Delusions of Grandeur

Following my nice rush in July I've kept the momentum strong in August putting in what is a lot of volume for me. I'm not much of a sucker for long hours doing much of anything, but I've really been forcing myself to play more and the results are freaking killer.

On the left you can see my Iron Man page for the month. . . I haven't had a lot of 1k points days but this month they are happening over and over again as I've taken to playing an early session more regularly. Whenever I happen to wake up and feel sufficiently awake I'll just start firing up sit and gos. I've been signing up for: $6.50 90 mans, 12+1 90 Mans, 24+2 90 mans, 24+2 45 mans, and lastly, a growing addition to the roster of games I'm playing regularly, the 69+6 45 mans.

That's a total of five games that I get registered for when I log on, and as soon as one opens I join the list for the next one of that type. My goal for the first hour is to have 12 tables open at the next break (there's a 5 minute break every hour on full tilt). My goal on one of these short sessions is to cram as many games in to the shortest time possible, and as these games never really last longer than 2 hours I know that I'll have finished up the session and can start the rest of the day, within about 2.45 hours.

Then I do whatever it is I have to do, and I start my evening session which is more of the same except I'll keep replenishing tables as long as I can imagine still wanting to play two hours into the future.

It's been going great. My one bummer is that I have yet to make progress in the 75$ 45 mans which is the "graduation" limit for the 45 man sngs on full tilt since there isn't a higher limit for that format. The tricky part is that it's nearly 3x the buy in for the next lowest limit so not only is it the biggest buy in game for the class, thus holding all the top players, but playing it involves at least 2x the variance that is possible in the 26$ games since the field is so much tougher on average and therefore the players edge is smaller.

My record on the 26$ games speaks for itself. There's still a lot I can learn and a lot of situations that I could play better, but really there aren't very many people beating that game as much as I am. I'm proud of the progress I've made with this format. . . but the style I use at the 26$ level doesn't seem to be working at the 75$ limit. Either players are playing better and I have yet to adjust, or I've been seriously unlucky in my limited sample size. As the first line in the pic above shows I'm down almost $2300 over the 158 times that I've played the limit, earning me the sharkscope fishbowl next to my name. I honestly feel like I've been unlucky when playing them, but there's a lot situations where I've been all in preflop with tens against aces, jacks against kings, and on. In the 26$ level I don't worry about these hands much since players are so loose that I think I'm more than fine just getting it all in preflop with these hands except under unusual circumstances. My fear is that at the $75 level players aren't stacking off as light in general (because there are still plenty of total donks in those games) but they are 3 betting light a ton which makes my job very tough and very swingy since I never quite know where I'm at.

Or maybe I've just been unlucky? So many of my games have ended the same way: I'm short stacked and I shove some hand in the sb against a similar stacked bb and the bb has aces. Or they have KTo to my A5s and catch a king on the river. Or I shove ten big blinds from the button with K8o and the small blind has AQ and the bb has AA. Over and over I've been in these situations where I say to myself "it's mathematically correct to shove here" and so I force myself to, yet they consistently have the 5% of hands that have me crushed.

It's a tough spot analysing poker situations because there are so many factors to consider. Do I need to tighten my play in certain situations? Or have I been getting unlucky and I should keep playing the game I know? The tough part is that if I tighten my game where it shouldn't be tightened I could become a losing player! It really is do or die. . .

Over all I've felt pretty unlucky the last few days, losing a lot of big hands as big favorites. The strangeness of variance never ceases to surprise though. A ton of agonizing losses are sometimes all made up with a couple of carefully timed suck outs and a won coin flip or two. I've been on an awesome rush the last couple weeks and can easily have a personally record breaking month if I can keep it up (which is hard to imagine since I am easily running well above expectation).