You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
Out of Position: Improvement Diary
CraigSG1
Member Posts: 1,831
in Poker Chat
Hi all.
After more than a few years of just plodding along and finding myself in a rut I need to kick my **** into gear and improve my poker game. I have made a steady profit through out which has hidden my troubles but realising that it is dwindling each year and I have to put in some effort.
I hope people will find this interesting and any ideas how to make it something you all want to read and more importantly contribute I am open to them.
A little about me, I am 40yo and been playing since 2005. I enjoyed some great results at the start of the poker boom mainly thanks to shows like Poker Night Live and later Sky Poker (RIP) that gave me a great head start in strategy and knowledge. I do suffer from some mental health problems but I'm hopefully on the mend due to an excellent new doctor and methods.
So lets call this Day Zero.
Thanks to some suggestions on another thread I will be reading some now poker books (and re-reading some others) as well as writing a list of my strengths and weaknesses and working on both. Some hand histories and situation discussions hopefully and anyone else who would like to join in they are more than welcome.
After more than a few years of just plodding along and finding myself in a rut I need to kick my **** into gear and improve my poker game. I have made a steady profit through out which has hidden my troubles but realising that it is dwindling each year and I have to put in some effort.
I hope people will find this interesting and any ideas how to make it something you all want to read and more importantly contribute I am open to them.
A little about me, I am 40yo and been playing since 2005. I enjoyed some great results at the start of the poker boom mainly thanks to shows like Poker Night Live and later Sky Poker (RIP) that gave me a great head start in strategy and knowledge. I do suffer from some mental health problems but I'm hopefully on the mend due to an excellent new doctor and methods.
So lets call this Day Zero.
Thanks to some suggestions on another thread I will be reading some now poker books (and re-reading some others) as well as writing a list of my strengths and weaknesses and working on both. Some hand histories and situation discussions hopefully and anyone else who would like to join in they are more than welcome.
Comments
So, Day One...or Zero.
Started out with my usual two MTTs in the morning if I'm off work or on lates (I'm a bus driver in Hull) which are the 9:30 £2 turbo BH and the 9:45 £3 BH.
With renewed vigour I vowed to approach these games in my style and not get drawn in like I sometimes do which led to play better than I have been. Got nothing going in the turbo which I've been relativelty successful in since starting to play it this year but got to the last two tables in the £3BH which this year I have been doing the worst I have ever done in. I regularly win this at least once every 5/6 weeks but this year I have only managed one 2nd place (should have won!) and the rest just not going deep at all. After playing well I got undone first calling a guy who said he wanted to go and shoved two hands before. I call with KQs and he has 34s. Flop is Q (nice!), 3(hmmm) and a four(sigh). It blanks off and I lose. I then lose a race to short stack and don't have much luck with A high for bust out hand.
Question - I think I should but is it a call with KQs in the SB versus the guy who has shoved three hands in a row and has half my stack?
Came back and played the 6pm £2 BH, again I think I played well and lasted over an hour with a decent stack before I lost a few small pots and didn't get much to play with before what I think is a mistake but again I'll ask the question.
I have AJ in the BB(18bb), UTG min raises (he covers me with 30BB) who plays 8/10 hands and likes to three bet a lot too. It folds to me and I think folding is wrong and I don't want to just call OOP against an active player and I'm stuck thinking about what to raise? I think if I raise to 7/8BB I'm committed plus in that bad place of what to do if I miss (and even if I hit) if he calls. I'm basically just wanting him to fold.
Thoughts?
Has the UTG raiser been showing down his many raises or is it a case of raise and take?
Also what is your head prize ?
If he's been raising with impunity and your bounty makes calling light attractive to him Id be tempted to make a committing raise 35 - 40 % and actually put some pressure on him, if only to get some notes for future reference. Although at this point you have drawn the line in the sand and its for stacks. If he calls and you miss you can either fire another bullet, empty the clip completely or try the check raise/ call all in assuming he bets.
Of course Im not a winning player so feel free to ignore this advice.
Yours in poker
Mark
AJ: Just 3b jam. I think a non-shove 3b makes you look stronger than you really are, thus folding out some of the stuff you beat that he might punt with otherwise.
He'll call some worse stuff that you flip against if you jam, if he's playing 80% of hands and is 3b a lot then I think it's fairly likely he'll make some very loose calls against us, especially with the bounty to consider. If he has better than AJ and we don't improve, then so be it.
Didn't run great again past few MTTs but no outbursts and some better thinking. A long way to go yet. I've noticed I played a lot on autopilot instead of with a plan and also stopped reading the table and players around me. I got stuck into branding everyone in two or three categories and of corse a terrible mindset. Ive had some great suggestions on another thread and this and I am going to set aside some time to study.
Does anyone know any good YouTube videos to watch for small stakes MTTs? And articles? There is a whole lot out there and its tough to find the stuff that relates to me. Oh, and Podcasts?
Thanks.
I must doing something wrong so what is it?
I made it a big raise as everyone likes to call, Im thinking A10 is ahead of limping ranges. I can't really not c-bet and the guy who called has played every hand and called every c-bet. Cant really do much else with an undercard and someone who will call very wide. As we see by what he has.
These days I'm not in a position to give players anything other than basic poker advice, & even that would be mainly at PLO or PLO8, as I almost never play the 2 card game these days, & have not for many years.
However, if I were to be, in some alternative universe, your poker "mind coach", the first thing I'd tell you is not to get fixated by beats like that. I mean, if you play enough hands at enough tables, they will - or should - happen to you EVERY DAY.
That was always the case, is the case, & if you play poker for the rest of your life, will ALWAYS be the case.
So every night for the next 40 years or more this will happen to you at least once. And there is NOTHING you can do about it.
Furthermore, posting hands like that, accompanied by a little violin, serves no purpose whatsoever. I mean, if it had some positive benefit, fine, post away, but it does not. There's no lesson to learn, nothing we can do better.....EXCEPT understand & accept that this is poker, & beats like this will happen every day we play. They just will.
Luckily, I'm not your poker mind coach, eh?
There's also a better way to look at this hand.
Pre-flop you were (roughly) 62% v 38%. That's good.
After the flop that improved to 73% v 27%.
What's not to like about getting your money in as a 3/1 favourite? You got him to get his money in real bad. Do that 1,000 times & you'll be a very rich man indeed, but, you know, 27% shots get there......27% of the time.
So, really, you should be patting yourself on the back (which is quite hard, to be fair) as you got the Villain to get his money in real bad. And when his 27% shot gets there, that's great, as he'll get it in bad again in the future.
You should be pleased, not disappointed.
Good luck, keep getting it in good & let the maths do the rest. And just learn to roll with the punches. Otherwise poker ain't gonna be much fun, ever.
See you in Brighton.
A10 off is a pretty mediocre holding and is not going to play great in multiway pots more often than not. Even when you do hit the 10 you are still not going to be sure where you are.
why not make it a standard raise or limp yourself rather than bloating the pot?
I am cbetting the flop also, but I am definitely slowing down and checking the turn when one of the 3 callers calls me.
realistically if they are calling station the combos consist of -
Most of the 10 (lets say 10 7+) almost all of the 77s (75s+) all of the draws 78,j8, j9 etc
and any slow played underpairs.
Look this is an extreme example but when you are playing against players who don't play a game theory type strategy you need to adjust.
Playing theroetically sound is the best way to exploit them and using a small ball strategy is almost always the best option. Big Hands Big pots managing to get 50bb in the middle with top pair is usually not going to end that well.
But yeah I don't like the raise in this situation at all.
I am sure some other MTT players could help with this but I def think you are part to blame for the hand above. I also think its much easier to get away from with a 2.5bb raise so the pot isn't overly bloated
As for that hand I'm not sure why my logic is skewed? I made it that big because I thought most if not all would fold (I expected onahigh to call and I want to play against him with a hand that is almost always ahead of him) if I made it that big instead of 4/5x when most would.
On that flop I can't check fold or check call and had I had either more than one caller or another caller other than the guy who I know calls everything then I would have been done with it.
So last few days I haven't played much due to work but have taken that time to think things through in my mind. Try to re-affirm my approach and thinking.
Strangely I played real well in a couple of MTTs but got nothing from them yet I played quite badly in one and got 7th. I did take the positives out of that and adjusted slightly and since then I've had a couple of very deep runs in the FR for £12 and should have been deeper but them the breaks. And to add to that I took down a morning £3BH for my second decent MTT win of the year.
Still a long way to go before I feel like I'm playing well again but also the aim is to improve my knowledge base. Im treating it like a ladder, I want my base to be solid before I start climbing up the rungs so this way I don't over complicate and confuse my thinking which I have done in the past trying to take a lot of information in in one go and not really applying it in the correct ways.
Go well.
Things have been going a little better lately, sticking with my mind set pretty well and being more focused and disciplined has helped. Had a 2nd in a small turbo (should have won but was happy how I played HU) and a FT this morning as well as a very deep run in a Pokerstars MTT (which annoyingly got cancelled due to technical issues) last night.
Im going to post an embarrassing hand now and then tell my thoughts:
Its the FT and I've played well but I made a quick judgement and thought "77s are good hand here, I only have 20bb (even though I know this is a lot!) and I can win whats in the middle" then I jam. Straight afterwards I'm like, "noooo!".
Just for clarification I would like to know how strong a mid PP are here and if there is any other way of playing other than what I think which should have been a min raise and then give up on this flop? Is that too predictable/easy to play against? Thats the sort of thing I worry about a lot and then I try and play different. Its like just because I know what I have doesn't mean everyone else does.
And I would like to know what sort of cost it would be to me if I was to get a coach? Im looking to bounce ideas and get basic strategy and thoughts.
Thanks.
I'm no tourney expert but given that your hand with 77 took place on a final table, I think the stack sizes of all the other players left will be highly significant due to ICM factors. For example, if you were 2nd in chips at the time and were shoving into the chip leader, it's probably a pretty terrible play. If you were last in chips at the time, it could well be pretty reasonable/good.
I'll leave this to others better qualified than me to answer, but that additional info may help you get more accurate feedback.
All the best
I'm also returning to poker after a break and been massively swingy so trying to settle down again. Gl
Stuff like this does not help you at all.....
"....Had a 2nd in a small turbo (should have won...."
".....very deep run in a Pokerstars MTT (which annoyingly got cancelled....."
FORGET these trivialities, & the feeling of being hard done by, it does not help.
We play poker, & every single session we get lucky & we get unlucky. It's just standard.
Concentrate on the positives.
This would be much better, & do you the world of good;
"....Had a 2nd in a small turbo
(should have won...."".....very deep run in a Pokerstars MTT
(which annoyingly got cancelled....."
See the difference?
All imo, of course.