Thursday 24 November 2011

On a New Grind Until I Learn More

Hey

I am now going to only play turbo style tournaments and the ones that have rebuys in particular because i like to have a deep stack but with a shallow structure and that plays into my style perfectly and i have noticed this is where i have made the most of my money over the years.

I am limiting my grind to this because i need to improve my game in the slower structured tournaments because i have many a leak on them. I am getting increasingly frustrated in them and am just uncomfortable so decided to drop the trouble tournaments completely until i can get to the bottom of all my problems.

From the top my problems lie in:

LACK OF A HUD: This is the box that can appear next to all of the players at your table with the amount of hands you have played with them along with aggression factor and other stats to help build a picture of how you should play against this person. I haven't set one up for myself yet and feel that i am at a disadvantage if i continue to neglect using one.

FULL GRASP OF POKER MATHS: I obviously know a great deal already but i am not 100% on the optimum strategy for what to do with a particular stack in a particular spot with a particular hand, the likelihood of my hand getting there on the flop, if it is clever to go chasing it on the turn and so on and so forth. I have to make sure everything i do is working towards me having the best possible opportunity towards winning the tournament in question.

GRASP OF DIFFERING TOURNAMENT STRUCTURES: What it says on the tin really. Have to know how slow and fast the blinds rise as well as the starting stack and the steepness of the blind increases and to know what strategy i should have on each level with whatever stack i have.

Ultimately i have to be ridiculously comfortable in any grind i play. At the moment i am only like this in the turbo tournaments as i feel i have a good pre flop game. Need to develop my deep stack post flop game however, as i am definitely too tight and i get abused too often. Need to exert my chips a lot more.

So i think it is clever to carry on playing what i am adept at and in the meanwhile learn how to better myself in the games i am less comfortable in. How to do this?

READ AS MUCH FORUM HAND HISTORY MATERIAL AS POSSIBLE

WATCH AS MANY TOURNEY VIDEO TUTORIALS FROM GOOD PLAYERS AS POSSIBLE

HAVE SOME FUN WITH POKER CALCULATOR TO KNOW ABOUT HANDS IN DIFFERENT SPOTS.

That is about it at the moment. I am looking forward to taking responsibility for making my poker game as good as it can be and to stop burying my head in the sand to my problems and to address them and increase profitability in the process. This is the start of the process of me playing as optimally as i could possibly can for the rest of my days.

Only then can i properly gauge if i can make this into a consistent £50k+ a year salary.