Well hey, it's been about a month since I last wrote here. How's things?
Thanks to that swing I just re-read about, I was able to start/finish a semester's worth of portfolio for my Arch course and scrape a hopeful pass for my exam. I played a bit of APL at uni, but apart from that I've been on a binge of excesses since the semester finished. Poker has been far from my mind. Well, not completely.
I spent time reading the 2+2 Archives for tournament strategy. The ideas of their most successful (from what I gathered) players were quite radical to me in terms of poker thinking, and for a while at least, I was playing a terrible game to try and incorporate ideas I didn't really understand.
One ethos was that if cards were flipped, they would take any 50/50, for numerous reasons:
- To build a big stack early for future prospects of chip accumulation
- To save time (you WILL have to take a 50/50 for stacks in a big tournament. If it's early, at least you haven't burned 3 hours of tournament time)
- Because folding edges early is only worthwhile if you consider yourself one of the best players in the tourney (ie. losing EV early is only worthwhile if you have a considerable edge in the later stages).
I'm sure there were more arguments but those are the ones I remember. So for a while, my game became tainted by both my poor sense of self-control when under the influence and the words of supposed pros. Obviously, this approach is more swingy, what I really failed to realise was that this is for BIG tournaments. Playing 180 man $6.50s I am at least top %10. Certainly enough to fold some early marginals. But no, instead I decided it would be good to play the beginning of tournaments like I play cash...and I'm no good at cash.
Anyway, I'm currently on the fence about whether to play tight or loose early. It will take far more time in appropriate sized tournaments to make my decision, and even then I could be basing it on luck to a degree. Sometime poker seems like religion to me. Everyone tells you they know the way and everyone else is wrong. Once you pick a side you start identifying with it and before you know it you're the one preaching.
Anyway, my experiments haven't left me in too bad shape.
I don't think I was blogging at the time, but leading up to exams I cashed 2nd in a few $12 180 mans, so my roll was ok. I transferred some to play at FT, but I wasn't adjusting quickly so I cashed it for rent and food.
So my new situation is this. I have 730ish in my Stars account, and all the money I cashed is spent or owed. I think I left this way too late, because I can't cover rent in a fortnight, but I DO have completely free time for 3 more weeks, so maybe I can make something happen and continue to live off this game. If I'm not doing well by the time this holiday finishes, it is time to get a job, which can be boring, but at least it's reliable. I'd rather not go down that path ![:]](https://www.pokerstrategy.com/_forum-runtime/wp-content/uploads/wpforo/emoticons/pokerstrategy-legacy/basics/pleased.gif ":]")
To be honest to myself, the games I have played over the past few days, have been very aggressive. I think I need to tone it down and play how I used to, but at the same time I don't want to stop myself growing as a good aggressive player.
Anyway, I won't be playing tonight, but as of this blog post I am committing to poker till the holidays are out. Instead of giving myself a monetary goal, I am going to give myself a goal in time.
I will complete 120 hours of poker before 27th of June.
16 hours by the 6th
51 hours by the 13th
86 hours by the 20th
120 hours by the 27th
Current bankroll: $696
It would seem I'm in same position as when I started...
Here it goes again :F
Personally if I have found that the best best thing to do during a downswing is to stop playing, but when you're needing to pay the rent then how can you? then it just steam rolls...
