Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Road Bump

So I started off the new year w/ a major goal in mind...achieving sne. Well that didn't last long. After 2 weeks and being ahead of pace I decided to give up that goal for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that I didn't think being tied to one poker site for the entire year is beneficial for my long term earnings. I enjoy playing different games and stakes across Stars and FTP. Also I keep hearing about how soft the games are on different sites so I want to check those sites out. Also living in Vegas, I have been playing more live and have really been enjoying it (not to mention the games are softer). Another reason I gave up sne is that I can't stand Stars software!! It really started bothering me multitabling 15-18 tables after a couple of weeks. I know everybody has a preference and I prefer FTP software...it is what it is I guess.

I started the year grinding $2/$4 nl on stars w/ the intent of building my roll on there and moving up stakes. I started adding in some plo along the way w/ a little bit of success. Everything was going ok until I had a nightmare session. Well here is a snapshot of my HEM for the past 3 weeks...I'll let you figure out where that nightmarish session is...












I seem to have 2-3 of these sessions annually and hopefully this will be my lone one this year. I know I ran incredibly bad during this session but I contributed to the destruction by playing past my bedtime and playing while my focus was wavering. I've talked to a couple of guys and have mentioned my results suck when I play past 2am. This isn't because the games are tougher after that time, but because I'm usually tired and not in a 100% state of mind to play my A game. I preach playing one's A game all the time and I'm susceptible to falling off that path because I'm human like everybody else but damn it I should know better!! I do a better job than most when it comes to consistency but I still need to work on some things, notably quitting at 2am or quitting when tired (this should apply to just about everybody, except for maybe the times a game is so good that even playing tired is +ev).

Here is the graph of my night...Doh!!























Even w/ that bad session the month wasn't all that bad and I'll be doing a January wrap up next time (thanks live poker, rakeback, and staking!).

8 comments:

  1. If the look of the software is the only issue with stars, there are ways to change the skins to something you like better. There is a ton of custom skins out there that look far better than the standard ones given by stars. (Thats what I did with mine since I dont like stars look either.) Im pretty sure that Ive come across some that were made to look like your playing at full tilt.

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  2. It's not the look, it's everything else. Just the sensitivity of the buttons, sounds, etc. Plus that disaster session was on stars so it created a bad taste in my mouth (I know that's totally irrelevant but those things do affect one's preference).

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  3. I'm with you on the software, just finished a really annoying session too. Hopefully we can both avoid those for a while at least.

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  4. are you thinking of playing any of the bigger deepstack tournaments at the venetian this go around?

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  5. I played in event #1...I'd like to play in a $550 or $1k one if I'm around (I think there's one next Thursday I'm thinking of playing)... I'll be going to Los Angeles for the LAPC in a couple of weeks so I'll probably play in 1 or 2 before then...if you really wanna know I usually tweet about it when I'm going to go play

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  6. oh ok right on maybe ill see you go deep then

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  7. Thats understandable. Theres plenty of sites that Ive deposited on, but the only ones where I continue to play are ones where my initial deposits ended up with me cashing out ahead (even if i lost money on later deposits). It is kind of funny how this effects players psychologically when realistically we each know it is unfounded.

    Good to know that even the pros are human. :)

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  8. 99.9999% are human, then there's Phil Ivey

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