Termi8r's Week and Thoughts About Time Management

Published on 03 Sep 08 13:34 by TribunCaesar

It's time for an update of Termi8r's progress for the last week. It was a rather quiet week regarding poker. Nevertheless, he made some important steps, such as having time management, to become a better poker player.

by Termi8r

This week has been a rather quiet one concerning poker. I played about 4.5k hands and made $30 profit. At least I was not running quite as badly as the previous week. It still hurts to go all-in with KK and get three callers and some random guy takes a >$15 pot with QJs. I will try and post more graphs this week in my blog about my stats and total winnings so far. Progress was made in terms of money, but I still make far too many mistakes. In some cases, I know how I should play but still do the opposite, and it's costing me.

I downloaded some mined hands of NL25 on PokerStars and imported them into Elephant. Now I have a decent sample size for the regular players and can assume that the stats are fairly accurate. In one case, I folded JJ after a re-raise from a guy with PFR of 4%. One person called him and he showed KK. I still try to play strictly according to the strategy and rather err on the conservative side. Later, when I have more confidence, I'll start to loosen up against the right opponents. The review session for next week will deal with "Stealing" while playing SSS, and I will try to apply the ideas of the articles in combination with the stats on the opponents to maximize my profit.
I formatted all my poker articles into word documents and printed them out into a booklet for easy reading. Now I can read them even when I’m away from the computer. I started out by just reading the articles a few times, and then took the quiz. I could remember what hands I should play, while I vaguely remembered something about the positions and about raising pre-flop 4BB+ limpers. I didn't bother to memorize the raise:stack size and how to play the flop. The other articles, such as the psychological ones, I skimmed through and then started playing. At the start I was doing really well and thought "Wow, SSS is the BOMB!" But variance has a funny way… Now I'm reading all the articles again and trying to understand the mathematics behind it all. I'm playing around in Equilator trying to see what my chances are of winning in different situations and against different types of opponents and trying to understand the whole "EV" thing. I'm reading the articles on what attitude you should have in order to play poker successfully and how you should study and evaluate your game as well.

I was wondering how many hours per day one needs to spend to be successful at poker. If you are young, maybe just out of school or a student at University, then you should have more free time than people who are married, working and have children. The friends I've invited to PokerStrategy.com started playing but gave up quickly because it took too much time. I try and play for 2 hours (1,000 hands) per night with about 1-2 hours spent on learning poker, and it still feels like I'm not doing nearly enough. If I spend more than that, then Mrs Termi8r gives me the frown…

Bankroll: $270

Weekly goals:
Play 7,000 hands
Perfect my SSS game: Posting hands, watching videos, reading articles, coaching
Have fun

Cheers
Termi8r