400 Posts
Wow. Just saw that I have 400 posts under the belt, that's a lot of posts. Unfortunately, I rate maybe 5 to 10% as entertaining, I'll try and do better. Too many hands, too much minutia, and that kind of stuff. I want to enliven the blog a bit, so will work to better dedicate myself to getting creative in presentation at least. I know I can but too often I get, well, lazy.
Of course another of the goals of this blog which is to chronicle my mistakes and to learn and grow from them. I also want to track what works for me, that I'm trying out, and put some post-play thought to my blog. No man is an island, and no man is a poker island, so feel free to criticize as you see fit.
What an wide range of 400 posts it's been. Maybe I'll sift through them, perhaps in time for post 500, to give a choice cut. We'll see. I think I've mentioned this before and haven't done it.
It's been a good week. Final tabled and cashed twice--chopped twice. The second final table the winner got a ring and a seat in a 9 handed tournament of champions free roll for a WSOP Main Event Seat. I felt like I was going to win that. I didn't.
I was chip-leader for most of the second half of the tournament which really made me buckle down and not get spewy. I didn't get spewy only because there is cautionary tale on every week. I don't know how many poker telecasts I need to watch to see that an early chipleader is usually a middle level exiter.
I decided to raise three times every two rotations. If I got a hand that made it easier, a tight chipleader only gets action with made hands, so I tried to cultivate that image and it made it easier to get away from the dreck I sometimes had to lead out with. If I played a pot and won it, I didn't necessary have to play two more before the second rotation was over. However, when I was getting card dead that metric was a good way to keep me involved and how I kept my stack growing. Before the tournament, I listened to Matt Glantz on PokerRoad radio talk about exploiting the sublteties in structure.
For example the antes in a very slow structure early and middle wise, that caught up with us in a hurry at the final table, would often repeat: ante 25 blinds 100-200, then ante 25 blinds 150-300. So, if you are going to be aggressive you want to do it when the antes are proportionally bigger. I don't think too many people were paying attention to that, and me pressing the gas a little more in those levels was probably just mistaken for a run of cards and kind of randomized my aggression.
In a similar vein, it always stuns me when a short-stacked player, I'd rate as otherwise good, will shove with any two cards at the very end of the 100-200 level. Why not wait til the next level and do the same thing, if you are in that much of hurry to bust, and have almost double the starting pot (10*25 plus 100, 200).
I had a couple of well time three bets, and had the chip stack to not get in a pissing match when some of the good players did it to me. It was something I was looking to do a little more of and I think had I not had such a big stack it's a skill I'd need to learn.
Plus, I got lucky. Can't win without doing that. There will be a point in time your chips have to get in and then you are at the mercy of your hand holding or catching up.
I played some talented opponenets in the latter stages of both tournaments and will probably spend the next post writing what I learned from their styles, table image, dispostions, and strategies. As with every deep run, I learned a ton.
Thankfully, it was one of those days where my hands held up for most of the tournament. It sounds like the Titlin' Texan and Southpaw Rounder have caught the dreaded bad beat-itis. They couldn't get into a tournament without running into ugly circumstances. Their frustration was obvious, I felt bad for them, and it was a reminder of how fortunate I had been.
www.gulfcoastpoker.net
Of course another of the goals of this blog which is to chronicle my mistakes and to learn and grow from them. I also want to track what works for me, that I'm trying out, and put some post-play thought to my blog. No man is an island, and no man is a poker island, so feel free to criticize as you see fit.
What an wide range of 400 posts it's been. Maybe I'll sift through them, perhaps in time for post 500, to give a choice cut. We'll see. I think I've mentioned this before and haven't done it.
It's been a good week. Final tabled and cashed twice--chopped twice. The second final table the winner got a ring and a seat in a 9 handed tournament of champions free roll for a WSOP Main Event Seat. I felt like I was going to win that. I didn't.
I was chip-leader for most of the second half of the tournament which really made me buckle down and not get spewy. I didn't get spewy only because there is cautionary tale on every week. I don't know how many poker telecasts I need to watch to see that an early chipleader is usually a middle level exiter.
I decided to raise three times every two rotations. If I got a hand that made it easier, a tight chipleader only gets action with made hands, so I tried to cultivate that image and it made it easier to get away from the dreck I sometimes had to lead out with. If I played a pot and won it, I didn't necessary have to play two more before the second rotation was over. However, when I was getting card dead that metric was a good way to keep me involved and how I kept my stack growing. Before the tournament, I listened to Matt Glantz on PokerRoad radio talk about exploiting the sublteties in structure.
For example the antes in a very slow structure early and middle wise, that caught up with us in a hurry at the final table, would often repeat: ante 25 blinds 100-200, then ante 25 blinds 150-300. So, if you are going to be aggressive you want to do it when the antes are proportionally bigger. I don't think too many people were paying attention to that, and me pressing the gas a little more in those levels was probably just mistaken for a run of cards and kind of randomized my aggression.
In a similar vein, it always stuns me when a short-stacked player, I'd rate as otherwise good, will shove with any two cards at the very end of the 100-200 level. Why not wait til the next level and do the same thing, if you are in that much of hurry to bust, and have almost double the starting pot (10*25 plus 100, 200).
I had a couple of well time three bets, and had the chip stack to not get in a pissing match when some of the good players did it to me. It was something I was looking to do a little more of and I think had I not had such a big stack it's a skill I'd need to learn.
Plus, I got lucky. Can't win without doing that. There will be a point in time your chips have to get in and then you are at the mercy of your hand holding or catching up.
I played some talented opponenets in the latter stages of both tournaments and will probably spend the next post writing what I learned from their styles, table image, dispostions, and strategies. As with every deep run, I learned a ton.
Thankfully, it was one of those days where my hands held up for most of the tournament. It sounds like the Titlin' Texan and Southpaw Rounder have caught the dreaded bad beat-itis. They couldn't get into a tournament without running into ugly circumstances. Their frustration was obvious, I felt bad for them, and it was a reminder of how fortunate I had been.
www.gulfcoastpoker.net
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