Adjusting my play.

Ok, so Blogger has changed which confuses me at this hour. Good job I can't remember what it looked like before, so we're all good! Back to the task at hand, which is writing about the experience of poker.

Last time I wrote I said I'd lost the love of the game. Well it's back, turns out I just had to play a few. It took me a little while though but I think my game has returned to some sort of natural equilibrium - like but not the same as my early play - when I hadn't read anything about poker and was just playing how I wanted. I say like because it's not the same, I still have all the knowledge that has slowly soaked into my mind over the years. The months becoming obsessed about a particular part of the game, whether that be position, three betting or push/shoving are now joined together becoming a more three dimensional model to play along with my own style. Often when I learned something new about poker I'd learn it well but then it would take over for a while ruining my game in other areas. A rest from poker has cleared my mind, letting me concentrate and actually think about the game again.

I started playing again ten days ago and in that time I've played 35 tournaments and cashed in only eight. At first I played OK cashing in the fourth and fifth games, coming in at 27/648 and 76/4990 respectively, not cashing again until fifteen games later 886/11946. What seemed to be happening was that when I was running deep I'd get either get a bad beat and lose most of my chips or if that didn't happen I'd mess it up myself by pushing with something stupid. I handled the bad beats and addressed what part of my game wasn't working and played a six seated $1 tournament. I'd made a few mistakes along the way but nothing major, tried to avoid situations where I was flipping for my chips and folded some good hands if I thought I could find a better spot, then after hours of play, I'm 9th out of nine left, I check the chips and I have around 400,000 as does the 8th player, after that everyone had around a million chips and instead of thinking what I was about to do when it folded round to me on the button I pushed all-in with J3os getting called by 44. I believe this was unnecessary even with only around 10 big blinds left, a better spot could of been found. Either way I shall learn from it - it's just the worst feeling when it's your own fault. In the end I won $46 which is $46x the entry fee so it isn't too bad I guess. It puts my current Pokerstars bankroll up to $145.92 along with $72 I have in PKR from a free ticket they gave me, finishing 19/2589.

My brain has stopped now, so I shall stop typing, I'm disappointed in my last move but pleased with how I played the rest of the game so I'll just have to take from that what I can.

Setting up.

Over the last few months poker hasn't came into my mind much, witch uncertainty all around me I found it hard to concentrate on poker - working best when I can get into some sort of routine. I cashed in a couple of tournaments here and there, being as they were the only ones I played for some time I was more than pleased about that.

The love for poker is gone right now but it has gotten rid of any bad feelings that would undoubtedly take over whenever I lost. Now I can view it with a more logical view rather than an emotional one. The problem with this however is that I find it hard to get motivated, to get back into the game.

I've spent the last few hours setting up Holdem Manager again but something tells me I'm not using it right, trying to look at other peoples HUD stats has been a failure and I found myself shouting about wanting some kind of manual. I also want to look at my leaks but have yet to utilise that feature either. Either way, my interest needs to be stirred somehow if only to slot it in to a some kind of routine. 

I didn't have anything particular to say in this entry instead just looking to use the blog again too and this is the first step.