Life Shouldn't Be A Fuckin' Grind

I will never be a poker pro, but my lifetime poker ledger is positive and I think that's something to be proud of.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

A Revelation....or two

I had a revelation the other night...in a moment of surprising clarity, I realized that even tight poker games are beatable. I was playing 2/4 FR on FTP the other night and twice I picked off bluff raises on the turn. It was then that I realized that just b/c everyone at the table is hovering around a VPIP of 20, doesn't mean the game isn't beatable. We need to look deeper at what these people are actually doing and find ways to exploit it. Some of them are way too passive both pre and postflop. They don't really play too many hands, but they don't play them right. For instance, a 22/5/.63, plays a few too many hands, but not ridiculously so. His big problem is that he's way too passive. Therefore, we can get away from hands when he raises us and since we know he calls too much, we can pound him with value bets. Pretty simple stuff, but it's something that I'd never really sat down and thought about before. Another example would be a player with decent pre-flop stats, but a really high AF. This guy probably bluffs a bit too much and also may fold a bit more often than optimal. Again, these are exploitable flaws. These games may not be beatable for 2-3 BB/100 like a good online game or 8 BB/100 like a good live game, but I believe they are beatable for 1-1.5 BB/100 and if you add in rakeback, it's certainly worth playing. It's just requires a bit of an adjustment from playing against a lot of loose players.

The other realization that I came to recently is that I do better when I play shorter sessions and less hands in one day. I don't think this can be entirely chalked up to luck and variance either. I believe that the more hands I play in a day and the longer I sit in front of the computer, the worse my decision making and attention to detail become. This could very easily turn a winrate of 1.5 BB/100 into a 1 BB or worse. Therefore, I've decided that I'm not going to play long hours any more. I'm hereby limiting my sessions to no more than 2 hours at a time and no more than 4 hours total in one day (from the time I get up until the time I go to bed again). I can still play upwards of 1k hands in a day with this plan if I choose to, but most days it'll probably be more like 400-600. I think I can still get in 8-10k hands in a month, which will give me a nice rakeback payout and allow me to slowly move up to where I may again have a bankroll that I can draw from if the need arises.

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