What's up guys,
Here to wrap up the month as I just completed my EPC for $80/40% rakeback.
I took my first shot at 25 regular tables on poker stars this month and it went well.
I was lucky to have ran incredibly well for most of the month. I started the month running incredibly, just constantly making top pair and going bet bet bet against fish. I was winning almost all my flips and preflop AIs. It felt like there was tons of fish and I was lucky to win 9 of my first 10 sessions, with the one loss being for 30bbs. Towards the middle of the month it started to feel like there was less fish and more regulars. However I started to get a good idea of when the pool is small, and when the pool is big and fishy.
I finally came back to earth and had some losing sessions, however it really wasn't that much variance and I would hardly say I ran bad, just didn't continue my crazy run from earlier in the month.
Obviously I ran great and this isn't my real win rate, but I think I can consistently beat this pool for 5-10bb/100 long-term. Potentially even more if I try and focus on playing sessions when the pool is bigger and softer. My problem is that the time of day where I would normally fire up my sessions in the evening is right when the pool is starting to die off for the day. I'm trying to fit in more early sessions to maximize the amount of fish at my tables.
While this is great and I'm happy to be winning, it does feel a little bit unsatisfying, because, as I noted in some earlier posts, I'm not really studying much or working on my game, but rather sitting down and bum hunting and taking money off weak players. I still think I prefer zoom to regular, but right now I don't have the time to dedicate to playing tough pools.
I don't think I did ANY study or review this month at all, which is an issue. I've also found myself in some poor habits, and in some spots making some light flats pre-flop OOP to try and justify getting into pots against fish. My stats are bit tight at 21/17/6 3bet. I've also found that towards the end of the month, I was starting to feel like I was getting outplayed and exploited by some stronger regulars who were playing looser and more aggressive. I think I need to be cognizant about my play style against regs, because I think I have become complacent with the ease of winning against fish that my game against raes has slipped.
However, this is largely due to stuff I have an ongoing IRL, particularly studying French and planning to go overseas to study French in 2022, that I can't really dedicate the time to studying poker and playing like I was able to from the start of COVID through to 4 months ago. Otherwise, I would probably be trying to get back into the zoom pools, which I do miss.
I'm going to try and do some review of spots I tagged throughout the month this weekend, and see if I can sharpen myself up a bit against regs. This month, my volume is mostly going to stay the same, targeting around 12-15k hands, or whatever is needed to complete the exclusive poker challenge. However I'm going to add another target of setting aside two hours a week to review hands I have tagged.
Thanks everyone and feel free to let me know what you think.
Sidenote: for most of the month I was using statname to manually look up each player I had unmarked, so that I could quickly see if they were fish, and if not I would find other tables. However, in the past few days this has stopped working, as the login feature on stat name does not seem to be working. Does anyone know why this is the case or have any other recommendations for free tracker sites like this?