Operation: How do you play this game again?
I have played very little poker for the past two months or so.
I struggle to find more than 7-10 hours a week for poker at the best of times. I've had even less recently for a lot of reasons, but the main one is my entirely unhealthy obsession with "football". For those of you who know nothing about Australian football, my team has just done pretty much what the Patriots did earlier this year - they had statistically the most dominant regular season in 80 years, went unbeaten through the play-offs, and then three weeks ago they fell at the final hurdle in our equivalent of the SuperBowl. It was just their 3rd loss in 45 games! So now that they've built my hopes up and then completely dashed them, again, its time to say fuck them, move on and get back into poker again. What better way to do that than with a clean start and a new operation?
I play mainly 6-max with the occasional bit of FR thrown in. I started in Feb '08 by depositing $50 on Stars, and have since ground that up to around $270 playing 2NL, 5NL and 10NL. I am currently 2/3-tabling 10NL, still exclusively on Stars. I play 22/18/4 or so at 6-max, with a lifetime winrate of 5.4 ptBB/100 over about 38K hands. Sounds OK I think, but to be honest it is inflated by a ridiculously hot upswing at the beginning (that has probably played a big part in me being still hooked now!). Take out my first 3,000 hands and my winrate since is a much more sobering 2.2 ptBB/100, over 35K hands.
I am a keen student of the game, having read HOH1, TOP, NLHETAP, and most of the strategy articles here and on some other sites. I still have a load of leaks, but I think one of the biggest ones is hand reading - I don't do it often enough and as a result I am not that good at it. Thats one of the main reasons I'm only playing 2-3 tables, so I can concentrate on developing reads. My general discipline also needs improving - in particular, due to the other calls on my time I tend to play at the end of a long day, when I am tired, and way too often catch myself making silly decisions - especially really bad calls on later streets - because I am too weary to think about it properly. So I need to do something about that.
My goal over the next three months is to improve my play in those areas, and to win some money and take down a few bonuses along the way (as a non-US player I have a lot of options open to me so why not use them?). More specifically, I'm aiming to play another 25K hands by Christmas, at a winrate of at least 4ptBB/100, which when combined with a couple of bonuses should hopefully be enough to get me to a BR of $600+ and 25NL.
The purpose of this operation is to force me to self-evaluate by posting tough hands, asking advice and commenting on my own progress.
Any and all comments, questions, requests for advice :lol: or flames most welcome ...
