TOP TEN:
February has started off being a better month then January, and there is a still lot more time in the month to go. Even though I compare one month to another I know that comparing two constants in poker is never a good idea. Each situation, game, mood, etc is different. It’s better to look at the whole game and decide whether you are playing good poker or not.
As for January I feel I played OK poker. I made my fair share of mistakes and made a number of strong plays. I did get unlucky in a lot of my sit and go’s but I know that time will be the true measure of my luck, not just 20 tournaments. My live game was good, except for a tournament that I could get any traction in. My bankroll took a hit of about 15%. This sounds bad but it really boiled down to two sessions, a tournament and one on-line session where I let myself chase too much and go on tilt at the end. If those two sessions were removed then my bankroll would have taken less then a 3% hit, and after some of the cards I seemed to be getting, that would have been very acceptable.
After two live sessions and some on-line play, I’m slightly ahead in February. I won’t be playing live any more this month due to traveling conditions which means I’m going to have to focus on my on-line game. I’m going to start playing at Poker Stars and Party Poker a bit to see how things go there.
As far as the two live sessions go, things did go well. The first session I left with an ROI of 55% after 4 hours and the 2nd I left down a bit, but still made more then a 1 BB profit per hour played. The most interesting story was related to the first session I played. I went to Seneca Niagara casino with a buddy on Friday night. My friend and I had gone several times in the last six months and he never seemed to be able to come up with a winning session. After some discussion of pot-odds, outs and the types of bets to make with drawing hands I came up with a strategy for him to employ:
The TOP TEN.
Very simply, when he was not in the blinds, or on the Dealer button, he was allowed to play anything other then the top 10 hands, and this would apply for the first hour of his session. After the hour was finished he would be free to play any style he wished. After 1 hour, he won two huge pots and nearly doubled his starting buy-in. I wanted him to get used to playing in position, and playing only with quality cards. Now, the hands that he won with were very playable, so I don’t think my strategy made him more money in those hands, but I do think that getting him to focus on position and starting hand selection got him to reduce the number of weaker hands he played. This probably caused him an extra 20% in ROI by the time his session was over.
