What's up merry pranksters?



Cliffs; Jan was sweet, Febtober blew, BW made a good video, Crapface82 snapped me out of a poker funk and now I'm running toasty hot.

I haven't updated the blog in awhile; the truth is that following a really great January showing, February shat on me. I just lost/broke even day in and day out, felt like I was running atrociously and, what was more unsettling was that my play was degenerating. My real frustration had once again stunted my poker growth and inhibited me from thinking clearly.

No, I am absolutely not a supporter of the 'Emotional Control' doctrine/dogma to the exclusion of the other important aspects of poker (game theory, statistics, psychology, BR management, forging solid professional relationships, etc etc etc). However, I think that Boywonder made a really great video recently which highlighted the relationship between frustration and gametime decisions. Getting my face pounded in on a daily basis was precluding me from thinking about ranges honestly, and I got this sense of paranoia that the tougher nl400-1000 regs were 'exploiting' me in every spot in which it was apparent that exploitation was possible. A big shoutout to my friend Crapface82 for repetitiously explaining that nobody is paying a bit of fucking attention and that they usually have what their line is telling you they have. I think I'm at a point where I can stop uber-leveling myself for a stack every session. Folding sucks, and not folding has been a big part of my mental development, but fuck man, sometimes you just gotta fold!

So I cut back my hours of playing, ratcheted up the studying hardcore and decided to build 9 tabling nl200 into my gameplan for the time being. I'm happy to say that I've made a toasty hot 19 bb/100 over 17.5k hands at those stakes. While my 'true' winrate (whatever that means) is undoubtedly less than half of that winrate, I feel like I'm playing well, and pwning bitches.

Today I decided that my BR was pretty safe and it was time to venture back into the nl400 games while the fish were biting. I was able to ship 3k during a 1000 hand session. Sweetness. I am going to keep playing nl200, play the nl400 games when they are good and keep everyone posted in the meantime.

Keep ballin hard ninjas,

Brandon