I've been having some success lately at the tables. It feels to me like I'm just running good, but I'm trying to tell myself that it also has something to do with decent play. I want to take responsibility for my actions. If it's poor play that causes me to lose, then I should also take a little credit if I'm on an upswing. I figure I'm only a week or two away from taking a shot at 25NL, maybe 3 weeks at the most. I'm very excited to move up and take a shot, but I'm trying to control my anticipation and focus on improving my game. Some recent changes I've made:

1) my session are limited to 40-45 minutes since I think this is about as long as I can play at a stretch without losing focus. Much longer than this and I find my mind wandering and not giving full attention to the tables. There's been a couple times when I've been playing well and lost track of time and realized that I'd been sitting for over an hour. That's fine, but when I realize that's happened I check the 'sit out next blind' button and call it a session, happy to be leaving the table with profit. After a break I can come back to the table for another session, but I really want to limit the length of sessions in order to improve focus.

2) I minimized my HUD. I only have a handful of stats displayed right now and I'm much happier with my current setup. I may reduce it even more, but I want to play a few thousand hands like this first.

Lost returns today and I'm very happy about it. It's about damn time!

Good luck at the tables!

It's time to set goals for November. Here they are:

1) Play over 8000 quality hands for the month
2) Review the 41 hands from October where I was heads up on the flop but NOT the preflop aggressor.
3) Review a random sampling of pocket 9s that I played from October to see if there is a reason why I'm losing money with this hand.

I think I have a handle on cbetting, I'll continue working on that. My main focus for the month during November's play will be to open up my button and CO range a little bit. Nothing crazy, but I agree with Scott from Microcrushers that a slightly wider range will be more profitable. So I'll focus on that, while trying to maintain some solid postflop play. I think the biggest challenge from this experiment will be making sure that I am recognizing marginal situations and dealing with them appropriately.

Good luck everyone.

Well, October is done and it is time for a review. First, my goals for the month:

1) I fell short on hands played. I was looking for a little over 8000 and only played 7022
2) In depth review of 17 hands from september. COMPLETE!
3) Review 5 hands from every days play for appropriate c-bet...totally forgot about this. I don't read the blogs very much and forgot that I had set a concrete goal for myself on this. However, I have been focused on cbetting this whole month since I am positive this used to be a leak for me and I know that I have improved. I think there is still room for improvement and I am still paying a lot of attention to this aspect of my game.

OCTOBER POKER TRACKER STATS: 10NL

Hands: 7022 3 BET: 3.11
Hours: 37.2 FOLD 3B: 84.12
Amt Won: $41.90 ATT STL: 24.52
BB / 100: 2.98 F SB TO STL: 94.50
VP$IP: 14.98 F BB TO STL: 93.48
PFR: 12.05 BET TURN: 26.06
AF: 4.67 BET RIVER: 24.13
CBET F: 71.73 FOLD F CBET: 89.47
W$WSF: 39.55 4 BET: 6.52
WTSD: 23.39
W$SD: 59.56

OCTOBER STATS BY POSITION: 10NL

POS VP$IP PFR AF CCPF AMT WON 3BET PF CBET F CBET T
Button 22.76 20.14 5.33 4.29 $54.10 2.58 70.53 23.53
1 18.23 17.05 4.88 5.36 $52.00 2.22 70.97 27.59
2 11.70 11.00 6.08 8.33 -$30.25 1.19 71.69 26.67
3 13.35 13.35 7.67 NA $3.90 NA 73.17 33.33
BB 6.77 4.72 3.58 NA -$44.95 2.97 73.33 50.00
SB 15.82 6.66 5.50 NA $7.10 2.19 57.14 42.86


Going by Pokey's "How to Use Poker Trackert" forum post, here is more breakdown of my game.

1) Do I have sufficient preflop aggression? Yes
2) Am I positionally aware? Yes. Position 3 has slightly higher stats than pos 2 this month, probably due to variance and small sample size. The UTG and UTG + 1 ranges I use are almost the same.
3) How's my stealing? My steal % is reasonable and is profitable for me. I don't think I have a problem here.
4) Defending the blinds? I typically win back some of my money from the blinds, that's good. Facing a steal attempt I am winning some of my money back, which is also good. I'm going to assume I have no MAJOR problems here.
5) Heads up play? Heads up in general I was profitable this month, although only marginally so. My BB/Hand was +0.01 and my BB/100 was +1.40. I would assume that competant players are fairly successful heads up and I feel that I need to bring this win rate up if I'm going to expect to be crushing any limit. So, my heads up play needs to improve. In heads up play when I am NOT the preflop aggressor I am a loser and I think this is part of my problem, with BB/Hand at -0.85 and BB/100 at -84.76. There are only 41 hands from the month where I was heads up on the flop and not the preflop aggressor, so I will review all these hands to see if they could have been played differently.
6) Multiway pots? I'm profitable in multiway pots overall, winning +0.13 BB/hand and +13.11 BB/100. When I am not the preflop aggressor I am still winning nicely so it looks like I'm picking good spots to limp or call and play multiway, as well as playing decently postflop. I'm sure there is room for improvement here, but it looks decent for now and is probably not my biggest leak.
7) Pocket Pairs? These were profitable for me with a good winrate. My VP$IP is very high with these, which is good. Looking down the "hands" tab I see a lot of negative numbers, which I shouldn't see with a large sample size. Unfortunately, my sample is small. AA-88 should definitely be big winners, and mine are except for 99. I'll take a closer look at the pocket 9s to see if I played these hands poorly.
8) Suited Connectors? My BB/100 is positive for suited connectors and that's good. Cold calling with these should be extremely rare, and I didn't do that this month, so that's also good.
9) Unsuited Connectors? I'm also winning with offsuit connectors. I never cold called with them.
10) Postflop Aggression? My AF is a little over 4 and I'm cbetting about 70-75% of the time. I think these numbers are reasonable, although my cbetting could probably be a little bit less.
11) Check-raising? My check raising for the flop is a little over 2, which is probably ok. My check raising on the turn is almost 4 at 3.85. This is probably too much, and I need to re-evaluate the times I did this.

One of my goals for October is accomplished. I just finished looking at 17 hands from September where I won at showdown but didn't bet the river. The reason I looked at these hands is because I thought maybe I was missing out on some value. For most of the hands, I think I missed out on a chance to make a bet, not just on the river, but on the turn as well. I think on a lot of turns, I am going too much for pot control instead of putting in another bet. I'm going to try focusing on this for the next couple of weeks, in addition to concentrating on cbetting. Hopefully, I will see myself extracting more value in good situations.

My goals for October:

1) play 8350 quality hands

2) review 17 hands from September where I won $ at showdown but didn't bet the river. The ultimate goal from this exercise is to determine if I am getting max value from winning hands or missing out on value by not betting rivers in good spots.

3) continue to improve in cbetting by: looking at 5 hands from every day's play where I choose to cbet and determine if the cbet was appropriate.

September is done and I fell short on my goals a little. I had two goals for the month: be active in the forum everyday and play at least 10,000 hands. I fell short on the hands played goal, I only put in 7588 hands. On the positive side, nearly all those hands were good hands where I was really focused and paying attention, instead of playing like a robot. Also, about 3 weeks into the month I decided to start playing only two tables in order to try and get more out of it when I play. I want to really put more focus into my decision making and hopefully incorporate some good habits into subconcious behavior so that when I do increase the number of tables I am effortlessly making good decisions. For the second goal, I've been much more active in the forums than before and have joined a study group. So even though I didn't read the forums EVERY day, I'm going to call that a partial success. I still haven't figured out how to get a fancy screen shot of PT3 info into my blog, so here's my stats for the month, typed out old school style:

Hands / Amt won / VPIP / PRF/ AF / BB/100 / cbet F / Att steal / 3 bet PF / 4 bet PF / Bet rvr / w$ at SD

7588 / -$58.10 / 15.17 / 12 / 2.68 / -3.83 / 72.7 / 25.72 / 3.41 / 8.84 / 12.73 / 59.73

So, a little bit of a losing month. I noticed a couple things as I was reviewing my stats that need a closer look.

For some reason, around 2500 hands into the month my red line starts going down much faster than it was at the beginning of the month. So did my playing style change, or what? If my red line had continued down, but at the rate I started the month, September would have been profitable.

Also, my bet river frequency is %12.73. It would seem to me that I am missing out on opportunities for one last value bet if my I'm only betting 12.73 but winning at showdown 59.73. So I am going to look through some hands and see if they could have been played better.

My cbetting is looking better, 72.7 instead of 85.

Running a couple filters based on a 2+2 post by pokey I also think that I have some research to do about these possible leaks in my game: not blind stealing profitably, possibly playing too many hands from SB, defending BB poorly or in wrong spots, lost money for the month in heads up pots regardless of whether I was the preflop aggressor.

OK, one of my goals for September needs to be updated. My original goal for sept was to play a little over 4000 hands, which would have been an increase from August. Well, it's not even the middle of the month yet and I've played over 5000 hands. Still not very many compared to what a lot of you are playing, but it crushes my original goal for Sept. So my new goal for septemeber is to maintain this pace and put in over 10k quality hands of poker. Quality hands means I don't just get to play like a robot, or on autopilot, I need to think about the hands and play my A game for as many of those hands as possible. So, new goals:

1) 10K + quality hands for the month

2) One new forum post reviewed or created each day

Setting some goals for september. To the people who are playing 30-40 + hands a months...I don't know how you do it. I tip my hat to you, that's a lot of poker. I don't think I have that kind of time, but it is important for me to play more. I'm setting a goal now of increasing my hands played per month by at least 10% from the previous month. I'm also going to set a goal of spending more time in the forums either reviewing or posting hand histories. In August, I played 3783 hands and visited the forums only occasionaly. So, Sept goals are:

1) play at least 4161 hands

2) read at least one forum post a day or creat a new thread of my own regarding hands I found interesting/confusing.

These are EXTREMELY attainable goals. And that's the point. I've also been paying much closer attention to table selection lately, as well as using a HUD, something I've never really focused on before.

The Olympics are over and that both sucks and rules. I like the Olympics, and I'll watch just about any event that gets televised, with the exception of any form of basketball. I think that's part of what makes the Olympics cool. The human interest stories are fascinating, and the drama that one team or individual may have had to endure in order to win gold, or even just compete. But what's also cool to me is: when else am I going to watch bicycling on TV? Or marathon running, or gymnastics, or fencing, or badminton, or wrestling, or anything from track and field? Never, that's when. Unless it's the Olympics, in which case all of those sports become interesting to me. So, I'm sad to see the Olympics go. On the other hand, now I get my life back and can go back to getting a full night's sleep.

Verneer hass started a new video series, with the guest appearance of Citizenwind, and I am very excited about it. The series focuses on the micro-limits games and the biggest leaks most micro players have. It looks like the series will also include participation from some regular micro stakes players who, so far, have been consistent break even, or barely winning players. I feel like I fall into that category and so I expect this series to resonate big with me. I watched part one today and already identified a couple big leaks in my game. The combination of Verneer (who I know has made some excellent videos) and Citizenwind (who I took a lesson from far too long ago and who I know is a good teacher) should make for some good videos and good instruction.

Heading up the Pacific Coast Highway this weekend and it should be great. I've been wanting to take this trip that winds up the coast for several months now so I'm stoked to finally be going. Hitting San Fran in a couple days and I've never been there before so I'm looking forward to that too.

After taking a little bit of a break from poker I am coming back and playing more regularly. Trying not to be results oriented. Dropped quite a few buy ins a few months ago and I feel like it's been such an uphill struggle to climb my bankroll back up. It would be nice to see the cash come back, but for now, my only goal is to get in a lot of quality hands for the remainder of the month. For September I'll be setting a more concrete goal for number of hands I want to play.

Outside of poker, the olympics rule. I'll be dissappointed to see them come to an end a few days from now.