DonkeySquad

I have been pretty quite for the last few days.  The reason, Poker has been sucking for me.  I have had 3 big losing days in a row.  It is very difficult to post when I am losing.  I played probably 30 SNG’s and about 2,000 hands of cash and just can’t win.  It feels like when ever I am ahead, I lose and when I am behind I never catch. 

My Mega Madness Monday Poker day started off bad.  I fired up Poker Ace Hud and it did not work!!!  It said I needed to register the program.  Well, I was not the only one.  It seems like there was some kind of server issue with Poker Ace and I could not get it to work.  I found a work-around on 2+2 forums and had it up later in the day.  But it really through me off and I depend on my stats for reads on the players. 

Since PAHUD was not working, I decided to play some SNG’s.  I was trying out a different layout of tables today and I liked it, but my results were really bad.  I play 15-18 SNG’s and I did not even win one.  I got only like 2 seconds and like 5 thirds.  I bubbled out a lot and I could not get anything going.  I think I will stick with Tiling over Stacking for now. 

After Lunch, I played some cash games and it went as bad as the SNG’s.  I feel like I was just donating to the fish today.  I lost a couple of really big hands to 2-outers on the river.  It made me go on mini tilt and I just called it a day and closed out of my tables.  All in all it was a disappointing day and a huge step backward in my dream of becoming a pro. 

It was also quite a drain playing for 8 hours a day.  I felt pretty tired and not motivated to play as much as I planned.  I need to re-think the amount of time am planning on putting into poker on a daily bases.  I think that losing also added to the stress of the day and made me feel tired and weak. 

My bankroll has suffered a lot over the last three days and it looks almost impossible to reach my goal for this month.  I am going to re-evaluate my game today to see if I can find leaks and try to come up with strategies to plug them.   I think I am learning something about my game over the last couple of days.

First, I need to tighten up.  I have been playing too passively and too many hands preflop. 

Second, I over value my hands.  I tend to get married to a hand and can’t give them up when I know I am beat.  I think I might make a list of the times I think I am beat and call.  It will show if my instinks are correct or not.  My went to showdown precentage is like 30+ which is really too high.  It is boarderline calling station.

Third, I am too passive at the river.  My river stats are really low.   I need to be bet/raising or folding a lot more.  The river bet is were most of the money is made or lose and I think that is my weakest part of my game.

Forth, Pot control.  I need to give people a chance to catch up when I flop big and learn how to control the pot with medium hands.  If I get pushed at, I need to learn to fold marginal hands and get paid with big hands. 

Fifth,  I need to not look at how I am doing as I am playing.  I notice that I was monitoring if I was up or down after just playing for a few minutes and it really effected my play.  If I was down, it made me feel like I need to catch up and start winning some pots.  If I am up, I tend to want to quit and call it a day.  These feeling are the exact opposite of what I should be doing.  Also, if I am properly bankrolled, these minor swings should not change my decision to play. 

I will call it a post and see if I can take my own advice and learn how to beat these games.

Bankroll: $621.00

Hands: 11.500

The Constanza_G prop bet is almost over and it was not the summer of George (seinfeld quote).  He pretty much lost the bet, even though there is still like 3-days left.  I think he “only” made $20,000.  So he is still up for the month, but only like $4,500 + rakeback. 

WCGRiver has just started a prop bet today.  I have his web cam on the sidebar of my blog (replacing Constaza_G).  His bet is at the NL25 tables, but he has to win $10,000 in a month.  It seems like this bet is harder, yet WCGRiver is much more of a grinder and will be putting in 20,000 hand days consistently.   These are always fun to watch. 

WCGRiver offical Thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=208939

Monday is Memorial Day and I have the day off of my day job.  I have no plans for that day until 6pm so I am going to use this day-off to use for a mock pro day.  I am going to get up on Monday and act as if I was a Pro poker player.  I am going to grind out 8+ hours on Monday and try to do it as a job.  My plan is to get up at 6:30am, take a shower and get ready.  I am going to fire up my computer and start datamining the NL25 table at around 7am. 

I plan on starting play 4 to 8 tables on NL25 starting at 8am.  I want to play for 4-hours and have a 1 hour break.  Than I plan on putting another 4-hours at the $11 SNG’s table.  I think I will play 6 to 10 at a time.  I want to start slowly and work my way up to more tables as the day goes on.   

The title came from some hair coloring for Men ad. I did not play any poker yesterday. I was busy working on my photography and uploading a bunch of images to my website which totally kills my internet connection. I tried playing before when downloading large files or upload stuff and it does not work at all. All my tables are unresponsive and sometimes it disconnects me and then I am on Monkey Tilt.

On the DonkeySquad front, we might be getting a new member or two. I will update you when everything gets banged out, but he is a young player and is local to where I live. We are hoping to meet and play at a home game sometime soon. I really miss home games some time. It is a nice break from the grind of online multi tabling games, but it can also be very boring if you are actually there to win and not just there to hang out and have fun.

My last home game I played at was at my friend Richard’s house. It was my “buddies” Jawn B-day and he wanted to cook some meat and play some cards. Now that is my kind of party. My so called Steak looked bad, so I bumed some meat off of another guy and we all played some poker. I was playing for fun and I played a lot more hands than normal. All the guys know that I play a lot and most of them I taught how to play. I got a lot of respect from the guys and bluffed a lot. It was fun and I went away the big winner.

I decided to play some SNG yesterday since I did really well in them the other day.  Yesterday results were not nearly as good.  I played 6 SNG’s and won 1 and got a 3rd in another.  I could have had a decent winning day, but I got bubbled out of my last SNG with my KK vs KJo.  We were both all-in preflop when he flopped trips and rivered quads.  It was a pretty bad beat, but sometimes that is how you roll.  I feel like I was playing really well, just that the cards were not going my way.  I ended the day down $3.

There are a couple of software programs to help with SNG analysing.  One that I will be trying out soon is SNG Wizard.  They give you a free 30-day trial.  Once I start to put in some serious volume on the SNG’s, I will probably download that program to do some fine toning on my game.  SNG’s are probably the easiest form of poker to master and is almost a solved game.  There is not a lot of variening styles out there.  It is pretty much play ultra-tight when the blinds are low, bet for value, don’t bluff to much, and when the blinds get big and you are 4 or 5 handed start to loosen up and put on the pressure with raises and pushes. 

I will probably play some cash games today.  If I start running really bad, I will go back to the SNG. 

Bankroll: $921.10

Please welcome Neil “Geekster” Camp to the DonkeySquad blog.  He is the first member of the DonkeySquad and I am glad it took my offer :). 

A little background on Neil.  He has his own blog (www.geekster.org) that he has been running for 3 or 4 years.  He is a avid techy and poker player.  He as of recent has had an itch to start playing poker regularly and has dreams of being a pro.  Don’t we all. 

Well, now we can actually be considered a “Squad”.  I am not sure how many is in a “Squad”, but it must be more than 1.   If anyone wants to join us, please feel free to leave a comment or email me direct at: photojake@gmail.com.