what's your edge?

i do think a lot about poker stuff and everytime i think about what i can do better than other players that are not total fishes, i feel like if there is an edge, it's pretty thin. i also think that if i am playing my A game, i am an ok player, but not playing my A game turns me into those standard regs that are grinding on my limits too. I don't fully analyze situations and just play standard plays and don't reflect my own game at all. what i want to say is that your edge in poker usually is very small and not playing my A game is a luxury that i can not afford.




That's why i do have to force myself to get better and study the game continously.

NL 200

so far i played around 4k hands @ nl200 and i think i'm doing fine. table selection is important but there are still enough bad players i can easily exploit. overall people are more aggressive and most regulars search for competition which let me go on FPS from time to time. I'm not used to play against people that are somewhat solid so i think i have to adjust to that a little bit. yesterday i had a really good session, was up about 6 stacks and lost all of it only to be up about 40$ in the end.

some hands:

biggest pot
i really hate my betsizing here. i was thinking about 10 sec about what to do and had 5 sec left and typed in just something i thought was around 2.5x his 3bet. villain was solid and 3bet me light. i hit my dream flop and i have to call a shove getting around 2:1 to call. against a range of AA,AK,JJ i have 40% equity so this is a no brainer. he gets lucky on the turn but what can you do. i still don't know what my best play on the flop would be. either reraise more or just muck it. i don't think that he gives my 4bets a lot of credit so i have to go with my hand if i hit a decent flop. being 350$ deep, i am not sure if this is a good plan. i don't like calling but it might have been an option. any thoughts?

same opponent 10min later..

i overshove the turn to look a bit bluffy and get a call by AJ,AQ maybe QQ. i didn't see that we were a bit deep and i should have raised more preflop. he gets lucky again and i am more or less drawing dead on the flop.

lol

i win coinflips
after losing KK 3 times on the very same table against big fishes making running trips, flopping two pair w/ J9 or flopping trips w/ J8 i finally won a big hand...



i am a little frustrated of how the session went. i wanted to go to bed early but couldn't stop playing a table with 3 vpips over 50 and a 70/45 guy splashing chips away. i lost around 500$ at this table and one of the fishes left the table with 1200$. i haven't been as frustrated for a long while as the last fish left the table, stacking me with a set after sending money in all directions with middle pair no kicker, ace high and stuff like that..

anyway, i am looking forward to playing more on this limit. i hope i don't have to go back to NL100. what i need now is a great session to be on the safe side but i won't force it and will go back if my bankroll isn't sufficient anymore.

good luck,
bernd

i had a nice session

today and went up about 5 buyins in 500 hands. it seemed like won every single pot and after 7 tabling the last days i found it way easier to follow table dynamics only playing 3 to 4 tables. i made some good calls because people really played back at me and i could build up a very laggy image by stealing and two barreling, although i wasn't too out of line at all. what i realized was that there are some players that once you have a bad image, they label you and never give you credit for anything. others see that you're cooling down a bit and react accordingly and you also have to look out for that and readjust to it.

There was one regular that tilted a bit on me because i had position and knew how to exploit his 50% cbet rate. actually that is not too hard to do..
after checkfolding a lot of flops he was checking on a dream flop for a cbet in a blindwar. it was k82 rainbow and he checkraised me after thinking a bit. i felt like he suddenly realized that i was punishing him for not cbetting more and i called in position. he didn't bluff on multiple streets at all so my plan was to either fold to a turn lead or check behind and bet the river to get him off small pockets or some ace high kind of hand. i turned a pair and checked behind. on the river i wasn't quite sure wheter to bet or just checkbehind because i thought my hand could be best. i decided to bet an amount i would bet to get value out of a queen or an eight, hoping he realizes this and folds that hands. i really thought that i got into this players way of thinking and i was really surprised as he called the river (maybe with ace high?). maybe he was way more on tilt as i first thought..

right now i am thinking about taking a shot on nl200. i don't know wheter i should go on with my bankroll rule of 25 buyins or extend that amount since swings gonna be bigger the higher i get. anyway i will take some days off from poker, start mining nl200 and maybe play some two table nl200 in 3 to 4 days.

reaching 4 the stars :P

a lot happened since my last entry. i was down about 10 stacks in 1k hands and managed to get it back in about 2 days. i guess it was a bit of a downswing plus my play really sucked. than i played nearly even in about 10k hands. i think i learned a lot in this time because i identified one of my biggest leaks. it's some sort of not trusting my reads but i won't go into details because i want to play cntgetmedown hu on nl400 next month and i know that he reads my blog sometimes because i force him to do so :P.

the last 2 days went really great because i concentrated more on the game. i planned hands in early stages and observed my opponents carefully. yesterday was my first big winning session this month. it was a great fish day and i went up around 8 stacks. right now i need 3 stacks to reach 25 buyins for nl200 and i hope i can reach this goal until the end of the month. actually my main goal right now is to become a better player. i want to balance my game a bit more, try to mix it up more often. i also want to establish some strategies to win more against regulars because there will be a tougher competition on nl200 or higher. i also want to experiment with donking, cc ip w/ sc, floating and bluffraising certain flops etc.

gl at the tables,
bernd