Still running hot

Well, it's been a really hot start to the year, after the first 3 days treated me like garbage. I can still count 4 times last night where I was rivered by a 1 outer, 2 3 outers and a 4 outer, but still managed to win over 2 BI's at Absolute. It's like printing money compared with Pokerstars from what I've seen. On Pokerstars you could probably just grind away at the tight weaks and get a decent profit, as long as you are very careful about who and when is playing back at you. At Absolute, you should probably just play good poker, at least up until the NL50 level, and return 10ptbb/100. I'm running at slightly less, but only due to my own fault for sure. And just for the maths, at only 4 tables, that'd still be $35/hour without thinking about the excellent rakeback and bonuses there. Only problem is the fields are thin, especially beyond NL50.

I'm almost fairly comfortably 3 tabling without giving away too much of my edge now, but have more work to do in that area. My reads are getting stronger though. HUD stats give you everything you need to know about preflop and flop, so if you are playing a lot of tables, you really just want to know how people play postflop, and use the HUD for PF and the flop. There is only one thing, which is what do people call 3 bets with, or limp call with. Knowing some of their starting hands, or how they play position can help define a range much nicer preflop too. But anyway, things like minraised a cbet and folded later on a very dry board, or miinraised the flop and showed down a set, or raised a flop and showed down a draw, or overplayed 2nd pair type hand. Probably at a much more general level you can label people as tricky, straight forward or just bad. I'll have to keep working on these concepts.

So I'm relatively free now, although I do have a half filled bonus at OnGame. I've just finished my PSO bonus for Absolute, so will have another $100 to put into the bankroll, leaving me almost fully bankrolled at NL100. In line with my new years resolution, I'll be staying where the fish are, which at the moment is a choice between OnGame, Absolute/UB or iPoker. All seem very soft, and really, playing NL100 and table selecting a bit and not tilting much, I should be printing money. If I halved the 10ptbb/100 I claimed should be possible at NL100, that's still $35/hr + bonuses 4 tabling, which at OnGame might be around the $40+/hr without winning too big. That'd be $600 AUD a week, which would be insanely good for our mortgage and bills at home. My definite overall personal goal stays at successfully grinding NL100 for 4 tables at any site for an average of $40/hr over a period of time, and cashing out a lot of my winnings, to help heal the amount of time I've spent away from other things I could have been doing up until now. I don't doubt that's still out of my reach, seeing as 3 tabling still seems a little hard and NL100 could be a lot tougher to play. But it's a good personal goal to set, as it sets me a real challenge.

I also want to come up with some short term game related goals soon. I sat down to write my list of nightly goals, and really couldn't come up with anything interesting related to gameplay. So in the next week or so, I'm going to set myself some acheivable goals that I want to focus on until the end of Feb, then each night I'll think about these goals before playing. I think I definitely need more work on turn and river play, and want to look at spots where my bluffs aren't working well.