In A Rut

I find that after a deep tournament run, I fall into a but of a lull. I don't know if I'm mentally exhausted or just unfocused, either way I just can't be bothered with more poker. And that's fine, normally. But not when you've got thousands of dollars worth of WCOOP tickets to use before they expire in 11 days.

I looked again to see what appealed on the WCOOP schedule, after 8pm. Mostly just turbo holdem bounty tournaments, which isn't really my thing. I  tried a couple of the late night holdem tournaments, but they went poorly. I max late regged a PLO tourney, and starting with just 15bbs, lost it all in two hands (favourite when the chips when in both times mind you). Feeling flummoxxed with it all, I went back to the good ol' nightly $4 badugi. I thought it would be a good idea to road test a new more aggressive playing style, but on reflection, I was maybe just bored and tilting. So, despite the pile of tickets, I'm taking a few days off to recharge ahead of the final few days of WCOOP big events.

Comments

Post a Comment

Most Read Posts

Why Do We Play Poker?

Image
During a recent interview with Joey Ingram, Barry Greenstein spoke about asking a bunch of recreational players why they play poker and despite all being clearly losing players, everyone says they're in it to win money. Absurd isn't it? But hang on, why do I play poker? To win money, of course. Do I?  A little but at a very poor hourly rate. So why bother? If I really wanted to win, I would do 200% more studying, I would have at the very least tried using a HUD at some point in the last decade and I would certainly be all over solvers right now. But I am not. I read free strategy pieces, some hand histories and occasionally go old school with some good old fashioned book reading, just enough to keep the pocket money coming in but not enough to win serious cash. And yet, I want to win serious cash, so what am I waiting for?  People are always asking pros "what do I need to do to become a great player?" like there's some quick "oh you should be 3betting ev...
Read more

Nit Picking

Image
I am such a fucking nit, a nd it's ruining poker.  It's not my play at the tables that's the problem though,  my problem is I am a bankroll nit. My desire not to lose money has shackled my ability to win money and destroyed my enjoyment of the game.  It wasn't always this way, back when I started I had more disposable income than I knew what to do with (part of the reason I started playing poker), losing meant nothing but winning big could have meant everything. The first couple of years wins and losses yoyo-ed erratically, but overall the pattern was a fairly consistent downward trend. After a while I got my shit together, started studying, reading books and forums, turned my game around and began climbing back towards the land of profit. At one point, I had a pretty nice win for a few hundred dollars, made all the more significant because it marked my return to the break even point. Only it wasn't.  I hadn't been keeping track of wins and losses, not ...
Read more

What Is Wrong?

Image
"Oh my god, what's wrong?" b ooms a beautiful bubbly blonde.  Confused by the grim scene she finds in front of her.  She turns to her friend but he doesn't know either, so she approaches the poker table. "What's wrong?" she asks.  Her question is met with silent stares. "I just saw your face as I came in, you look really angry." she says to me.  Bemused, I shrug, not sure what to say, I manage to raise a little smile in her direction.   "Oh my god,  why does everyone look so serious?" I look around me, and she's right. After a night of solid poker, we're one player away from making the final table an yet we look more like we belong in the dentists waiting room.  "You all look pretty sad" I laugh. No-one else joins in though.   "Why does no-one look happy?" Her effervescence is failing to spread.  The line of questioning isn't doing much to lighten the mood.  She watches on, tr...
Read more

And The Winner Is...

Image
“Win a luxury holiday to the Bahamas for you and your friends!” You know those competitions for amazing all expenses paid five star holiday? You probably never hear of anyone winning one, you might even wonder if anyone actually does win them, I used to wonder that, until I won one, but I am the  worst  winner. Prostate Cancer UK ran a fundraising campaign called ‘Lad's Night In’. Similar in vein to things like 'Movember' or the 'Ice Bucket Challenge', the idea was to get people to do something fun, in this case play poker, raising money and awareness to help fight prostate cancer. My dad is living with prostate cancer and I play poker, so I got involved.  Pokerstars were sponsoring the campaign, bringing two things to the table: - a home game poker pack, including cards and dealer button - a holiday in the Bahamas for 5, including flights, accommodation, spending money and entry to a side event at the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) to be...
Read more

Grand Prix Poker Tour - Hampden, Glasgow

Image
I read this blog by Kat "the Poker Baffer" Arnsby and it completely changed my outlook on satelliting into big events. What I took from it was that small stakes players such as myself would be better off trying to win their way to smaller, more local poker events, in my case UK tours, rather than the international big buy-in WSOP/WPT/EPT type events. It makes sense, get a few £200-500 events under your belt before you try to win a million against the best in the world. Despite how much sense that makes to me now, previously my mind was firmly set on the idea that if you could just be lucky enough to run like god in one of those events, you'd be set. The reality is, with a small stakes bankroll, you need to run like god just to get to that big tournament in the first place. With this new approach, I had a bit of a look around to see what the upcoming events where taking place in Scotland and found that PartyPoker were conducting the Grand Prix Poker Tour (GPPT), wi...
Read more