Well my first month back playing poker has been a pretty disappointing one. As you can see from my graph I went on a small downswing right off the bat and then recovered pretty quickly only to crash and burn even quicker. That big dip in my green line is from monkey tilt, running bad bluffs in bad spots, stacking off with one pair, 5 bet shoving trash because getting 4 bet annoyed me etc.

I think after that though I didn’t tilt once I just ran pretty dry. In total I’m down a disappointing 12 BI leave me with only 18 BI for 25NL. I’m re-depositing to give myself 50 BI for 10NL. I have really come to realise 30 BI isn’t enough, like if I have a 3 BI downswing in a 1 hour session, that is 10% of my bankroll gone in 1 session and I just don’t feel secure enough. Stepping down from 25NL is a big disappointment because I am moving backwards instead of forwards but I think in the long run this decision will benefit me a lot more.

Reviewing my hands after every session has actually been really beneficial and I’m glad I have finally gotten into the habit of doing it. It allows me to see what hands made me tilt and why and I can see a pattern of what hands I spew money in.

I have a bad habit of looking at my graph at the end of a session and sometimes a few times during a session. Now that I have identified that I do it I can work on fixing it.

Having people to talk to on skype and getting more involved on the leggo forums is definitely helping me, being able to actually talk poker to someone who know the game is a huge weight off my shoulders and I’ve met some cool people who share my goals, passion and drive.

GOALS FOR MARCH

1. Get in 30k hands
2. 3 bet more IP
3. Defend less from the blinds
4. Tighten up pre flop
5. Continue to review my hands after every session
6. Not look at my graph until the end of the month
7. Watch 3 leggo videos a week (1 video for every 4 hours played) 80/20

I put in some solid hours last week I am pretty proud of myself actually lol. I've bumped my tables from 2 to 3, I found 2 tables a little too slow and I just wasn't getting in enough hands so I added another table and I seem to be able to concentrate the same so I’m happy. I would like to play 4 tables but I don’t think I would be able to concentrate and would maybe go into autopilot so I'm going to play with 3 for a while and add another table in a couple of months.

My single biggest leak so far is that I am stacking off way to loose against fish and its costing me quite a lot. So far after 7,000 hands my red line is perfectly neutral which I’m really pleased about because I have always had a ski scope red line during my poker career (like 140k hands ). I'm losing 3BI at the moment which isn't bad but the amount of times I have stacked off with AQo, AJs etc. and have been facing QQ+ is definitely affecting my win rate. After looking in holdem manager I have stacked off 13 times in 7,000 hands with the hands above and the worst hand I have seen so far is AKs and JJ 4 times in total, so QQ+ 9 times out of 13.

I created my own little theorem I call the Era Theorem (that's an original name haha) and the definition of the era theorem is - if you are facing an all in decision pre flop vs a fish and you find yourself saying that he is a fish so he cant possibly have a hand, you should probably fold.

I’m going to be posting a 1 hour live session pretty soon, not sure whether to just record with no audio or commentate my thought process during play I’m guessing the latter will be more informational and less boring but I’m not sure maybe people don’t want to hear my British accent. And I will be reviewing my stats every 10K hands so that should be coming up pretty soon probably next week.

For the avid note caddy fans I would just like to direct your attention to www.crushthegame.com. The owner of the site has created 640 custom definitions to completely dissect your opponents flop play. It is amazing to me that it takes 640 definitions on the flop, imagine how many you would need for the turn and river :S. The great thing about these definitions is they are only used against a player who you define as a reg. So say you define a reg as someone playing a style with a VPIP between 18-26 and a PFR between 16-24 then it will only take notes on a players flop play when they play against a reg. This is useful because people play different styles against different player types.
Lets say I am in a pot with a reg and note caddy took a note saying that this reg c/r all in with top pair weak kicker on a Txx dry board but he did this against a fish who has frequently gone to showdown with middle pair, bottom pair and A high then this changes things a lot.

As for my progress thus far, I have discovered that sticking to 1 hour sessions and having 30 minutes minimum in-between session is best for me. I like to play short but intense sessions and I feel this is the best way to play my sessions.
As far as tilt I have been brilliant, I think I got a bit angry once when my AA lost to AJo in an all in pre flop situation but I got over it quickly and got my head back in the game.
I have played about 3,500 hands so far in like 10 hours lol at the low volume of hands and I am 1 BI down. Over the first 3,000 hands I was down 7 BI with a red line of about -50bb and was getting ready to move down in stakes but from analyzing my losing hands I came to realize I was stacking off way to light against loose players. I think I get it in my head that because they are bad I want to stack off every time I have TPGK because they cant possibly have a better hand because they are so bad :P. I had a WTSD of about 33% and a W$SD of like 46% lol.
After realizing this I made it my main focus during my sessions and even made a few folds post flop with AA where I would have usually said fuck it and called. My red line has dropped from -50bb to -200bb but this is obviously because I am folding more medium sized pots and they are going to my red line as apposed to taking those hands to showdown, losing and having them impact my blue line while my red line stays the same.
So I have had a 6 BI upswing after 500 hands and I hope for this to continue , I will be reviewing my stats every 10,000 hands if anyone has any advice on how to do this it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables.

This blog is of a way for me to air my thoughts and feelings in relation to poker, I think it’s hard because you can’t really talk to anyone about it because they either don’t care, don’t understand the game or in my mothers case think it is a game full of degenerate gamblers and nothing will change her mind.
I have taken a long break off poker as I was a losing player and getting pretty fed up. I have watched all the micro stakes and a lot of small stakes series at deuces cracked and have been a member there for almost a year. I watched training videos, read poker books and played a fair amount of hands a week but just couldn’t win.
My problem was that when I would watch a training video I would do just that, watch it not actually study it so I wouldn’t learn anything or half learn something and misuse what I learned during live play and lose money.
I would very rarely review a session in holdem manager and when I played I would be on Skype, go on the internet etc. I could never understand why I couldn’t win because I felt I definitely had the tools to beat 25NL but I would autopilot playing only 4 tables and I can say I probably thought about villains range about 5% of the time which is obviously atrocious for somebody who has been trying to "seriously" study poker for a year.
I also went on monkey tilt a lot spewing chips after losing an all in with KK vs. AK for example. I would frequently move up in stakes to win back my losses and then blow my whole roll. Yes I was one of those players.
So I thought it would be best to take a long break from online poker and properly study the game.
In comes Lego poker. Don’t get me wrong I do think deuces cracked is a good site but it is not so great for a micro stakes player, there videos work in series and they are probably about 75% classroom style. They cover all the basics and don’t really take it much further than that. I found the videos really quite boring because they were just too basic there isn’t really any content there for someone who has an idea of what they are doing and isn’t a total newb.
Lego pokers videos are awesome there is so much content for all stakes and the coaches really do know what they are doing and have a tonne to say. I feel like I have learned so much and I have only watched about 10 25NL videos so far.
I have taken studying poker seriously this time around and frequently pause videos to think about I would do and then see what line the coach takes and also take lots of notes. I have read Jared Tendlers' book about tilt twice and took many notes on that also. I finally feel like I know what i'm doing enough to get back into poker.
I have constructed a proper pre and post session routine, I will be play sessions ranging from 1-1.5 hours taking a 2 minute break every 30 minutes to ask myself if I am still concentrating on my opponents and playing my A game. I am using semi aggressive bankroll management of 30BI, ok not too aggressive haha, and take 3 BI shots at 50NL when I reach 30BI for that stake.
My first goal is to reach 50NL in 50,000 hands, I’m not too sure if this is realist but if I had a win rate of 5bb/100 (2.5ptb/100) I think? then it would take 60,000 hands to reach 30BI for 50NL so I guess if variance is on my side and I play as well as I feel I am capable of I think I can do it. Hey it’s just a goal it isn’t written in blood.
My plan is to start off 2 tabling so I can really focus on my opponents, I have played about 1,000 hands so far and I can honestly say you see so many spots to exploit it is absolutely un believable. When I can focus on my opponents 100% until the point of unconscious competence then I will add another table and rinse and repeat until I reach 4 tables.
I will struggle to get hands in at first because 2 tables aren’t a lot but the benefit of learning more intensely vs. half learning but getting twice more hands in is definitely the better option.
I have moved over to PT3 from HEM. In my opinion if you take time to properly learn what PT3 is capable of, it is much better than HEM. HEM is better for a lot of people because it is straight forward to use but PT3 is amazing because you can make custom stats which makes it much more powerful. I bought a HUD for PT3 from www.crushthegame.com (it is awesome) and also note definitions from the same place for note caddy which are also awesome. I never really felt my HEM HUD gave me much of an edge, is seemed really basic and I didn’t get much out of it. PFR, AF and A% are very misleading stats that just aren’t good and crushthegame's had fixes this problem.