G1lius' Road to Triplenova

I looked at my results this month. I saw my cashier by accident and noticed the number on there was fairly low.
After that I was too curious and looked in pokertracker.
The damage: 12.8k hands, 3.8k down.

So after my tilting about the whole regulation in France, I went to see a movie. The A-team.
Pretty good movie. It's not the best movie of the year, but it's good enough. They really honor the series in my opinion.
Anyway, after that we had a couple of drinks. Too many drinks.
Which basically ended up with me not feeling well during the whole day yesterday. That combined with the hot weather here, making it VERY hot inside, means that I didn't play yesterday either.
It sucks, but I never could've gotten in a lot of time anyway. I lost about an hour of play I guess, because I felt better during the evening. But I've looked at a couple of videos on youtube, and I don't really regret it, giving the nature of the videos.

That's where the science comes in.
I've always been interested in the human psyche, and saw a lot of videos about it. It's strange you can quote whole lines from somebody's speech, but fail to realize it also applies to yourself.
I've been struggling with motivation since forever, and although I've seen the video before, it took me another look before I realized it could also apply to me.
http://www.youtube.com/user/theRSAorg#p/u/0/u6XAPnuFjJc

For the people that don't view the video, the think it boils down to is that you have 3 things that increase performance and give more personal satisfaction.
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose

And I've thought about them all.
I don't have to report my pokerresults to anybody (except for you guys ;)), so that's a lot of autonomy.
Without a doubt, I got where I am because I got better at it. I learned more and more, mastering the game.
And like I've said in one of my previous blogposts, I like to view the bigger picture. Even beyond going pro.

So I got all incentives, yet I'm not all that motivated.
And I realize now that I should focus on all three things at the same time. If I'm thinking about moving up, I'm thinking about shortterm, I must do this in X time. I lose sense of bigger purpose and autonomy.
Same goes for all the other things.
While it does give me some boost, it's not for long. And it's obvious why. I forget about the other things.

The goal of mastery is also a bit faded. I would've signed for this to be playing the 10/20 games 1.5 year ago. It doesn't have to stop here however.
I never really wanted to be the best, and it's still a long way to go, but why wouldn't I try to reach it? After all, it's not the goal that's important, it's the route you take to get there that is.

I'm taking my "restday", although I didn't plan on doing one, because I wasn't happy with the amount of time I played, but I'm just too tilted to play right now.
Not because of some hand or something, but because of the news about the French poker regulation.
Again, they isolate the country, only allow to play against each other. Plus, they ask a big amount of taxes on every pot, which basically means, no one is capable of playing winning poker. Even if someone manages to do it,  it'll be by no means something worth playing for.
Belgium has his own regulation planned for the start of 2011, and it's easy to just do the same things the other countries did. I looks bad.
I have the option to move out, to another country, but if everybody closes off their country, there's a lot less people to play with.

Lately I've seen good or decent players make a play that I can't really figure out all that good.
I see some extra value in it, but it's so marginal, and so exploitable on first sight that I really wonder what's the deal about it.

The play goes as following:
they're in position, I'm not (I bet you didn't saw that one coming). I check, Villain bets, I raise, villain 3bets, I call, turn goes check/bet/call, river goes check/check. Villain shows Ax high.
Pretty often it's on lowcard flops, so I guess there's little really strong hands in my range that can really punish him if I have a made hand.
If he folds if I check/raise the turn I can play my draws really aggressive, but if he doesn't I can't really do alot about it. Being more aggressive with my weaker hands is not quite the solution I think. After all, he could have tptk hands and overpairs and sets.
Then again, it's only 0.5BB, and you can get in really though spots if you get raised on the turn, or capped on the flop.
You also might miss the value from missed draws, but often people don't fire the 3rd barrel because it's obv. villain is calling down.
It is a well balanced play. Instead of calling the flop and turn, which makes your hand pretty face up, you disguise your hand a bit more.
It seems like it is in fact a decent play, but it just doesn't feel good to me. It is very exploitable, but only if you know his hand (and everything is exploitable if you know villains hand obv).
I'll give it some thought, might implement it to my game.
I can't really remember the last time I learned a completely new line in pretty standard spots. Maybe this is one of those times. :)

So it's the first weekday in the two weeks I don't have to work.
I skipped the morning session, because the tables where just insanely bad. Went for a run, played a session just after noon. I was planning on doing one or two sessions before dinner, but my mother came home and said it's time to cut the hedge.
Just to give a good idea of how way too long our hedge is I made a video :)



Long story short, only 2 hours of poker.

I hope to get in 4 hours from now on. The other hedge is not that long, so it should be quicker.
For the people just buying a house: don't plant a hedge, it's a fuckload of work, and a pain in the ass to get rid of.

I like to give song and movie quotes as a title :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyUPFMHCA_Q

Anyway, last workday this month. Looking forward to my well deserved rest.
I hope I can play a lot, and enjoy some other things as well.

Was very close to buying a house last week. After long thinking I decided I'd wait a bit for that.
One thing that played a small roll in that was the gamblinglaws in Belgium. It's very unsure what will happen, and as a limit player I'm kinda bound to pokerstars.

I still haven't looked at my results this month, although I have looked at my yearly result, because I needed some information about that. So I know I'm not massively up or down.
It does make me realize I'm way behind schedule on my winnings. It seems like I'm not beating the games as well as I thought I would, and therefor I'm not even close to the +/- 13k I should behaving right now.
July 1st is the official halfway mark of the year, and I will be making some conclusions.
Maybe take coaching, maybe just accept 1BB/100 is too though (not a lot of people have that kinda winrate over a decent sample). We'll see. I don't like to think about it all too much, I'll do that at the end of this month.

FAILED!

Also my schedule kinda failed. If I'm home a bit earlier from work, I usually get everything done, but if I'm just on time, or later, it's usually a fail.
In 2 weeks my vacation begins. I'm not going anywhere, so according to my schedule I should be playing like at least 20 hours a week. Let's see how that's gonna work out.
I do succeed in not looking at my results. At this moment I don't know if I'm up or down, or how many hands I have. I'm thinking about doing a videobloggy thing at the end of the month so you can see live how I look when I see my results :D
Also played a bit HU today. felt ok, I did run good so I ended up with about 200$ profit. I think it was quite equal in terms of skill. He limped a lot, and did some limp/raises. It looked like a fairly balanced range. It was definitely a regular (he was sitting along with 10 others), so I wonder what the idea is behind that, and most important: how do you play against it.

First mental change is starting I think, I see playing poker a bit more as just putting in the hours, instead of winning some money, or playing X amount of hands. It's not a big thing though, but I do feel it.

I think, but pretty sure...
http://weaktight.com/2368068
flop is interesting. If SB had just called, I'd prolly raise, but if I 3-bet here, I'm scaring off all the others.
Just calling also disguises my hand. I think I got extra value on the river because villain put me on a lower FD.
Anyhow, ship it!

I'm not really in the habit of posting hands, because nobody really cares all that much about LHE I guess.

PokerStars Limit Hold'em, $10.00 BB (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Preflop: Hero is UTG with K, K

Hero raises, MP calls, Button calls, 1 fold, BB calls

Flop: (8.4 SB) 10, J, 7 (4 players)

BB checks, Hero bets, MP calls, Button raises, 1 fold, Hero 3-bets, MP calls, Button caps, Hero calls, MP calls

Turn: (10.2 BB) 7 (3 players)

Hero bets, 1 fold, Button calls

River: (12.2 BB) 2 (2 players)

Hero bets, Button raises, Hero calls

Total pot: $162 (16.2 BB) | Rake: $2

Results:

Button had Q, 8 (flush, Queen high).

Hero mucked K, K (two pair, Kings and sevens).

Outcome: Button won $160

So BTN is a standard regular player. No reads, which means he's not doing crazy stuff.
MP is a huge fish.
He coldcalls preflop, which is low pairs or connecting suited hands pretty much all the time.
Flop is pretty standard I think, I have the best hand often, and I might get MP to fold some gutshotlike draws.
BTN caps, which is surprising. He's in an excellent position to call, and raise the field on the turn. He could although be capping with a flushdraw for a free turn.
Therefor I chose to lead the turn. Once he just calls the turn, his range becomes very narrow. There's very little in his range that beats me. 98 that just calls because he's scared of JJ/TT is about the only hand I can think of.
The river makes the flush, and I'm hating life. His range is so many flushdraws, and I'm basically only beating JT here. Nontheless, I still bet, which is not that bad imo, because I can't really fold in such a big pot if I check, so I might just put the money in when I'm ahead too. But once I get raised, there's really nothing I beat.
If you're trying to make 1BB/100, it's these kinda spots that make or brake your winrate.