Wednesday 5 September 2007

Reflecting on Bad Play

Well its been a poor start to September for me so far , sadly , mainly due to my poor play . It certainly has got me thinking more and more about this game of poker .

A few months ago before this cr experiment i would try and sneak a few mins here and a few mins there of poker , my lifestyle was such that it was easy to play for short spells at a time , but this lacked preparation and goals , the former absolutely essential when playing .

This resulted in a pretty inconsistent set of results over several months . I am very keen to move up to 50 / 100 nl and so i had a lesson from a coach . This pretty much involved watching his style and replicating it which i did with success .

Around the same time the blogger experiment started and i had a disatorous July
I think down to lack of preparation and maybe overconfidence .

August was a turning point , although i did nt move up i certainly grinded out some results and the way i did this was pleasing . I could feel myself learning and understanding all the time .

So whats gone wrong ? i here you ask . Routine is my reply !! You may have caught on that i have been working in chip shops , nearly ten years now !! 30 000 bags of spuds later , i have sold the one where i worked . Whilst it was long hours i would come home at about 11pm and then start a little rolutin of playing poker , reviewing a session and then blogging and then the same again .

Now i have sold the shop i get home at around 5.30 ish and look to play a little bit here and there through the evening , no planing , no preparation , NO PROFIT !!

I have managed to lose 5 buyins so far which is a lot for me , admittedly there have been have been a couple of $100 dollar all ins , one on a tripp 5 i lost to a higher kicker and another when i had ak on an AK9 board only to lose to trip 9s , however on aech occasion the guy goes all in and i call . Without being funny it is obvious that i am way behind on both occasions but i still call like a fish . Oh and i played a hu $100 game against a guy called sbrugby dont know who he is but he did quite well against me . Personally i think he was playing well below his limit !!
LOL

Anyway i think the point of this post is to remind myself that you cant just mess about here , there and everywhere when playing poker and expect to win . It has to be the PPPPPP way proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.

More posts later in the week I may even post some resu;ts if there not too embarassing

GL All

6 comments:

Marc said...

I don't want to give you false confidence or anything, but don't beat yourself up too much when you call and lose an all-in. You should certainly be careful calling bets like that, but in the AK hand (although we don't know exactly how it went down), you should be happy to get it in without an absolutely phenomenal read. Doesn't matter whether you are calling or betting/raising.

Your previous routine of trying to squeeze some play in around a busy life hits home for me. I wonder if I had more time, how much of a good routine I'd have. I can't speak from experience, being the 30 minutes here/60 minutes there type of player, but I would guess that the difference to longer sessions is how long you can maintain your focus/concentration/A-game. So, whatever routine or preparation you come up with needs to support that aspect of playing more than any sort of poker technique aspect of playing. You probably know this, sorry if I'm just blathering.

grinder said...

thanks for the support marc
im not really beatong myself up ...or am i .... i dont know its probably more disappointmet than anything
and a reminder to myself

losbert said...

Graham, although what you say about having more success when you had a better routine to your poker, your early losses this month may purely be down to variance which affects us all.

You've under gone a radical change in lifestyle and this has to have an affect on you even subconciously. In time, things will hopefully settle down and you'll develop your own new routines etc.

Gregory Lynn said...

I'm struggling with bad play myself this month. Actually, I have been ever since August started. The amount of money I have lost over the past five weeks by calling while on autopilot makes me cringe.

Actually cringe isn't the right word. Puke my effing guts out is probably more accurate.

I think my problem has been about 80% focus and 20% tilt.

Hang in there. Practice, focus, play hard, play well, it's gotta get better.

robracing said...

A solid graph for August. The extra time that you now have will allow you to devote a lot more time to leisure activities. Don't overdose on poker! Try to do some other things as well.

RakebackFAQ said...

Nice post. I think you had a very good August and i think you did beacuse you had a plan on what you wanted. I am using you idea about working on position play and i hope it goes well for me.

I think that if you fell like playing for an hour or so you should try out sngs that will give you your "poker fix" without risking to much $. Iam sure if you put the same work in this month as you did last month the results will follow.
Best of luck