May Results

Overall May turned out to be a pretty decent month and I now class myself as a full time 200NL player.

This is the review of my May targets with comments in blue:

Premier League

1. Review every hand of each session played where I VPIP and see flop.(Thanks to PT3 for making this possible)

Started well with this but fallen away a bit lately. Need to do betterbut PT3 does tilt me sometimes. Hopefully the new build will arrive soon and hopefully replayer will be better and more reliable. Seeing the opponents stats when reviewing a hand would be awesome.

2. No looking at stats during session. This is a tilt indicator and must stop session immediately.

This is very hard for me and I would guess I acheive it no more than 30% of the time. I am working on a session review spreadsheet which will give me very accurate stats to guage this in future.

3. Give study full 100% concentration. It is not an inconvenience!

Dueces Cracked videos are great and I pause and take notes as necessary. Keep up the good work!

Championship

1. Work on understanding of Leverage.

This has helped me in MTT's but cost me in cash games. More work needed.

2. Cascade tables during session if more than 2 tables.

Disaster and binned after 4 days. You can guess where on graph above!

3. Develop session checklist.

Sorted and will start using tomorrow. Promoted to Premier League.

4. Improve session review spreadsheet.

No Progress.

5. Follow Monthly Play/Study Cycle as follows:

1 Hour Study 6 Max

4 x 1 Hour Sessions

1 Hour Study MTT1 x MTT Session

Didn't really stick to this. Is fine to do as I please as long as I continue to study.

Lower League

1. Find 200NL coach - Done

2. Monthly PT review filters - Promoted to Championship

3. Study Pocket Pairs stats by position

4. Study 3bet Pot Stats

5. Website

6. Learn Omaha

7. Learn Full Ring

8. Learn HU

Sundays are pretty cool too ;-)

I like Saturday Mornings ;-)

Rates

I am not advertising for students at the moment but still get approached by the odd Cardrunner who has heard about me on the forums.

I would say my 50NL intro programme is pretty good value at $150 but I am struggling to find a rate that is fair to both student and coach once the intro programme is done.

Previously I have been working on an hourly rate of $50 but that doesn't work so well in practice. What happens is people book a session assuming it will be an hour, but the sessions usually run for 90-120 minutes and they (understandably) expect to pay for the first hour only.

Some of my students have now moved up to 100NL and I will probably start charging per session. Coaches usually charge 1 buy in per hour but I am thinking $95 per 90 minute session.

This works out at just under $65 per hour, which is still worth it for me despite being way below my new hourly rate at 200NL tables ;-)

10,000 Hand Update

Stats for my first 10,000 hands since I hired my new coach:



As you can see I am running pretty hot and no doubt the boomswitch will disappear soon but is nice to see some consistently green stats!

Valuetown Express

Last night I had the first sweat session with my new coach.

It has been 10 days since I sent him video of my ‘A’ game and his initial recommendations were to:

Start open raising for less in late positions, but open a wider range of hands
Ignore my image when opening in late positions
Stop being ‘flop averse’
Stop missing value on later streets

In order to achieve number 4 I asked him to send me hand histories from a few of his recent sessions for me to study. Whilst looking through these hands it hit me smack in the face where I am going wrong lately.

Put simply, I have been focusing so much on the showdown value of my hand that I have not been betting these hands for value on the turn and/or river. Missing value on later streets, where the bet sizes are biggest, is such a huge leak I am surprised I have been winning at all lately!

Working with a coach who is so comfortable at this level is going to be gold. Already the change in my thought process is amazing, and I would be embarrassed to watch how flawed my ‘A’ game was just 10 days ago, but it goes to show how much confidence (or lack of it) can affect my winrate. When confidence is high I play a solid aggressive style but when confidence is low I go way too passive on later streets and this is proving to be a costly problem.

At the moment confidence is high and I get a great buzz when my new found value bets are paid off.

Running Bad

"The Professional does not run good or run bad. He does not pleasure himself or torture himself with artibituary time frames and accounting. He just plays."
-Tommy Angelo, Elements of Poker

I need to 'just play' more.

Missing Value

I have managed to find a new coach and he has immediately picked up on my miserable attempts to get to valuetown. This hand is a classic example of my opponent holding a hand he won't bet/bluff but will probably call a river bet given the action so far.



Ps. This hand was played AFTER I was made aware of the problem :-(

Full Tilt Poker - I sort of apologise

No they haven't given me rakeback and yes I am still bitter!

However I am reading the FTP Strategy Guide - Tournament Edition and it is excellent.

Some of it is very relevant to cash games too and may help if you are looking to open up your game. NLHE: The Theory of Leverage, chapter by Howard Lederer, is pure gold!