Brutal honesty

Well, of my three May goals, I only completed one. I have started a pretty regular workout regime, including joining a local gym and taking kickboxing classes. They hurt, but I know myself pretty well. When it comes to exercise, I need someone to push me or I will just slack off. Kind of like, work, really. I'm much lazier than people give me credit for.

I'm going to make it a June goal to finally finish up my head's up book. For some reason this one just isn't holding my interest is much, which is odd. First, I liked Moshem's STT strategy book. Second, I like poker books (and books in general), so that can't be it. And this is a part of game that I could use some help at. I don't think finding the time is going to be hard in June, given my vacation and travel schedule coming up, so I plan to finish this one and Snyder's "Poker Tournament Formula" this month.

As for my goal to make $400 in May - um, no. It was only due to a great (for me) finish in a largish MTT yesterday that allowed me to break even. I placed 13th in the $22 30K on Stars yesterday for an almost $250 cash. A heartbreaking finish, though, since the hand I busted out on was QQ vs. AKo, and the A hit the river. Had I won that hand, I would have jumped to 5th place and it would have been fairly likely not only that I would make final table, but also that I would cash for 4 figures for the first time (which started at 7th place). Still, since I myself had sucked out with AK twice earlier (vs. TT when I hit a K and vs. KK when I flopped a straight) I couldn't be too upset. There was no way I was folding QQ, and no way villain (who had a huge stack) was folding AK, and after that the cards fell as they fell.

Still, the fact that May was a slightly losing month for me was distressing. At one point, I was up almost $300. The first part of May I felt close to invincible, cashing in close to 1/2 of my tournaments (STTs and 2-3 table SNGs, mostly). Then during the second half of May, it was brutal beat after brutal beat.

So what can I do to fix this? I'm trying for brutal honesty here, but there's one thing that's getting in the way of identifying an easy "fix" - I actually think I was, for the most part, playing pretty well. There was a stretch where I was not only losing all my coin flips, I was also losing almost every hand where I was the clear preflop favorite and all of our chips got in preflop. They were all pretty "standard" beats by themselves - JJ vs. 55, KK vs. ATs, QQ vs. AJs are just some examples - but I was losing far more than I was statistically likely to, with only infrequent suckouts of my own to compensate. Also, for some reason, almost all of my dominating A hands (AJ vs. A2, for example) have been losing. There have been some circumstances where I played a hand badly (bad read, bad call), and I haven't factored those into my analysis, but during the last part of May I was losing between 65-70% of hands where I was at least 50% or greater to win when all the money went in. Also, for some reason, my KKs were running at like 35%, which is far lower than they should.

Still, I have come to this understanding - I am, right now, only a break even player, or maybe very marginally winning. And I don't make enough during my "up" streaks to compensate when variance (and the declining but still occurring bad decisions on my part) decides to smack me upside the head.

So my fixes for this current run include:

1. Less bitching. I'm pretty sure my b/f is sick of listening to it, and frankly I'm kind of sick of doing it. Donks play badly and suck out. My AK gets trounced by A6. I've got to get numb to it at some point, and I think that will come more easily if I just resolve not to stew about it.

2. Stick to my limits. I was trying to mix in some $22 STTs, and my results weren't bad, but my roll can't really handle the fluctuations right now. Although I will still play my new favorite donkament - the $22 30K. I like the smaller field, and I seem to get a little deeper in this one. Plus I just got really deep yesterday. So I have a special fondness for this one right now.

3. Mix more MTTs in with the STTs, but drop down to the $5 tables for this. I need more experience with pushbotting and aggression for the large MTTs, and that often doesn't really come up in the STTs, particularly when we are down to only 5 people by the 3rd level.

4. Find a mentor and keep learning/grinding.

I'll be on vacation for 2 1/2 weeks in June, which will cut down on my volume and probably lose my newly (and surprisingly) acquired Silver Star status on Stars. Anyway, good luck to one and all, and see you at the tables.

SGT RJ