Still Cruising

Poker can be so deceptive. Right now I am crushing it, I've just fully recovered plus a bit from a 2k downswing, but am I really playing that much better than my opponents now or am I just running good over a smallish sample??? I've made a ton of changes to my game, so I'd like to think I am playing much better now, but I probably won't know if they're really helping till I get a bigger sample and by then I'll have changed twenty other things that will skew my results. I suppose I just need to keep studying and keep thinking about what I'm studying to decide for myself if it should be profitable in my game. I can say definitively though that I am going on tilt less and quitting sooner when I do, and that has saved me a ton of money over the past month. Poker is such a dynamic game and each table is different, I just need to keep honing in on my opponents thought process, and then figure out better and better lines to take against them.

I've been incredibly lazy this summer and I'm finally starting to run and lift so that when wrestling season rolls around I'm not terribly out of shape. I feel like I think clearer and am more confident for the rest of the day when I get a good workout in, so ya this has been great on all fronts.

Poker is great, life is great, and may anyone reading run good!

cheers,

Chad

Changes

I got the 200 search trial of the PTR Premium service so I could compare my stats to some of the top winners at 50nl Full Ring and see what basic changes I need to make, and the final conclusion is that I am far too loose, so I did some pokerstove calculations and came up with a good base for what hands I should be raising from each position, and I think thats going to help me a ton. My decisions post flop are much simpler when I've generally got the best hand pre-flop, and I felt a lot less stressed the one session I played and decided to bump my tables up to 14 and play longer as a result. So ya, lots of big changes going on with my game, and I'm sure they'll make me a much more consistent winner and be step down the road to playing more tables more profitably.

cheers,

Chad

My pillow isn't nearly as soft as live 200nl. It sucks that the game is so slow, but you can't beat playing with 7 people who have never really taken poker seriously and generally started out below average intelligent to begin with, and 1 other that has a clue and wins in that game, but still is bad, and then maybe 1 other pretty solid player. I'm going to try and make the short drive to the casino at least once a week till school starts. Its a great atmosphere too, and I finally feel comfortable enough with my bankroll to take a loss, so ya good situation there.

Everything online is still going according to plan, it seems like every time I make money consistently for a good stretch it starts to feel like I can't lose, so when this good thing comes to its inevitable end I just have to make sure that I handle it well and keep playing the best game I know how, but I've really turned a corner with my tilt control and attitude towards the game, so I'm very confident I'll handle it like a champ, and hopefully I can keep climbing for a while!

Went rock climbing today, and I think I'm going to buy a rope, some quick draws, and a few other things so I can start going climbing a lot more often. There are a ton of routes within 20 minutes of my house, so ya should definitely be taking advantage of it!

cheers,

Chad

Gettin Settled In

I've made some money at 50nl now, and my roll is sitting 12 buyins above the number I said i'd move down at, so I should be able to weather some negative variance if the poker gods so desire. I did a hand history review today and really got a lot out of it. It seems like every time I take a step forward with poker and really make some improvements with my game, the biggest thing I realize is just how little I know and how many leaks I have, but I suppose thats how it should be and how it will continue to be for a long time or quite possibly forever.

Achilles157 has some great videos for Drag the Bar, and I think I'm going to go back through one of his for 50nl and take some more notes, his thought process is presented in a way that seems to make a lot more sense to me than any other video I've watched so I'm sure it'd do me a lot of good to meticulously watch that one a couple times and get everything I can from it. So ya poker is good, life is good, and I'm really motivated to learn right now so I should probably get to it.

cheers,

Chad

First Post

Hey, I used to have a blog here http://www.pokerfreerollsonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=8123, but I figured I'd start one that was a little more my own page.

I suppose I'll start with a little about myself. I'm a senior mechanical engineering student and wrestler at Colorado Schoool of Mines, and I started playing poker about a year ago. I won a freeroll for $20 and deposited ten bucks on Absolute poker so I could start getting player points and stuff and have been stuck to the game ever since. For my first 8 or 9 months I'd build up slowly to a couple hundred dollars then tilt, move up limits and start back over from twenty bucks, and after several months of this on Absolute and Full Tilt, I found out PokerStars had a restrict table limit feature and I immediately switched over there and started climbing through the limits a little quicker.

I had been primarily a limit player up until a couple months ago, but it seems like your edge gets pretty small around 5/10 limit, so I figured I'd eventually want to make the transition to no limit and this summer would be my best opportunity to do so. I'm currently playing 50nl FR and working on my game like crazy. I've been doing a lot of sweats, watching and taking notes on a ton of videos, and trying to make as many poker friends as possible to help me get where I want to be and make the ride more enjoyable. I'll lay some goals out here to gauge my progress.

1. Have Fun. When it comes down to it poker should be fun, and in the past I've struggled when it becomes too much about results and not enough about playing a game that I enjoy to the best of my ability.

2. Constantly improve and never get content with my game.

3. Be beating 100nl and be rolled for 200nl by the end of the year.

4. Achieve Supernova status by the end of the year.

The biggest reason I have fallen short of past goals is tilt control, so my biggest focus at the moment is on playing my A game all the time. Every one of these goals relies on me getting my tilt under control, and in the past 2 weeks I've gotten a lot better at quitting, so hopefully I'm at a turning point in that regard. Thanks for reading, and I hopefully future posts won't be so dry. gl at the tables!

cheers,

Chad