Tuesday 15 January 2008

Time to reflect

After celebrating new year, and eventually sobering up I had time to reflect about why December was such a bad month for me, worst ever in fact. It would be easy to attribute it to running bad and continue as usual, but i think that would be a little naive and immature of me. The 6 weeks or so prior to December were my best on record for online poker and i think that in turn that set me up for the disastrous December. I have reviewed all of my sessions throughout the month and my play gets noticeably worse and worse as the month goes on and on. At the start of the month I felt invincible and felt all i needed to was turn up and win without any thought or effort.

I did seem to run really bad on full tilt to lose the first $20k or so with some horrendous beats that I wont bore you with the details of. However after that I was obviously becoming frustrated and impatient about how my results were going. I started playing the step 5 SnG's on stars for the PCA and quickly burnt through $8k and no package, wp pab. The rest of the month up to christmas I played pretty badly and was leaking money all over the show, and some bad beats mixed in didn't help my situation in the slightest and just increased my frustration. Christmas came and it was break time, drinking took over and poker didn't figure in my daily routine which was good as the $50k losing month could easily have become $70 or $80k.

Since new year as i said i have reviewed all my sessions to determine the cause of December's atrocities. Yes i ran bad but i made the situation worse by tilting and playing bad. I have watched some Cardrunner's videos, something i haven't done since i went on my super hot streak. I am making a conscious effort to play no more than 4 tables and to give them my full focus and not take winning for granted just because i am a good player.

I hope i have learned from my mistakes in December and will be able to tackle running bad in a more professional manner next time which there inevitably will be. I hope now i will step away from the tables sooner and review my sessions in detail to determine the problem.

I have just played my first real session of poker at high stakes since new year and was very pleased with the way I played and how much more in control I felt. $11k to the good i just over an over was a bonus as well. Some of the 10/20 ad 25/50 players on ipoker are just so bad, im gonna name and shame art113 as the biggest donk on the site IMHO. I feel in a much more positive frame of mind about poker again and am hopeful about stringing some good sessions together.


Thanks for the comments to my previous post. Alex, Ukgatsby and m3boy, thanks for the good luck 08 message, same to you guys too. Busted man ill look your blog up as soon as ive published this entry, so a return link would be appreciated, Snoopy - lol


I think i have rambled enough now, bye for now

Pab

3 comments:

Geo said...

Hi Pab,

Got to say I agree about art113, he's probably on every players buddy list.

Sorry to hear about your bad month in December. Sometimes it can be good to have a wake up call and realise that its not easy to win effortlessly every month, and to never get complacent with your game.

Since June i've been playing generally 2 tables, 3-tables max and my results have never been better. Its really hard to make optimal decisions playing any more than that, and swings are much smaller the less tables you play. My advice - play less tables, have less stress, and you will probably win more. I've not played more than 20K hands in a month for 7 months and its much easier going.

Good luck for the new year.

Geo83

Anonymous said...

if you need any help with "steps" strategy let me know

best wishes

boo

Anonymous said...

Hey,

I saw your post on another blog and figured I’d check yours out and give you a headsup about a WPT giveaway I’m running this year.

A lot of players want to participate in a 10K buyin event, but most lack the skills or experience, so if I gave that way it would be like giving away a lottery ticket. Unless they got very lucky they probably wouldn’t do much with it.

So I tried to come up with something that I felt would be a much better prize for the majority of poker players. I’m giving away a WPT Battle For The Season Pass III package this year on my site.

You can win a weeklong vacation in the Bahamas, training from the pros (over 20 in attendance last year) and entry into up to three tournaments while you’re down there. One of the tournaments is a 3-day deep-stacked event with a number of WPT, cash and boot camp prizes. The grand prize is a $100,000 WPT Season Pass plus $10K in cash for expenses.

You can use the WPT Season Pass to enter any World Poker Tour events you want (ten 10K events, a mix of 5K, 15K, etc)

The first free satellite is being held on Full Tilt Poker Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 14:00 (2pm EST)

Right now there's only 34 players signed up, the top 4 advance to a single-table semi-final in February. The fields aren't going to get any smaller as word of this promotion spreads. So if you want in, you'll want to play some of the earlier events to have less competition.

Hope the tables & life are treating you well, and I hope you’ll take a shot at winning this prize!

Also, feel free to contact me via email from my site, perhaps we can work out a way for you to put our banner up on your blog. Would love the opportunity to work with you! Contact@rakereport.net

AJ
President
www.RakeReport.net