A Return..!!
I have been back playing Poker for about 3 months now and have decided to renew my blog.
I am learning all the time and i want to record and share my thoughts
I have now moved to London and whilst i still have to work during the days i have pretty much devoted much of my free time and the early hours of the morning to online poker. I have only been able to achieve this because of the saviour of Red Bull to get me through work.
On the whole i have made a lot of progress. It has surprised me that most of this has not been in tactics or strategy development but in learning to be more professional and disciplined in my approach and my playing.
I will try to explain as i go along.
I would now class myself as a slightly below average player....i think. Trouble is it's very difficult to measure yourself online.
For the last 3 months i played almost exclusively on the Tribeca network having virtually busted my bankroll on my other sites when i last left you.
I had a good run on Tribeca in January and February(playing through the Blue Square skin). I made the last 30 of the $100,000 and i had satellited into that and never made a re-buy. During that time i had also run my account up to $1,400 playing low limit MTT's
That is pretty impressive i think, and certainly signals some progress.
However the old holes in my game were still there and they were about to expose themselves.
Towards the end of March, Tribeca Tables prepared to close. It had been bought out by ipoker and was gearing up towards primarily serving a European market. This, i guess, is the result of the imminent ban on internet poker in the US. In anycase we were all transferred to the new network bankroll and all.
Several things caused problems at the point of switchover. The software in case you're not falmiliar is the one that Titan Poker runs on. Now it was adding the players from Doyles Room, Victor Chandler, Paddypower and Blue Square amongst others. Needless to say the servers crashed several times in good positions mid tournaments because they couldn't cope with the sudden jump in users. Initially i was pleased to have longer levels in the tourneys. Tribeca had used 8 minute levels and this had always led to the end of tourneys becoming all in crapshoots that detracted from any skill you had as a player. I had also become a 'fast' player and and 'aggressive' one. The short levels dictated i had to be. I felt it would do me good to slow down my style. There was also the annoyance that the loyalty points i had accumilated were only going to be transferred at a rate of 5-1. I felt like someone from East Berlin the day after the wall came down!
The extra level time and subsequent length of games combined with the constant crashes only served to put me on tilt and frustrate me. I lost a lot of my bankroll by playing too fast and playing as many as 5 tourneys at once. I would enter them in advance and would still be playing tourneys as they began. I severily misjudged the new length of them. My bankroll plummeted and i couldn't win anything.
I managed to stem the tide when i had blown a$1,000. This left me with $400 after about 1 weeks play on the new software.
I really can't impress upon people how important it is to be fully comfortable with a sites software before depositing money. Everything takes getting used to, the time allowed for decisions, the length of levels, the payouts, the speed and lighting....hell all sorts of things have a collective impact on you and need time to adjust to. Time you don't realise you need. If you're starting at a new site, play micro levels till you get used to it.
Through some careful play, and i daresay luck i managed to rebuild my bankroll in about 3 weeks back up to $1,300. At this point i made my oft repeated error of going to play the cash games. It really is a differnet game and style required. I blew $900 here in only a few days, chasing losses and getting personal with players who had sucked outon big pots.
I have finally learnt my lesson though! I promise!!!
I am always suckered into it because i know there is far more money to be made at the cash tables and far quicker that by playing tournaments. But i was playing above my limits AGAIN!!
I was playing $1/2 NL with a bank roll of $1,300 and i was playing loose. I reckon you need a bank roll of 20-30 times the maximum buy in to play and absorb the swings without causing you severe grief. The buy in here was $100 and you must always sit down with the maximum amount of buy in if you can; why would you enter a game as a willing short stack...? It's difficult enough as it is.
So going back down to about $400 i switched back to tournament play, i vowed not to indulge in cashgames again with one exception, i will explain later.
It took me a long time to re build myself this time and it wasn't for about 3 weeks and into April that i managed to get back up to about $700. This time however my frustration about having to rebuild my bankroll twice in quick succession was hampering me. I was playing with a sense of desparation to regain my bankroll. Needless to say i did a lot wrong.
I am learning all the time and i want to record and share my thoughts
I have now moved to London and whilst i still have to work during the days i have pretty much devoted much of my free time and the early hours of the morning to online poker. I have only been able to achieve this because of the saviour of Red Bull to get me through work.
On the whole i have made a lot of progress. It has surprised me that most of this has not been in tactics or strategy development but in learning to be more professional and disciplined in my approach and my playing.
I will try to explain as i go along.
I would now class myself as a slightly below average player....i think. Trouble is it's very difficult to measure yourself online.
For the last 3 months i played almost exclusively on the Tribeca network having virtually busted my bankroll on my other sites when i last left you.
I had a good run on Tribeca in January and February(playing through the Blue Square skin). I made the last 30 of the $100,000 and i had satellited into that and never made a re-buy. During that time i had also run my account up to $1,400 playing low limit MTT's
That is pretty impressive i think, and certainly signals some progress.
However the old holes in my game were still there and they were about to expose themselves.
Towards the end of March, Tribeca Tables prepared to close. It had been bought out by ipoker and was gearing up towards primarily serving a European market. This, i guess, is the result of the imminent ban on internet poker in the US. In anycase we were all transferred to the new network bankroll and all.
Several things caused problems at the point of switchover. The software in case you're not falmiliar is the one that Titan Poker runs on. Now it was adding the players from Doyles Room, Victor Chandler, Paddypower and Blue Square amongst others. Needless to say the servers crashed several times in good positions mid tournaments because they couldn't cope with the sudden jump in users. Initially i was pleased to have longer levels in the tourneys. Tribeca had used 8 minute levels and this had always led to the end of tourneys becoming all in crapshoots that detracted from any skill you had as a player. I had also become a 'fast' player and and 'aggressive' one. The short levels dictated i had to be. I felt it would do me good to slow down my style. There was also the annoyance that the loyalty points i had accumilated were only going to be transferred at a rate of 5-1. I felt like someone from East Berlin the day after the wall came down!
The extra level time and subsequent length of games combined with the constant crashes only served to put me on tilt and frustrate me. I lost a lot of my bankroll by playing too fast and playing as many as 5 tourneys at once. I would enter them in advance and would still be playing tourneys as they began. I severily misjudged the new length of them. My bankroll plummeted and i couldn't win anything.
I managed to stem the tide when i had blown a$1,000. This left me with $400 after about 1 weeks play on the new software.
I really can't impress upon people how important it is to be fully comfortable with a sites software before depositing money. Everything takes getting used to, the time allowed for decisions, the length of levels, the payouts, the speed and lighting....hell all sorts of things have a collective impact on you and need time to adjust to. Time you don't realise you need. If you're starting at a new site, play micro levels till you get used to it.
Through some careful play, and i daresay luck i managed to rebuild my bankroll in about 3 weeks back up to $1,300. At this point i made my oft repeated error of going to play the cash games. It really is a differnet game and style required. I blew $900 here in only a few days, chasing losses and getting personal with players who had sucked outon big pots.
I have finally learnt my lesson though! I promise!!!
I am always suckered into it because i know there is far more money to be made at the cash tables and far quicker that by playing tournaments. But i was playing above my limits AGAIN!!
I was playing $1/2 NL with a bank roll of $1,300 and i was playing loose. I reckon you need a bank roll of 20-30 times the maximum buy in to play and absorb the swings without causing you severe grief. The buy in here was $100 and you must always sit down with the maximum amount of buy in if you can; why would you enter a game as a willing short stack...? It's difficult enough as it is.
So going back down to about $400 i switched back to tournament play, i vowed not to indulge in cashgames again with one exception, i will explain later.
It took me a long time to re build myself this time and it wasn't for about 3 weeks and into April that i managed to get back up to about $700. This time however my frustration about having to rebuild my bankroll twice in quick succession was hampering me. I was playing with a sense of desparation to regain my bankroll. Needless to say i did a lot wrong.
- I put myself in situations where i was only a slight favourite for all my chips
- I played tired...so tired that i often fell asleep mid game
- I was still double dipping (playing more than one game at a time)
- I was continually trying to push people off pots with no hand
I didn't get very far playing like this. My bankroll failed to improve and when it fell to $400 and the system crashed a few more times i had had enough.
I was due to return to the North East and visit my sister for a week and before i did i cashed out $300 and thought i'd give things a rest
Labels: poker
posted by Stephen Daughton at 10:22 pm
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