Still here

Been funny times (I'm not really laughing though). I'm seriously mixing my games up way too much. On a given night of playing poker I'll play up to 10 HU SNG's, an hour or so of 2-3 tabling NL50 6max, and maybe an hour of HU NL50 cash. I've almost lost the desire to just sit down and focus on one form of poker, instead looking for a thrill, which I get somewhat by playing different games.

My HU SNG's are going pretty well overall. Since my last blog, I hit a huge horror stretch, where no matter how many times I got my hand in good, it was never holding up in pressure pots. Like I'd work hard to get a 2:1 chip lead, get it in with AQ, get called by KQ, he'd hit his king. Very big favourite, very big loser when it counted. I tried not to be results oriented, but I did let it affect my play for sure. Since then I've gotten back on track, and am now a small winner at HU SNG's $55 turbos overall. I now check OfficialPokerRankings, which is like a free SharkScope, which gives me an idea of who to push smaller edges against, and who to wait for easy paydays. For the most part players are losers at HU SNG's, where it's common enough to see players -15% ROI over a decent sample. Don't ask me why these people bother, but they constantly show up at my tables. So when it's a 5-15% winner, I treat it as a difficult job to win, and I do make higher variance plays to try to steal a win, or in fact tilt the other player. Overall, my biggest leak right now is calling too many flops and turns with draws or medium made hands. I get poor results from calling, still rarely get paid when I hit, so it's clearly -ev. Still the times I bet or fold end up much more +ev, and I'm pretty happy with most of my plays these days.

So I am still down since last post, and it's due in part to alcohol and game selection. For some reason I thought I was due a shot at NL100 6 max, even though I'd hardly been playing much around then. My patience was 0, and I needed to be a part of every pot, and try to win every pot I was in, similar to HU. Unfortunately in 6 max people far more often have a hand, and getting it in with JJ overpair vs a PF 3 bettor who's happy to get it in post flop is actually spewy (although I had worse plays), and yes he does have KK more often than not. I also hit a few coolers/bad beats which hasn't helped, as I feel I've run pretty bad. I settled back to NL50 and am starting to get a good feel again, just trying to grind up a bankroll again now.

Points wise I'm cruising for Silver Iron Man this month, but see it hard to get gold in the near future. My bankroll just hasn't got the strength to play the levels required to constantly get to 200 points a night, even though 150 isn't a problem. My FTP points are flowing nicely, and as I'd heard, CardRunners now supports 3 months and 6 months subs. If I kept buying one month memberships until I could afford 6 months, I'll have saved up enough points to buy 6 months by roughly late November. If instead I choose the 3 months (which is the same rate of FTP points to CR months) it will be more like early October. The first option comes later but leaves me paid up to May next year, the second comes a little earlier but only leaves me paid up to January, and let me decide what to do from there. I guess I'll look at how I'm going on FTP by the time I qualify for the 3 month subs, and assess from there, but at this point I'd definitely like to aim to knock off 6 months if I could.