Poker, Football & Other Assorted Ramblings

Poker

That's the last time I comment about any results mid month because for about a week after that I barely won a hand. Variance at work at its best I guess plus I played really badly at times and got a bit complacent. This week has been better mainly because I've played more like the standard required.

As a bit of a change and because I enjoy them, I've been playing a few MTT's this week. Had a few cashes not to any great extent but I think I'll continue for a few more days yet because I'm getting a bit stale with cash at the moment and I've got a few things I want to look at away from the tables.

The area's of my game which I need to work on in my opinion currently are: -

• Overplaying hands where I have 1 pair
• Sort out what I am doing on the Turn/River because the turn is a big leak for me
  
• Stop calling people down when I am probably beaten and know it
• Unsuited Connector's - do I stop playing them altogether. Since the start of the year this has been a big losing set of hands for me and I'm starting to think there just not worth it - I'm currently putting something together for these involving the Replayer so will have a detailed post shortly
  
• Hand reading, Table analysis and following the action better. I've never been any good at these and its an area I need to focus on quite drastically if I want to take my game to the next level.
• Playing multi player pots
• 3/4 bet hands

That pretty much covers it!!!!

Football

I've mentioned this in the past but I am a massive Leicester City fan. In the late 90's/ early 2000's we spent a few seasons in the Premier League doing ok competing for the most part with the likes of Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, usually finishing mid table and winning the League Cup twice in 4 years and being runner's up in another year. This success was due mainly to the Manager we had at the time - Martin O'Neill and the way he was able to get a team without the talent of clubs with more resources to play above themselves and build up an incredible team spirit. Since he left to go onto Celtic and now Aston Villa the club has fallen apart. We are now in the 2nd tier of English football and have been fighting relegation from that league for the past few years. We have never played in a league lower than the one we're in at the moment but it was looking bleak at one point nutil recently. Today we have the biggest game we have had in a long time and its a 32,000 total sell out. We play Sheffield Wednesday who are below us in the League. If we win we're safe and can build for next season. If we draw and results go our way we're also safe. If the unthinkable happens and we lose then we are in desperate trouble.

Other Stuff

Fuel prices in the UK and the rest of the World are going crazy at the minute. In the UK, we are paying £1.10 for a litre of unleaded petrol and most of that is in taxes. In addition to that, a major refinerty in Scotland has been shut down due to industrial action reducing the available supply and probably resulting in prices going up even more and this will probably mean in time if things continue that people won't be able to afford to travel anywhere as the Public Transport system in this country is an absolute joke. For instance if I wanted to get a train to work which is about 25 miles away, I have to get 3 trains which are not frequent and I live in a city which is on a mainline to London. With the profits the oil companies are making and the money that the Government are making, from us, then something needs to be done and quickly. In addition food prices are substantially higher than a year ago and people are going to start panic buying for alot of things.

Ok that's it moan over.

April So Far and a Situation I'm Trying to Avoid

I'm not going to say too much about April at this stage but it seems to be going ok so far. Hopefully I've not ruined that but here's the graph to date: -



One important correction I have made, is that I noticed a serious flaw in my game and I know I'm not alone in this in that I have spells when I call hands down when I know I'm behind.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've tried toeliminate this from my game although there are occasions where I still find myself doing this. From analysing some key hands, I have found that I am doing this with Top Pair for the most part. Basically I am being a lot more cautious with this type of hand particularly if a c-bet is called or re raised and more often than not am currently folding these hands more often than not.

There's a quote that Dodgy made on my blog a few months ago which I'd lost site of to a certain extent where he stated that "A Raise on the Turn Usually Means That Top Pair is Beaten". Considering the progress he has made over the past 8/9 months this is important advice to bear in mind.

Here's a few hands from the past few weeks which illustrate what I was doing that I feel was incorrect/poor play whatever you want to call it: -

http://weaktight.com/160903

http://weaktight.com/160908

http://weaktight.com/160912

These hands kind of show what I'm trying to demonstrate although I probably do have better examples but my significant downswings usually occur because I play hands like these not only calling hands down but also if I am involved in the hands then playing them too passively.

That's one correction to my game I'm trying to make only another 999 to go!

March Results

March was very much a stop start month and I never really got anything going for reasons which I have documentated in previous posts. Any way here's March's results. Obviously not a great month again but I have noticed a major leak which I am eliminating from by game which is greatly affecting what I am doing so hopefully that should help. Unfortunately I only discovered this leak recently so am expecting good things from this month.

In addition to the tables below, there is one day's play not recorded as I had my settings wrong after converting my PT Database to Postgres. This day not recorded I was up about $70.



The bulk of the losses between hands 500 and 1784 when I made the mistake of playing when I was ill which is a mistake I won't be making again and the dip around the 11k mark was when I worked out what this leak was so a positive has come out of a negative.

This leak I discovered and it should have been obvious to me is that I am overplaying when I flop hands like TP or TPTK and losing significant pots when I shouldn't be in the hands. I'll make a separate and more detailed post about this in the next few days.



The stats look pretty reasonable to me other than the Agression Factor's look a bit low which I 'm a bit surprised about. Although it may be due to a lower than normal number of hands.

Considering where I was 6/7 months ago and was playing 11/9 to now be playing 18.75/16.29 without any trouble I am happy with what I'm doing Pre Flop. I have an ongoing battle with Post Flop play and have had for some time which I need to address as I'm losing that badly at the moment.



These don't look too bad other than there is too much of a gap in the blinds between my VPIP and PFR percentages which is unusual for me particularly the BB. I need to look at that it may just be variance but should be an easy fix.

April Targets

I don't have any specific goals or targets this month with regards to hands played or anything like that I just want to put some serious work in at my game particularly post flop because that's slipped a bit over the past few weeks. Work commitments are probably going to limit my time to a certain extent as well.

Another area I need to look at is to get back in the habit of posting hands in the various forums etc and start utilising the resources available to me more effectively.

I hope to make a video and also get some Sweat Sessions in but not sure my PC can cope at the moment.

Any way off to put the kiss of death on a couple of nags in this afternoon's Grand National, the only Horse Race I will bet on.