so much time.  But now time to sign up for the gyms again, getting cold outside.

I’m planning to play sessions Fri-Sun, so plenty of work ahead of me the next few nights.

I want to start updating this site again some for myself because I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, maybe it can help keep me on track; writing is powerful.  My life has been really crazy during the past few months. 

Some highlights to catch you up:

1)  I just moved to a different state.  I’d prefer not mentioning where I am on this blog.  I’m really not here to tip off grinders on where I think games are more profitable, it’s really for my self improvement and tracking my progress.  That may sound selfish, but I don’t really care.

2)  I purchased a new car a few months ago.  That’s right, I didn’t go back up to high stakes only to get smashed again and repeat.  I may never get back to high stakes because I bought a car, it was completely irresponsible, but I’m fine with that.  I think at the time I really just needed some justification that I earned something playing poker.  The past three years, so many crazy ups and downs, at least I have something to show for it now.  And no one can take that from me.  Also, playing higher wasn’t important to me at the time.  For some reason I wanted to gravitate towards a less stressful existence at the time.  I’m just now getting my real competitive nature back.

3)  I recently broke off a 5 month relationship.  It’s tough, but I feel like this is my only chance to get to where I want to be in the poker world.  However, the main reason honestly was that I couldn’t see myself ever moving in with the girl or wanting to marry her.  Therefore, I justified it as a waste of time in my mind.  It was great sex even at the end, but just not enough to cancel out all the negatives.  Also, I felt I didn’t have the time for a relationship anymore.  The 2 days wasted per week need to now be used to play and sometimes improve.  And when I do take a break I’d rather just spend the time with friends, not deal with her bull-shit.  Maybe I’m not capable of being in a relationship with anyone right now, and I’m fine with that for the time being.  I worked too hard to get myself in a position to be self-sustaining working for myself, I can’t throw that away yet; it’s all I have.  I have to fight on.

I think I'm back, I enjoyed writing this post.  Aiming to update after my sessions this weekend.  I'll be fighting.

Going forward I want to be playing 130 hours live per month, and 50 online minimum.  I expect to hit those numbers this October.

-bag