A while back there was a "one liner" thread in the beginner's section.

My contribution was:
Know where to sit and when to leave.

In my last blog entry I talked about screwing up on the latter (and I almost always do).
The need to check the ego and say "that guy's giving me all sorts of grief, let's go find another table" rather than "3-bet my c/r again will you? I'll show ye! I'll win it all back!!111).

This time I'm going to say something about table selection and why I $@€%# suck dunkey balls when it comes to table selection.

Take this for an example:
I have an empty chair before me. To the right sits a TAG, to my left a tight-passive, then a bit of a gambler (bad lag), another tight/passive and then a fairly dangerous lag.

Is that a good seat for me? Well no, because the first thing is that it's a $500NL table, so duh, move on. (I lost a stack that session).

But let's take $50NL. I'm a fairly mediocre $50NL player but I'm a winning player (just over 60k hands). 1bb/100.
My general principle has been: take the first available chair. If possible I'll sort via average pot size and players/flop but normally I'm queueing for the first available slot.

How's that worked out for me?
Well, as I say: $50NL (6-max): +$600, 1bb/100
But let's look closer.

There's 18.5k at Party at around 1bb/100. I've cleared a few Bonuses there with that (I mean 2.5k hands on Empire clears $100 Bonus which is nice). If I'm on my PT PC I'll have a look at stats and try to find some weak players at a table free from serious competition.
But that's the best I've got.

A few other sites have a handful of hands. iPoker is nearly 4k hands at 11bb/100. I've made twice as much at Crypto in 4k hands as I made at party in 18k. Could be variance, but wow.

Then finally there's Crypto. I've logged 37k hands on Crypto for a profit of $7.

Yup, $7.

Sure, I've never been down since starting there; and after 25k hands I had made about $1k which wasn't a lot but is a lot better than where I ended up.
Some say Crypto is too tough, on the other hand I was doing ok until recently and Bonus+Rakeback were a strong incentive.

But right now it seems that trying to play Crypto is just foolhardy when better results have been had elsewhere (and losing $300+ this month on Crypto didn't help).

So I'm now playing iPoker and Party. We'll see what results look like as I get more hands (again hoping to finish up and not quit in disgust at the end of the month). And so far I'm enjoying the style of the tables more (fewer tricky spots, marginal decisions seem to be right more often).

But it seems to me that a part of my session review ought to regularly be "was that a good seat I picked?" and "Should I have left earlier?". Look for signs where a player made my position a hard one and then keep any eye out for those while playing.

Anyone who has good tips for reviewing their table selection then please do leave a comment

Probably my single most fixable leak is my inability to get up and walk away from a tough game.

Today I undid yesterday's good work by losing 4 BI over 350 hands ($50NL 6-max). And the thing that made it criminal was that I lost three of those to the same villain.

He was a slightly laggy player, in that he'd play a wide range of hands cheaply but then lay them down too easily, I felt.
I was doing okay against him and taking a few pots where he'd limped in and was doing okay against the table.

Then I get QQ, he 3-bets a min-raiser and I 4-bet to $15, he pushes, I fold. (-$15)

Lose a $20 pot PP v PP on an AAx flop, where he minbets twice. (-$25)

Next hand I have 66, c-bet the K59 flop, he raises, I 3-bet and he places a tiny 4-bet.
I see the turn for that, another 5, and fold to his turn push. (-$45)

AJs he calls OOP, flop 579 rainbow, he min-raises my c-bet. Turn J. He HPB it. 1/4 pot on the river, I push over the top, he calls with 68s. (-$94)

I raise AKo UTG, 1 caller, he 3-bets from the SB, I decide his 3-bet range must be enough to let me push here and do. He has KK which holds up. (-$142).


I don't there's much there that's too weird. I may have gone to with the AJ hand not realising he minbets both strength and weakness.
But I seriously thought about leaving after the first few encounters but decided against it; now I really have to question whether, regardless of his quality,whether I should have got out the moment I felt uncomfortable.

I've been working so hard on better reads. And made some fine calls and fine plays (a number of thin calls that were right and pushing people off good hands when they were weak enough).
And yes today I seemed to always have the QQ versus another's KK etc and that goes around and next time it may be reversed. But still.

So I'm pleased with my first 1k hands of $50NL this month, even if I'm down 4BI overall.
Until today I was running okay despite fairly meh cards... now it's a bit more ropey.
Well, we'll see where I am come 10k.

But, no pressure, if I'm a loser over 10k at $50NL this month, I think I'm done with NL ring.

Comments welcome

I've never been one for focusing on one particular type of poker. Not since they days when my bankroll was double-figures have I concentrated on one stake, one type of game, etc.

That's why in my various threads I tend to post updates with a few different tourney results, some limit and no-limit HE, both short-handed and full-ring.
Indeed it's only because my PT doesn't support Omaha and Five-Card-Draw that it's limited to that.

If nothing else it allows me to switch when bad luck is getting me down.

Recently the experiment has been tournaments, mostly SNGs and I've struggled but I think learnt a fair bit. Enough to justify the $400 or so it cost me? Perhaps not.
I've just bought Tournament Poker for Advanced Players and Harrington on Hold 'Em (Vol 1 +2), in the hope that spending $40 on books will teach me more than losing 10x that at the table.

I've got bits of what's left of my roll on Party and Everest. I had about $500 on each and have managed to wind up with less than $200 on each left.
While Full Ring started really well on Everest and went horribly south; my SHNL last month actually started unbelievable well (recouping quite a bit of my losses).

So I'm going back to $50NL (again). Both at full-ring and 6-max.
I'm going to try to get back to my previous nittyness and just start grinding back a new roll.

This is about the third or fourth time I've been forced back from $100NL and higher to start "afresh" at a level I thought I'd beaten and finished with for good.
But the reality is that although I seem to have a lot of sick downswings and very few good variance (last month was the closest I've ever really felt I came to a decent heater and I only got in 750 hands). But there's so much I've never fixed in my game.



Table selection (only ever got that at Party)
Reads, never really got them either, too often playing versus generic ranges
Staying out of trouble, whenever I think I'm done with stupid heroic calls...
Review sessions properly. Only since donkaments have I started putting anything like enough time into it.

I'm back on the Bonus + rb trail again, hoping to boost the bankroll again. After cashing out a fair chunk I've got around $1k that I'm considering my roll and I want to grind that up to $2k asap before I even think about moving up.

So far iPoker's been swingy but good for me. I'm also putting in some FR on Everest (but that's not going so well... the first session of August has sucked so far).

Over almost 50k $50NL I've only run at about 1.7bb/100, but then before the last huge downswing I was running at a lot more.
I think I say every time I drop down that I don't know how many more times I can take this sort of setback, but I always do...

Will the suckage continue? Time will tell.

Comments and Feedback welcome in the available comment thread

I've just played in a $0.10 + $0.01 SNG.

Well that's got you all hooked on my new blog. Nosebleed stakes etc.

As a quick recap: I've been playing for about a year and a half now.

I tried to build a big roll to move up to mid-stakes, but I stalled around the $100NL/$200NL level. (All catalogued in mind-numbing detail in the 7k5 operation).

These days I'm playing only $50NL when the mood takes me (for instance I've got $100 of Bonus on Party which I doubt I'll clear before it expires at the end of the week).
I've played some Limit again, which is okay.

Basically I'm playing okay at SHNL right now, but don't feel a lot of urge to start moving up again. Yet.
And right now I'm a bit sick of grinding out for a small loss in order to make a bit through Rakeback and Bonus (which is how I always seem to make money, as I fully confessed before).

I'm probably going to get back to grinding $50NL soon and rebuild that roll. But for now I'm having fun learning SNGs. I've got my little operation running; so far it's more of a learning experience than a profitable one. But I am learning.

I've been playing $11s on Party, so what made me play a $0.11?
Well, I was chatting to Da Goat on vent and he was warmly recommending the fish of Everest Poker.
So I decided to download the client onto the laptop and maybe deposit a little for some full-ring grinding.

I signed in with my old SN and saw my old roll there. $1.41 which I'd taken from zero winning $0.10 in single-table Freerolls and then entering $0.04+$0.01 NL SNGs.
Nowadays the lowest level is the $0.11s so I thought: why not, give it a go. See how it feels.

Okay, the players are bad (I mean, yeah, it's $0.11s, {arh}). But as I sat there on the bubble with the shortest stack I saw how tricky it still was.
I tried a blind steal with 35s or something, and donk villain in the blind calls. The flop is 24J or something, so I push over his donk bet and he folds. Pretty sucky stuff, but suddenly I has 17bbs or something and I didn't descend into push-fold.

As players bust out and I found myself HU it was interesting to play relatively deep (I normally play turbos). And yes, the guy sucked so very, very, very much. (Lovely stuff like he completes and never raises, he calls or folds and never 3-bets, he min-bets flops he's got marginal holdings on and lets you hit your draws).
But still, he had a 2.5:1 chip lead going HU. One suck out. One KK v AA and I'm busto.

It'd be interesting to see how far I could take my (now) $1.80 roll on Everest. But of course I'm not going to.

It's just interesting to reflect that I used to be this guy and was just managing to win these things, now I've played levels a zillion (ish) times higher and learned much more about position, betting odds, flop texture, ICM, hand-reading (next to nothing is MUCH MORE than nothing, ok!? and what's the result? I still just manage to win these things. Poker is hard.

Oh and I still make dumbass moves like the 35s steal

Humbling stuff.