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.