harding this is a very interesting post and i hope you keep updating it.I am playing at nl4 at the moment and really enjoying it.
I know exactly what you are going through at this level and what i am doing is trying to adjust to each table i play at.If i have a premium hand and i raise 4x and get say 3 callers then the next time i will make it 5x or 6x of a raise.Nothing really groundbreaking but just trying different ways to play but overall i play simple ABC poker and at the moment i am showing a small profit.
I think Rancid has made a good point with his thoughts on mixing it up a little and people can either take on board what he says or not but i dont think it is worth falling out with anyone over it.I will listen to anyone who gives an opinion and then it is up to me to utilise what they say or not.
I hope you dont mind me joining in on this thread, I read this story from the beginning and my story is similar to you Harding. I joined SkyPoker about september to play cash games after from regularly playing 5$ DYMs and sng (on Mansion poker). I decided to change from sng to cash and see if I could improve my game. I believe I have seen you on the nl4 tables, but I cant recall recently.
I would be interested to hear about your nl8 stabs as I have tried a few times myself, but quickly retreated back to nl4. Having a go at the next level up, especially when you are on an upswing (providing you have good brm) is good fun because you tend to be more positive/confident about sparring with the better players and holding your nerve.
So after reading your story I wanted to add my two pence worth, from my nl4 learnings so far, particularly around charting your progress.
I find that you can copy and paste results from the sky poker account section into an excel spreadsheet and make a chart manually with a bit of editing (so far I havent found any piece of software to do it for me - but I will happily share the spreadsheet, if you want it).
Anyways, once youve pasted your results you can use a nice simple formula to work out whether you won or lost money on a particular table and paste that formula down the list of results. You will want your results sorted by date (oldest to newest, so you can always add new data to the spreadsheet as you play more games)
To create a chart you need two columns of data, the number of tables you have played, or sessions (manually create a column of numbers from 1-1000+), then secondly create another column which is the cumulative total of win/loses so far (which would be relative to the number of tables/sessions you have played). This will allow you to create a quick graph to visually show you your ups/downs, if you are beating the limit then hopefully you will see an upward trend (with maybe a small loss at the beginning due to variance)
I find the graph useful when reviewing hand histories, just look at the places where you start a downswing, open up some of the hands, look for the losses and decide whether its just plain and simple bad luck or whether there is bad play in there. Plus the graph is motivational sometimes because its nice to see an upward trend, as the beats and bad times blend in and disolve into variance. It keeps you perked up.
We have played a couple of times lately without doing each other any major damage.
I don't play a lot of volume, so until recently I've only recorded my balance at the end of the month as a measure of profit/loss and not broken it down into categories. I have fairly recently started keeping a daily spreadsheet and breaking down where the profit/loss comes from but I don't work it out by individual tables, just nl4, nl8, mtt, & stt.
When I went up to nl8 in November I had been beating nl4 but not by much but had picked up several good mtt results to boost the BR. Some of what went wrong was probably just variance but it got to me mentally very quickly because I didn't have the confidence from properly beating nl4, and there was an element of not quite being good enough in there as well.
I've had a tidy start to nl8 this time round, although it's early days yet, and I've got much more confidence in where my cash game is from doing nl4 properly.
Comments
I know exactly what you are going through at this level and what i am doing is trying to adjust to each table i play at.If i have a premium hand and i raise 4x and get say 3 callers then the next time i will make it 5x or 6x of a raise.Nothing really groundbreaking but just trying different ways to play but overall i play simple ABC poker and at the moment i am showing a small profit.
I think Rancid has made a good point with his thoughts on mixing it up a little and people can either take on board what he says or not but i dont think it is worth falling out with anyone over it.I will listen to anyone who gives an opinion and then it is up to me to utilise what they say or not.
All the best harding.
keep it going
We have played a couple of times lately without doing each other any major damage.
I don't play a lot of volume, so until recently I've only recorded my balance at the end of the month as a measure of profit/loss and not broken it down into categories. I have fairly recently started keeping a daily spreadsheet and breaking down where the profit/loss comes from but I don't work it out by individual tables, just nl4, nl8, mtt, & stt.
When I went up to nl8 in November I had been beating nl4 but not by much but had picked up several good mtt results to boost the BR. Some of what went wrong was probably just variance but it got to me mentally very quickly because I didn't have the confidence from properly beating nl4, and there was an element of not quite being good enough in there as well.
I've had a tidy start to nl8 this time round, although it's early days yet, and I've got much more confidence in where my cash game is from doing nl4 properly.