Poker has been going very well the last couple months. Most importantly, I feel I am playing very well.
It has been over a year now that I've been playing 5/10 full-time. 5/10 is the last limit you can really grind. By that I mean that during peak times you can hop on enough waitlists if you play 2 sites to get 8-10 tables going in a reasonable time. The volume of games above 5/10 that isn't 6 regulars is pretty sparse and unpredictable.
I very rarely see regulars tilt at 5/10. This makes sense since it would be very tough to maintain a positive winrate in the average 5/10 games if you tilt often at all. I thought of this because I played a hand the other day where I 3bet a reg from the sb after he opened co, he 4bet small and called a shove with KQo. Clearly this is an example of pretty hard tilt (or misreading your cards). In a sense both are equal in your total winrate analysis. Making mistakes is always going to be a bigger winrate drag than the winrate boost that creative play can give you.
I'm pretty happy to say that I virtually never tilt now when I'm playing. Occasionally I feel myself getting hungry or sleepy (my only
weakpoint) and I just stop. Occasionally if I run super bad I just stop for the day and pick it back up the next day.
A big reason for this is confidence in my edges and ability. I remember taking shots in games with one weaker player and 4 regs better than me (or at least I assumed they were better - they were at least better at dealing with the swings of higher stakes, which can matter) and really getting frustrated at myself when I was faced with a situation I wasn't sure what to do in, and for higher stakes.
The games I play in are very predictable in terms of lineups, but remain very challenging because there really isn't much room to play badly. Plus, you have to be constantly trying to sort through relevant info and make good, informed plays. I remember Seabeast (Leggo MSNL legend who used to 12 table mid-stakes and crush) making a blog post about how 5/10 feels so draining in its current state. All the regs have watched tons of videos, talked tons of poker, played inf hands, gotten coaching etc. Somedays it feels a bit like this. But overall I love the competition and enjoy challenging myself to play better.
Player pools at 5/10 are really surprisingly small. I play most afternoons during the week and start games with lcohen on Party (a good guy and good player btw) at 5/10 virtually every day I play. So many of the regs have been playing mid stakes+ for years and 100's of thousands of hands. Most regs won't start games. At 5/10 I've kind of realized you can't really blame them. Edges are often small and variance is high. It is annoying that lots of other regs benefit from othe regs starting tables (like me), but I figure if I'm starting a session and am on a ton of waitlists it is a good way to stay sharp and work on my game.
Coaching has been really good so far. I've been mainly coaching full-time pros who play 1/2 to 2/4 which has been a good experience since my students are pretty hungry to learn. If you are interested in coaching its good to keep in mind that it will require work on the student's end as well as my end. Especially at that skill level, it is not the case that my focus will be to teach you a bunch of tricks you never thought of in one long monologue. It requires a real dialogue about spots that the student has realized that they are uncertain about. I'll be taking new students starting in January and can provide references of students I've coached.
