anomaly16

September

A combination of only losing in 5 of the 30 days of September, playing reasonable volume and also playing more 100PL has resulted in a new best month ever :)


Coaching

I'm really pleased with the way I'm playing, but still think I'd benefit from some more coaching - I'm going to take some more time to decide who and what I want from it though. I've actually taken on a student myself now - it's very early days so far, but I hope teaching will help me think more deeply and clearly as well as being able to help someone else.

Black Card Day

So, its the big day today and Full Tilt have revealed the details of the scheme among other changes. There seems to be a lot of bad reactions to the news : loss of rakeback due to changing to a weighted contributed model, worse than hoped for black card bonuses and small changes to Iron Man. I'm not so pessemistic and will allow some time for the system to bed in and see if any tweaks appear before passing judgement.

Rakeback isn't a huge part of my income so I'm not too worried about that, and if players think they need to play laggier to get more rakeback then it should suit my game. If some of the regs decide to leave for Stars then the games should get marginally better. I've no appetite for SuperNova or SuperNova Elite at Stars, so there is no value in any kind of comparison between the sites for me. The black card store is pretty poor, but the increase in rate of earning FT points should allow me to pick up more tournament tickets which I get a reasonable return on.

Live Poker

Its been a while since I've posted about any live poker but it hasn't gone that well this year. However, after also doing poorly with it in Vegas I now have an appetite to do much better when I go back next year. I've approached it with a little more of the discipline that I apply to online poker since I got back and have had some results as a result (or I'm just finally running a little better!). I finally got to play Omaha Hi/Lo live for the first time at the end of August (I never managed it in Vegas) and although there were only a disappointing 8 entrants I had a lot of fun and won. There were a few more for Omaha Hi mid-september and I finished in an ok 3rd after a bad run of cards towards the end. The week after I was doing pretty good in a 2-day £100 event, but towards the end of day 1 I was moved with an average stack to a new table and 2 large stacks had a lot of hands while I sat pretty card dead. In the final hand of the day I decided to commit my remaining short stack rather than come back the next day for only a few hands, but couldn't even beat J high :( Last saturday was a normal nl holdem event, and after a poor start I staged a comeback getting to the final table with 3rd largest stack and then winning after quite a long HU battle.

Games at the weekend can be a volatile affair with recreational monkeys clicking buttons, and when there are several at the table it can create some really awkward spots. The forums are always full of regs bemoaning bad weekend beats while others have awesome sessions.

I played pretty well this weekend navigating these spots and didn't have too much C-game in evidence at all. Running good definitely has benifits of providing the confidence to be more aggressive preflop and make the most of barreling and bluffing opportunities. Almost everything went to plan for probably my best 2-day results ever. I don't think I can complain at running below EV!