haven't played in a bit... fixing my leaks

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vlseph United States. May 17 2009 06:18. Posts 3026

I lost a lot of money and well over half my bankroll before and I really hated poker so I took a break.
It felt like I had to play rather than I wanted to play. Poker was fun when I first started and had no idea what I was doing, and back a couple months ago it felt like a really bad grind when it really didn't have to be. I find myself starting to like poker now. I'm going to only play when I want to play, not when I feel like I'm forced to get x number of hands in every day/week/month or whatever.

I've been playing WoW for three months as a substitute and finished my first year of college.
Need to try and find a roommate and an apartment for next year though since my family is moving further away from campus.

Back to poker.

I've lowered myself to 4 tables to start focusing on my game and trying to get more reads on other players, so far it has been working great. I used to mass table and just click buttons without thinking but there are still many spots that happen too often that I was unsure about, and I'm going to work on my play a lot more.

I've deposited a roll good enough for NL25 and onto Pokerstars (took all my money off FTP, seeing too many people from 2p2 getting hacked or w/e) and going to try and stop cashing out so much. Cashing out parts or all of my roll from time to time has really hindered my progress as a player. I don't care about the money anymore, I only see it as a tool to advance my game and not for spending.

Here's a list of leaks that I realized my game had and to serve as a mental note to anyone else reading this around my level as for what to look out for and fix...

Barreling too much without
Going against reads
Playing too fit/fold when not the pre-flop raiser
Not fighting against cbets enough
Being distracted by the allures of the marvelous internet
Not thinking enough
Not enjoying it enough
Forcing the action too much

I thank my friend Allen for helping me go through some hands and just talking about poker. He's helped me a lot in my thinking, and he'll probably see and read this blog. Thanks a lot, without you I'd probably have quit. He's helped me table select a lot better and I definitely feel it is another BIG improvement in my game.

Some side notes:
Played live SNG with some friends today. It is very nice to be able to play for a small amount of money and to be able to play poker for fun and not have it feel so serious.

I've signed up for this month's Turbo Takedown since it is only 2000 FPPs, I haven't played in it before so I hope I do well enough just to stay awake for however long I'm going to be in it. Hope I catch a good run of cards and tables there and taking back from it a couple hundred dollars I'd be pretty happy. Good luck to everyone else playing in it, and try to have a good time while playing poker. It'll make it a lot easier.

0 votes

The only hands a nit balances in his range are the nuts, the second nuts, and the third nuts.

joLin United States. May 17 2009 06:26. Posts 3818

we have lots of work to do this summer.

YoUr_KiLLeR @ TL