I am in fact immature, lacking discipline, and dumb. Once I learn how to bring my A-game to the table every time I play and quit when I don't, I'll make some decent money at poker and have more fun.
Well I'll give y'all the run down, I bought in for $10 at a 7-game, and I'd just made my active challenge on full tilt poker academy jennifer harman's sizing up your opponents, one of the challenges was to win a pot preflop without a pair, or an ace. A couple hands in, I'm in the bb, the button raises 3x, I decide 34 off is prolly good enough to complete the challenge, I re-pop him, then oh crap he calls, flop comes 456, I have bottom pair and am open ended on a board he is likely to have missed, if I remember correctly I check raise him, long story short I'm an idiot, he had pocket queens and i missed my straight, I lost my ten, def not on tilt yet, but 3 or 4 bad beats and 40 dollars later, I'm steaming. I quit for the day, come back the next day take another bad run, don't move down limits, lose another almost 50 dollars, down to 107, take a break then decide I'm going to win it back playing $1/$2 no limit (did I mention I lack discipline) I buy in for 100, 4 hands in I have A 5 in late position, I make it $6 button calls, two to the flop, comes A 5 4, button checks I bet 10 or so, button calls, turn is a 7, button checks I bet about pot, button pushes all in, I call without considering what they could have, they have 6 8, river is a king. New bankroll 7 something! I took a break for a bit, turns out you get a lot of rake back when you play games so far over your bankroll, so after rake back I was basically back to my originial 20 dollar deposit.
Since then I've played within my bankroll and discovered the art of multi-tabling, and realized that if I'm ever going to build a decent bankroll I have to gain some maturity and discipline. Twice now I've got to around 200 dollars on different sites and just drove my bankroll off a cliff. It seems like thats about the amount when I start caring about the money and seeing that I can actually make something at poker, then a downswing is more upsetting and I hardcore tilt. I need to learn to be less results oriented and more focused on strengthening my game and consistently making the right plays, win or lose.
But ya, lately I've been reading a lot and multi-tabling 5c/10c limit hold-em, I'll generally open up 5 or 6 tables and play in 30 minute or so increments so I don't get too mentally exhausted, the bad beats tend to get evened out and a lot of times I don't even see them happen which has kept me off tilt in my losing sessions so far, but I haven't beenr really tested with a bad run. Playing 5-6 tables also tends to even out the variance, so most sessions I win $4-6, take a couple bad beats and hit a couple monsters, then take a break. My bankroll now stands at $64.98.
I play almost no live poker, but last night one of my friends was headed up to Blackhawk (in Colorado thats where the casinos are) to play some poker and I decided to tag along, I figured it'd be a good time, win or lose and I just turned 21 a month ago, so I hadn't been up yet, so I decided I would have fun, if I lost $150 then I'd be done and it wouldn't be a big deal. I sat down and was a little nervous. I took about 2 revolutions to kind of figure out the table, and with every single player at the table my initial evaluation of how well they probably played was lessened. Everyone was awful, the standard raise was 5-6 times the big blind but went up or down from there based on their hand strength for the most part, aces or kings would often raise 7-8 times the big blind, and any pocket pair would open limp from any position and then call the huge raise by someone in position on them to see the flop. Sometimes they hit and it was easy to put them on a set, but mostly they missed and kissed their 12 dollars they paid to see the flop goodbye. I could go on and on about how bad they played, but all in all it was fun I played for 4 hours, couldn't catch a decent starting hand to save my life, won 5 pots and made 72 dollars. I think it'll be quite a while before I go back, I really don't want to lose 150 dollars until my online winnings can justify putting that much on the table or I graduate and get a job as an engineer and 150 doesn't seem so steep. Phew, long post, thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Chad
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