point is, i'm in a good place tonight i think. i'm in a positive mood, i showered and changed after work, it's quiet, everyone's next door, i'm excited to play, and am sincerely interested in playing well(an easy distinction to make from a frequent "eh, what the hell, i'll look at some hands" attitude that often leads to bored0m-bred curiosity which has on more than one occasion led to, i swear, something like 80/5/0.4 play for most of an hour of micro LHE).
Point being, that's not tonight. So here we go with two $1 SnGs.
I'm gonna go ahead and stagger the start times by maybe 10 minutes or so, 'cuz i find that sometimes these tourneys turn into nit fests and run super long, and it's frustrating to me to have even just two tables at 400/800 with 4 players left.
I want to focus for now on thinking through a hand. I've been particularly short sighted recently, even though i showed a good deal of success when i consciously thought about where a preflop decision would leave me two streets later. for some reason i kinda dropped that.
i also want to stay tight early in these, though i've been intrigued by a differing strategy that may have applied more to MTTs that i may look into later. i think i benefit more from getting a feel for the table without mixing it up too much too early.
so off we go.
i find myself wanting to put in a small raise with 8/9s from mp with one caller. this is silly(though it would have filled a nice boat on the turn this time), i think this comes from my wanting to make this play later in the tournament from later position when it's folded to me, as a semi-bluff blind steal. situationally aware though, and this is an easy laydown this early i think.
sketch play here, find AA utg, flat in hopes of popping a big reraise preflop, but two callers including the BB limp and we see KJ8r flop. BB bets 40 into 200, i pop it to 300 which is enough to put him all in, fold, call, he turns over rags, i take it, but i wanna look at this later. i think i'm okay with this play, but i gotta see where i can get into how much trouble with it. i think maybe i need to know the table a little better and be a little more certain of the probability of a preflop raise before i play this this way.
few hands later 89s from the sb with two limpers i call, 9/j/jr flop, i bet it, bb folds, 1 call 1 fold, turn is a 6 that gives me a flush draw, 1/2 pot it and take a nice pot this early, though i worry about this play too. he'da prolly raised the flop with the j though, right?
20 hands in we're 25/50, lvl 3, i'm sitting on 2290, chiplead. 99 utg, raise. utg+1 calls. 9j5r, bet, raise, reraise all in, call, villain turns over JJ. well. that was fun. maybe if i flat preflop?... no, that can't be right. even if i do i'm still stacked on that flop, i think it goes down the same way. not too worried. it DID escalate silly fast, but i WANT to get stacks in there.
i was just about to say, at 20 hands is when i tell my hud stats to pop up - i mostly just use it to tell who to pay attention to this early - the only stats that register signficantly to me are like vp$ip >75 or < 10, pfr 5 or less or 50 or more and af of less than 1. i don't really adjust to super high af yet except to be a little more cautious as to what i enter pots with. if i feel like most of my value in a hand is coming from c-bets or if i'm out of position i'll try to find a better spot. later in the tournament i'll read a little bit more into the numbers, if he's running 40/20/5 or 10/5/1 i can make small situational adjustments.
anyway, while this has been good, i think i'm gonna try to find recording software so i can focus a little more on the game, and comment audibly to annotate my thought process and leave written analysis to later - while analyzing does force thought process, writing it out takes time and detracts from my table a bit.
so. i'm off to find some software and continue playing, i'll update this post at the end of this session when i can go back with PT3 and replay hands exactly.
$14.62
edit
okay, so. fun stuff. got camstudio to record sessions, and prism video converter to change the HUGE .avis to a hopefully more manageable .wmv or something. made a 62 minute video of me talking myself through 2 SnGs, tagged a few hands that i wanted to reexamine, happy fun stuff.
talking through hands is definitely one of the most monumentally helpful things i've done. hearing myself say "i dont' know" is a pretty enjoyably obvious indicator to reexamine a particular situation later and learn what the hell is going on and what i should be looking at. talking in general also ensures i'm actually USING a thought process, which, y'know. helps.
also happy about coming in 2nd and 1st in those two SnGs. so. 3 SnGs down, i'm running at 20/15/9. less than 200 hands, but a step in a positive direction i think.
so. all i have to do is figure out a way to not look like a crazy person sitting here talking at my computer while playing 2 poker tables, saying things like "and here i'd like to raise but i don't think i can justify it..."
anyway, not much poker, but a lot of poker related things accomplished, and i think i gotta call it a night at that after i figure out a few more things with this video. i'd really like to figure out how where i can go to talk to myself and not seem crazy.... in the mean time another plus is, when i'm in one of those "bored poker inclination" moods i think these videos will suffice for poker input without bankroll risk. hooray.
$19.32
(these numbers will be more relevant later down the road, i just want to get used to posting them regularly... part of the whole keeping me honest thing)
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