March Results

Edited for spelling, I really need to use spell check and not just type and let typos fly everywhere.

So March was an overall successful month.  To highlight a few things, I hired a coach, Improva.  I felt this was a very good move.  The things he is teaching me I feel are really gonna help me improve as a player – it is just going to take some time to fully grasp the spots I am looking for, and to correct some poor assumptions I make that lead to spew.  Once this happens, look out.  I felt that despite the results this month, I learned a TON.  Continuing to work with malfaire and RiverRock55 in our weekly sweats and having the usual weekend discussions with ladymuck continue to be beneficial to my development.  It is truly great to work with such dedicated people who have the same desire to improve that I have.  I also discussed poker with a few others players like Covert Ops and Probability and others I am sure I missed here, but a big thank you to all of you who helped me learn this month, it is much appreciated!

I had some goals on the right part of my blog that I have had up there for each month for a while now.  I missed every one this month.

• Hands:  20,327/25,000
• HH Responses:  91/100
• Videos watched:  8/10

This is okay.  This has been a very busy month between being out of town for 5 days, enjoying spending time with my wife getting prepared for the baby to come (just 10 weeks away from Jacob Daniel being born!), coaching a few students on the ABCs of poker, softball starting, and also a few childbirth preparation classes tossed in there.  The reality is that while I love to play poker and love to learn, priorities need to be set.  Clearly the time spent at work and spent with Jasmine are higher priorities.  I felt I learned a fair amount this month on the poker front and I feel I improved as a player, despite taking lumps here and there with some poor plays.  Ian once told me that pain causes change.  It hurts to lose BIs from poor decisions and play and therefore, it is what makes you strive to improve that much more.  I think he is spot on there.  These mistakes will help me learn something and help me to improve, so it’s all good. 

That being said, these goals will cease to exist each month, for a multitude of reasons.  First, a hands goal is kinda meh.  I am not sure how much time I will have available for poker starting in April (though I suspect that May will be when it decreases and June will be very low).   I don’t want to make artificial goals I either cannot reach or play too many tables to reach.  So a hands goal seems counter productive.  It was very good for a while.  I remember dodgyken helping me out by telling me to make a hands goal when I was (am?) too results oriented.  It did help me focus on the hands goal much more than the monetary goal, since that is something that is out of my hands.  However, given these new events, it does not seem worthwhile to make hands goals anymore. 

Also, the HH responses will go away.  I spent a lot of time responding to HHs on the forums, because luckysob said that is a way he improved dramatically in his poker career.  I did find it to be very helpful.  However, I feel I am getting less out of it now.  I will still respond to hands, but I won’t be making an effort to respond to every single hand on the micro and small stake forums on Leggo.  I don’t post my own hands as much becuse the group of people I work with and my coach provide enough thoughts and reasoning to make me think about which line is the best and why. 

I also will eliminate the poker videos goal.  I will still watch them of course, especially any 100-400nlvideo on Poker Stars, I will gobble those up.  However, I feel I am getting less and less from videos anymore.  It might just  be that I focus for 20 minutes and get bored because when watching someone play in a video format, you don’t have verbal communication and discussions, you just watch and I feel my attention wain.  There are some video makers I really enjoy and will keep watching them regardless, but overall, I imagine this drops down to maybe 5 videos per month.  I am okay with this.

Now, you might say, “btimm, won’t this stunt your growth as a player?”  The answer is no.  I am eliminating goals, because I don’t want the unnecessary pressure, but I am still going to work to improve as a player.  I am going to be spending much more time with my HM database, analyzing my own play and regs play.  I think it might be cool to formulate a plan for how to counter various regs and counter their strategies.  I can do some in depth analysis in HM and make notes in the HM note taking system, which is so awesome.  Such an underrated tool that I think people take for granted now.  I think this could be help me develop as a player, reviewing my own play as I always do, but also looking at winning regs to see what I can do better and looking at all regs to develop counters to their postflop tendencies and styles.  I am still going to put the work in my game, just in a different avenue that I think will lead to more success.  We’ll see how this goes, but I am optimistic that it will help me learn a good deal.

Here are the results for the month.  They are not that good, but I made many mistakes this month.  I felt I learned a lot though and I feel I improved as a player.  I look forward to April, where I feel I can continue my development and I can really start to see the fruits of my labors.  Thanks for reading if you got this far!