The month started off pretty good, and then on Thanksgiving night things went terrible I dropped a few buy-ins. Within 24 hours, I had dropped most of the preceding two week's worth of profits.
There were two particularly bad (read: expensive) hands.
1) Every few thousand hands, or about once a month my brain tricks me into thinking I have a straight*, when I have four cards of it. In this case, I was missing the nine and when I raised and got re-raised AI by my opponent, my brain tricked me into thinking I had the straight and it cost me about 300 big blinds.
2) The second was against the player who has taken more money off of me than any other player. He did it a few months ago, and I think I might've played him once or twice since. I had a good hand, and he kept raising me. I know this player's range and playing style and I knew he had something a little better than my holdings. I knew that I should've let my hand go, but for some idiot reason, I turn into a spew monkey against this guy and I refused to fold to him and shoved over his raises only for him to cooler** me and take even more of my dough.
Looking at my graph (click to enlarge), after the gigantic drop down, I pretty much flatline. Little wins, and little losses.
There were two particularly bad (read: expensive) hands.
1) Every few thousand hands, or about once a month my brain tricks me into thinking I have a straight*, when I have four cards of it. In this case, I was missing the nine and when I raised and got re-raised AI by my opponent, my brain tricked me into thinking I had the straight and it cost me about 300 big blinds.
2) The second was against the player who has taken more money off of me than any other player. He did it a few months ago, and I think I might've played him once or twice since. I had a good hand, and he kept raising me. I know this player's range and playing style and I knew he had something a little better than my holdings. I knew that I should've let my hand go, but for some idiot reason, I turn into a spew monkey against this guy and I refused to fold to him and shoved over his raises only for him to cooler** me and take even more of my dough.
Looking at my graph (click to enlarge), after the gigantic drop down, I pretty much flatline. Little wins, and little losses.
The rest were little losses, and the occasional medium-sized cooler. There were some occasional misplays. One of my biggest leaks, that I thought I had removed from my game, but it popped up over the weekend is having top pair, top kicker like AK and getting the Ace and betting into the flop and when I get raised, reraising my opponent all in, only to find out they have two pair or a set***. Mostly, I was card dead and folding. When I would get something playable, I'd either get nothing with it (Ace Jack missing the board) or I'd get raised out of the pot (Kings with an Ace on the board being heavily bet into).
I spent about an hour and a half folding on Saturday night. Here's a few orbits at one table... (click to enlarge)
I spent about an hour and a half folding on Saturday night. Here's a few orbits at one table... (click to enlarge)
The only playable hands there are maybe...
1) A5s, which got raised and I wasn't going to call a raise with that... and it would've lost anyway.
2) 44, which I did win with, but wasn't going to raise from the big blind when the entire table had limped in. That's usually suicide. (I do tend to raise any pocket pair from anywhere usually.)
Everything else was either trash to fold, or something that I wouldn't play in the position I was in at the time. People that play offsuit connectors or facecard-rag are the ones I usually make the money from. I'm sure that my opponents thought I was a complete nit, but lucky for me, I'm more concerned with making money than what other people at the table think of me. Everything I folded was a losing hand anyway. (Bluffing isn't an option at a table with at least two players playing 80% or more of the hands they're dealt into. Guys that apparently don't have a "fold" button popping up on their screen.)
On the upside, when I did finally get a playable hand, it was the best starting hand once can get, a pair of Aces. I was lucky enough to get a dumb caller. I know if I was sitting at a tale and somebody had been folding EVERY hand, and then suddenly started raising, it would make me incredibly suspicious.
Anyway, hopefully December is better. I'll just keep playing and studying, improving my game and plugging my leaks.
Notes for the non-poker players
* A straight is five cards in a row like K-Q-J-T-9. Just like the name implies.
** A cooler is when you have a good hand and your opponent has something a little better. Like you both have a full house and but his is with Aces and yours is with Kings
*** A set is Three of a kind.
1) A5s, which got raised and I wasn't going to call a raise with that... and it would've lost anyway.
2) 44, which I did win with, but wasn't going to raise from the big blind when the entire table had limped in. That's usually suicide. (I do tend to raise any pocket pair from anywhere usually.)
Everything else was either trash to fold, or something that I wouldn't play in the position I was in at the time. People that play offsuit connectors or facecard-rag are the ones I usually make the money from. I'm sure that my opponents thought I was a complete nit, but lucky for me, I'm more concerned with making money than what other people at the table think of me. Everything I folded was a losing hand anyway. (Bluffing isn't an option at a table with at least two players playing 80% or more of the hands they're dealt into. Guys that apparently don't have a "fold" button popping up on their screen.)
On the upside, when I did finally get a playable hand, it was the best starting hand once can get, a pair of Aces. I was lucky enough to get a dumb caller. I know if I was sitting at a tale and somebody had been folding EVERY hand, and then suddenly started raising, it would make me incredibly suspicious.
Anyway, hopefully December is better. I'll just keep playing and studying, improving my game and plugging my leaks.
Notes for the non-poker players
* A straight is five cards in a row like K-Q-J-T-9. Just like the name implies.
** A cooler is when you have a good hand and your opponent has something a little better. Like you both have a full house and but his is with Aces and yours is with Kings
*** A set is Three of a kind.
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4 comments:
I dunno if this is a rude thing to ask or not and I also don't know if you've said it or not. Do you play online poker for a living?
Nah, it's not rude to ask. (Although generally, I don't tend to talk about money or my personal finances. Unless it's to whine that I can't afford some item that I probably don't really need like a 100 inch HDTV. Wait, I do need a 100 inch HDTV.)
Poker is side income with my intent being to eventually turn it into my main (or only) source of income. I've been playing for less than a year. The first time I ever (reluctantly) played was at a friend's house last year around Christmas. I still consider myself pretty much a beginner though, and I know I've got a lot to learn.
At the moment I don't have a regular steady job (combo of crappy economy and my natural laziness), so I've got plenty of time to play. Frankly, I want to get good enough at poker where I don't ever have to get a regular job again. You don't even have to become a millionaire or play the nosebleeds to do that. A good mid-stakes player can pull in the same yearly salary on average that somebody working in an office makes.
I'm still playing really small stakes. In fact, I've only been playing for real money for a few months. I started off on a play for free site tht I read about. You get 100 play chips and if you get some ridiculous amount of chips they pay you real money. Something like 100,000 chips equaling out to $10 of real world money. I'd probably still be trying to make enough play chips to cash out if I was there. Given how bad play money players are, and they're worse than the worst of real cash players, I realized how futile and what a waste of time playing on that site was. So I decided to deposit some money on PokerStars and started getting serious about my game.
Right around the time I quadrupled the money I deposited, I figured I'd be okay at this in the long term. I still get unhappy about downswings, like the one I'm in at the moment, but I've got enough of a bankroll cushion that I'm not worried about going busto or anything.
This year I've met my modest goal that I set out to accomplish when I decided to deposit and play for real money. That was to make enough playing to be able to buy some Christmas presents and a game or two for myself. Poker was also able to pay for it's own software expenses like Hold'em Manager. (Playing without tracking/HUD software is probably suicide online.)
It's a bit odd that I've gotten so serious about poker. I've never had any interest in gambling before. Once I realized that online poker was essentially a video game that I get paid to play, I attacked it like the obsessive nerd that I am.
That answer was a lot longer than I expected it to be.
Everyone needs a 100 inch HDTV! It's pretty cool that you've been able to meet your goal with poker paying for some odds and ends. I have a feeling with my luck, poor skill at cards in general, and my inability to place good bets due to boredom I'd be a very shitty poker player.
Yeah, it's definitely not for everybody. There's a lot of work involved if you want to treat it as a game of skill rather than hoping to just get lucky. I've probably studied more math in the last few months than I did throughout the entire time I went to school. It's a hard way to make an easy living.
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