City Of Sin

Dec. 3, 2010

What a month! After a much needed break in the city of sin I came back to the uk with a newly-found desire to play poker. After having played this game professionally for 6years I can assure you that almost always after coming back off a break my performance is almost always B and A game, at least for a period….It seems to me that your unconscious is possibly (probably?) doing a lot of work while you are catching the sun, some r+r helps the brain cells recharge and the stresses of daily 5-10buyin swings takes its toll, especially if you are terrible at keeping a solid routine (like 99% of poker players).

The month started solidly, many fellow farmers know about my July/august downswing, whereby I lost a lot of confidence and really had to work hard to even start breaking even again. After 3 months of small profits (200nl when im playing ok and not just clicking buttons is a cash cow) I was ready to start breaking in some 400+ games. Everyone has their own individual habits regarding stop wins and stop-losses, personally I like to book wins with regularity. Mid-stakes grinding is akin to sailing an oil tanker I think, very easy to keep going straight when you build up momentum, but a nightmare to turn round that requires enormous energy. The start of the month was solid, indeed I was close to having a prop with a fellow poker farm employee Tyler about number of winning days on the trot. Unfortunately due to effectively being a prop-bet fish and losing inordinate amounts of money in home games and particularly pro-evo the nit inside me refused. Good swerve.

 After being close to 20k up for the month I took a shot at some of the juicier 5/10 games and ran horribly. This hand was pretty important to my month overall, as it triggered a downwards spiral. Preflop the squeezer is a reasonable reg, but his squeeze here is extremely high and I flop enough strong draws to make it profitable, especially when I know the 200bb deep is overcalling a lot, adding credence to any post flop aggression in rebelde’s eyes. Sadly my two best friends get there and blessed were predisposed at the time. Since then I got legitimately beat-up by two of the best regs on the micro gaming network, tiny and wtf-is-fold. Both are unplayable when firing on all cylinders, with unbridled aggression and a wicked way of tilting and forcing mistakes from lesser  players.

So as I write this there are 6 days left of grinding, I find myself $4k in the hole, but with a positive outlook and expectation. Ill be putting in massive volume in the hope of making some moolah, plus watching every single Dr.giggy vid I can find on bluefire and posting a lot on 2+2 (even though the general responses are far too nitty for a euro network like mg, where aggression and ranges are wider than a more GTO-mappable site (like the major US one’s).