Playing better, table selecting better

Well my great run (2 winning sessions in a row) had to finish sometime, and last night it did. Funnily enough I actually thought I'd quit while ahead, but obviously rake killed me and turned the night into a very marginal loser. If it's to be believed, PokerTracker says I payed over $10 in rake over 700 hands last night. That would be 14BB/100 hands??? I think pokertracker is lying to me, unsure. Well, when I look at my biggest pot won, I won a $20.55 pot and got returned $18.55, so $2 rake = 10%. Yep, that's pretty insane, and certainly no lie. In fact in 5000 hands I've payed $120 in rake, and I can honestly say I don't think I'm getting 27% of that back, but anyway just interesting.

So I thought I played the best I've played in a long time last night. Everything decision seemed clear and easy, and a lot of that came from two things I'll discuss in a minute. The first half of the session went terrible. I couldn't catch anything post flop, and got played back at every time I cbet a good board with air and got folded to every time I actually hit a top pair or had an overpair. I tried one two barrell bluff with backfired even though I think it was a good move overall. Still I was fully aware it was a case of just running bad and took a break and came back. I then instantly got 3 hands on 3 tables, AA, JJ and AQ. AA got folded to, JJ got called but folded as top trips on the flop, and AQ hit top pair with 3 clubs, I didn't have a club, in a 3 way pot against short stack donks. I got called all in by one on my cbet, and the other called with $3 left. Turn was another club, but also an ace, and he shoves. Only $3 I thought, and I have two pair? Only bad call I made all night, he had 55 for 4th pair on the flop, 5 high flush on the turn, and I didn't improve. So should probably tilt, but I decided to work hard at making good decisions, and things swung my way. I finished strong and thought I'd done enough by the end to turn a profitable session, but having to lay down top set in a similar situation to above on a 4 club river (right decision this time) very late in the session meant I had a losing session overall.

So the two things that helped. Catching up on a solid blog at CardRunners, Verneer, I ran across a post that mentioned decisions in poker were easier when you watched someone else play. All about not getting attached to your money/cards, and as he mentioned you play your A game while railing. It made me think I definitely need to get less attached, and I felt like I did this well last night, looking at every situation closely rather than just hitting call to see where I'm at after getting 3 bet/check raised. The second was an extension of that, called finiding the fold button. I made a decision to play hands extremely face up without reads on a player. So if I got KJ from the button, was called and then check minraised on a K74r, fold. Why? Because I stand to win a very small pot if I continue and I'm ahead, or I'll get punished or have to fold if I'm behind. Given how many good spots there are to make money, there is no reason to semi bluff your way out of trouble at this level. Now if I had the read he bluff check minraises, now it's a different story. I can happily call, and probably call the turn too, as long as my read indicates he'd do that.

The reason behind the above rule is to force me to get more reads. It may feel frustrating laying down decent hands a lot, but I noticed last night, people rarely take advantage of you folding. One player got me to fold and then tried a couple of moves, and he got burnt about the 3rd time he tried it anyway. It's a form of tilt I think, just expecting every loose player to be bluffing you, but they genuinely have a hand often enough, and without reads there is no point winning a tiny pot or losing a big pot.

So onto table selection, almost perfect last night. I managed to get 4 tables up in the 2nd half, and all 4 were fishy. I have now stamped > 25 VPIP as green, with 15-25 as red and <15 as blue. Also have similar colours for PFR. So if you look around a table, I expect to see a lot of green VPIP's, and hopefully blue PFR's. And last night, I had that pretty good. I had to close tables occasionally, but I'm really getting into the groove of just closing down a table and looking for a replacement. The reasons for closing so far are usually fish leaving and short stacks/TAG's coming in. So for example, I left a table where the two to my right were suddenly short stacks. A reasonable weakness I've found is not leaving a table with a looser short stack to me left, who are likely to call with anything and shove any flop, so you need to hit the flop to continue and hope you have it. It shortens your poker game quite a bit, as you can't just raise any hand in position against these guys. Anyway, with how easy it's been to table select I'm upset I haven't done more of it in the past.

So looking forward. Table select NL25 tonight. Yep, fire up two tables, pretty much underolled, to take a shot. I just feel like I'm playing good enough to beat NL50 and with table selection should be able to find some very fishy NL25 tables and be +ev by a margin at that table. I do believe in bankroll management, but I also believe you get things in life by taking chances, and if this were to work out, and I could build up a bankroll in the first few sessions, I'm sure I'd never have to look back at the highly raked, poor $/hr NL10 level. My aim in the next few months is to grind up to NL50 again when I hit a bankroll of $750, and I think thats very acheivable with more work on hand reading and table selection, and of course keeping tilt out of my game.