Change of Plans

You may have noticed that I haven't been updating this blog as much. After a pretty decent start in late December, I really cooled off at the beginning of January. I had a long talk with some fellow poker players and a couple of dealers and was quickly told that my game had changed...for the worst. I was told that I was playing "like a pussy", my aggression was gone!

I found myself locking up small wins so that I could post a "good session" on my blog. I wasn't pushing in spots that I normally would out of fear of losing a big pot. I was playing ultra-tight, etc.

In other words, having a winning session was becoming way more important than it should be. Instead of focusing on making the right decision, I was focusing on winning small pots, or more importantly not losing big ones. I had also fallen into a bunch of "fancy play syndromes".

After some analysis, and a re-reading of "The Poker Mindset"(a great book if you haven't read it). I decided that the way I was using this blog to track individual sessions was inherently flawed.

The blog was placing way to much focus on short term results and measuring them in dollars. This is silly, since my goal and mindset are focused on the long term!

Focusing on the short term was keeping me from playing my best game. In addition, every time I missed a monetary goal I would think of the session as a failure, when in fact sometimes they weren't. Making the correct decision and losing the pot isn't a bad thing. However, I would walk out the poker room in a really awful state of mind. Lastly, I could see what was coming up as January was coming to a close, I was getting a bit too over-concerned about my month "looking bad". How silly! I was chasing in spots w/o getting good pot or implied odds. I was pushing with marginal hands and a whole slew of other things.

So a change was in order...

I first had to decide if I wanted to keep the year-long challenge going at all. I quickly decided that I did, but it just needed to be tweaked a bit in order for really short term results(like individual sessions) not to affect my play. The bankroll management parts of the challenge I believe are solid, really solid. Tempted as I am to go back to playing full buy-in's at 2-5, or 1-2-5 I realize that any individual losing session at that stake would place my bankroll into a place that would have me playing scared(Remember I only gave myself 3K to start the challenge). Plus I like having a more conservative bankroll anyway. Although live play doesn't require as much of a BR as online play, my online BR is typically 30-40 buy-ins for the game i'm in. I'd rather be over-rolled than under-rolled, especially since I have the benefit of this not being my full-time job.

So the plan I'm working with now is just updating the blog less, maybe on a twice-a-month basis as it relates towards my progress thru the challenge and maybe mixing in some updates about some of the personalities that inhabit that place. Some of the regulars are real pieces of work!

That being said, look for my January end-of-month update shortly.