What's up guys, here with the short and late update for July.
Sorry for any weird mistakes, verb tenses or incorrect words, I'm dictating with Dragon and often mis mistakes when I proofread it.
Unfortunately things at 25zoom overall continued to be quite poor for me in July. I continued to get smashed at 25z. I felt like I was overall playing relatively decent, except I did feel like I was struggling in some spots against fish, often value owning myself by going for max value with hands that were too weak and then consequentially also not going for enough value with hands that were strong enough. I felt like overall I ran relatively poor, and it was frustrating because many of the sessions where I lost most were the ones where I felt the most confident. I probably had 5 sessions where I lost 2-4 buyins and came away feeling more confident at this stake than ever. Unfortunately in addition to not running spectacularly overall, I had a bit of a more pronounced downswing right at the end, when I decided to move back to 10z zoom for the month.
In hindsight, while I'm planning on reviewing most of the big hands this month, I do feel like I ran poorly, but there is probably some tilt and poor play overall. One spot that I know was tilt, and was maybe the most frustrating hand I've ever played, was because I had just won a big pot and got to 175bb deep on one table. I have starscaption set to immediately sit me out the next hand when I'm over 150 big blinds deep, but it decided not to, and I immediately got dealt KK, and ran into one of the best regs in the pool, who turn a set with JJ and stacked me when he had me covered. While it was a standard 2 outer OTT, the fact that I of course had to get KK the one time caption decides not to sit me out immediately and then I get 2 outed and tilt call 125bb behind on the turn drove me bonkers.
My second shot since May 1, was for 10BI, but I rolled my rake back from the exclusive poker challenge into it, so I effectively stayed within the shot.
Anyway, here are the graphs for 25z. The first is the entire second shot since May 1, and the second is just July only.
Anyway, after that I decided to move down to 10z to finish July. Unfortunately, I continued to run like hell there, and just increasingly got frustrated. Although admittedly the sample size of hands is not even 4K, so there isn't much to be said there, but it was just very frustrating to just continually get smashed. During the last several sessions here, I felt like my mindset really started to turn, and while I felt like I was playing decently overall and not on obvious brain-dead monkey tilt, I could definitely feel that I was just getting frustrated, and was starting to have that "let's see how much I'm going to lose today" mindset when I logged on. During the last session, there was definitely a couple tilt hands.
10z in july:
Overall though, I was relatively happy with my mindset and mental game throughout this run bad/downswing/extended period of realizing I am likely not winning at 25z. Until the end, I felt like my mental game was relatively resilient, and the vast majority of days I felt like I had no hands that I would obviously classify as tilt and I was making solid decisions. I also felt like I was relatively good at letting coolers pass by and continuing the session fine. I am relatively aware of what I can feel those tilt emotions arising after a tough spot or cooler, and I feel like I feel those emotions less and less often these days, and when I do feel them I can better control them to ensure that I am not making decisions with them. However, as I've noted there were a few tilt decisions.
Anyway, after starting 10z running like hell and continuing to get smashed, I decided just to take a break from zoom and go back to 10 regular tables. Finally, my luck turned, and I hit some run good (though admittedly it doesn't really feel like I'm running well, but rather that the pool is just so bad that it's just easier to crush). Finally all that time studying and improving in the tough zoom pools paid off, and I've been crushing the 10nl regular tables thus far.
This is my graph at the 10 reg table so far, it's all in July except for about the last 1000 hands, which are this month:
It's very weird, as I'm playing 10nl without much of a plan or play style. My only real goal has been to work on exploiting the fish, and study their hud indicators and see what they showdown, to try and understand the individual mistakes each fish are making. I'm trying not to play the same against everyone, but rather think about how different types of fish (25/5 fish, 50/40 whales) are playing, and how I can adjust how I play against each specific player to maximally exploit them.
Ironically, my redline is doing relatively well here, which is funny because at regular tables so far, I don't really have any statistical targets or goals, I'm just playing. I think so far here I have like 6% 3b and 4% flop xr. Meanwhile at zoom my goal was always to have a relatively flat or slowly declining red line, which was always something I struggled with. I also wanted high three bet and general aggression stats in the zoom pools, which was challenging.
Anyway, my goal for August is really just to play very little poker and take a break from the game. I feel as though I have been basically grinding 5-7 days a week since Covid 19 Started in March 2021. Things are finally relatively open (though no live poker yet sadly) in Ontario in the last half month or so, and I'm hoping to use what's left of the nice weather to get out golfing and see some friends.
While I'm fully vaccinated, I suspect that we will see more lockdowns in the fall, which will probably mean a return to being stuck at home and grinding. So I'm trying to get outside and enjoy nice weather while I can.
My only goal for August are:
- 5k-15k hands.
- Get outside and do some non-poker things
Going forward after August, my plan is to continue on the regular tables for a little while. If continue to post 10bb+ in August, even over the small sample, I will probably move up to 25nl regular tables to start September.
As I'm learning French for work, I'm spending 1-3 hours a day on that, and consequently have less time for studying and playing poker. As such I will probably stick to regular tables for a couple months, and grind more casually with less study and less serious intent on improvement. However, my overall goal and personal metric remains to beat 25z. While it might be a while before I get back on the zoom tables, I do intend to see at that goal to completion.
I also intend to get into live whenever it reopens, but given how things are going here, I wouldn't be surprised if we were into 2023 or 2024 before casinos officially reopen the poker rooms here.
Also, shout out to Ceres for helping me get voiceattack set up, so I can keep grinding without using my wrists, as they have gotten quite flared up recently.
That's all for me for now.
Any thoughts insight or advice is appreciated.
Last edited by TRUSTtheDRAWCESS; 08-08-2021 at 08:57 PM.