I woke up a bit early today (730am) because I wanted to crutch up the street to a nearby coffee shop and enjoy the start of the morning and write a blog update for y'all. I've been looking for excuses to get ouf of the house whenever I can. However, By the time I rolled out of bed and had a shower, found a couple of things and actually got to the coffee shop it was already almost 9am. Normally, 9am would still be incredibly early for me and in the past I would routinely start grinding after noon on a regular basis but this ain't 2010 anymore! This year on the SNE grind, every day has felt like there aren't enough hours in the day and it's going to take extreme discipline and time management if I want any shot at making SNE this time around.
I've been fighting to stay on pace for my target of 60K VPPs this month and so far I'm just the slightest bit behind but am doing pretty good. I'm planning on making up ground this weekend when the games will hopefully be bumping the whole day.
I've learned a couple of important things so far this year with regards to the SNE chase. The first is that I really need to take advantage of when the games run during peak hours to maximize hands/hour...during roughly 10am-6pm, I seem to be able to play consistently close to 24 tables and average around 1250 hands per hour. On off peak times, I can still get 20+ tables but the startup process is longer, tables break more and my average hands/hour seems to be closer to 1000. The difference might not be huge but enough when VPPs are this tight.
The second thing is something that I'm not entirely sure if it's true or not but I seem to be able to play better at night. During the day, I just have this rushed feeling a lot of the time and don't seem to play as relaxed or as calm. I think that a lot of factors play into this feeling, such as knowing that I still have a big grind ahead of me, more noises inside and outside of the house, the bright lights shining through my window tempting me to be outside etc. I guess a lot of it could also have to do with the fact that the games are a bit slower, as I mentioned earlier, and I have more time to think about decisions for the most part and play a bit better...I suppose that has the most to do with it, actually. Anyways, it's not like I'm going to start playing only at night but I found it a bit interesting.
I haven't checked my results yet this month, aside from 1 single session I think, and will try to continue to do so until halfway through the month...at which point I'll post them publicly as well. Things seem to be going pretty good though, thanks in large part to a big heater last night. It was kind of only the 2nd or 3rd session this year where I've really felt like I've been running great and got put in many situations where I have Aces against another premium hands and held, stacked fish in standard spots and managed to avoid the big coolers the other way too. I feel like my play is progressing as well and there were only a few hands that I was unhappy with how I played and fortunately they didn't cost me too much.
The only one that I can remember really is when a reg opened from EP, an unknown flatted and I flatted AJo in the BB instead of 3betting...I didn't like it at the time even but for some reason I thought the unknown was sort of a reg-fish and not a standard rec and didn't really want to 3bet against what I thought were tight ranges. I wanted to fold but the open was basically a min-raise so I decided to peel instead of fold. Flop was Axx 2 diamonds, reg Cbet, reg-fish called and I check-raised trying to iso the reg-fish and fold out the initial raiser. EP called, reg-fish folded. Turn was a brick and I decided to fire even though I know EP has a very strong range there...was basically hoping to fold out a flush draw but EP shoved and I had to fold. All of that could have been avoided if I just 3bet pre! I think that my biggest mistake that I seem to keep making is flatting instead of 3betting in a ton of spots. Either that, or check-calling in spots where it's just so much better to bet. Got a couple of things to work on but other than that I think that I'm feeling the games pretty well right now, have a strong grasp of people's overall ranges and am just playing much better than January. Or maybe I'm just running better, who knows.
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7325513_AC60D8EAAE
There was one pretty funny hand that I played last night that ended up working out great for me. I ended up squeezing out of the BB with Queens pre-flop against 2 regs and a whale and everyone came along. The whale and I were pretty deep. The flop was J-high and I Cbet and one reg and the whale came along. The turn was gross, another J, and my HUD was placed over the reg still in the pot and I thought that they actually folded on the flop. With stack sizes a bit awkward between the whale and I, I decided that I had put too much money in to fold vs their range and wanted to induce a bluff or check-shove and hope to get called by a 1-pair type hand. I checked, the whale shoved and I snap-called without realizing that the reg was still left to act lol. Fortunately, they just folded and I ended up winning vs. just a straight draw. It was pretty lucky since I think that I normally would have to just check-fold that turn card and give one of them credit for having a jack at least, especially the reg :/
In other news, I had my first checkup on the ankle a couple of days ago and the news is good and bad. The good news is that it seems to be healing properly and I should be able to avoid any surgery as long as I don't damage it further by walking on it. The bad news is that it's going to take 6 weeks for the bone to heal and I can't even do any rehab on it until then. It looks like I'm going to be out of crossfit and ice hockey for at least 2 months! It's pretty brutal but I obviously want to get my ankle back to 100% and at least poker should continue to be productive.
Alright, back to the tables. As I said, I'll post results in about a week on the 14th. My plan is to start including 400nl and 600nl if I'm up over $3,000 at that point, otherwise I'll stick to my current filters of 100nl/200nl. What I'm doing now is basically trying to play all of the 200nl tables that I can and fill in the rest with 100nl...which usually ends up being more 100 than 200 anyways. It will be nice for my vpp/hr to start including the higher midstakes tables, although I'm not sure how much they'll run anyways. It also sucks to play with a spread of 100nl-600nl since it's hard to care about the smaller stakes when there's so much riding on the bigger tables but in the end it's all about hands/hr and VPPs/hr :)
Also, quick link to the PokerStars blog about my upcoming PSO class. I'll be doing a member review class, which was very popular last time and was a lot of fun to do so if you have any hands that you'd like me to analyse please send them in and attend the class. I took literally a page of notes per every hand last week, going over every street in detail so I take this pretty seriously. That's all for now,
PokerStarsBlog.com - Get your hand analysed by Tyler "frosty012" Frost!
gl at the tables!
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