Thursday 29 August 2013

First feelings - HU


Basically there are 2 ways how to start the 1st serious session at the new format.
You are lucky and win most of your games then realize how good you are and what a nice future you have at that particular format without a little thinking that it is not over yet regarding to keep studying and hard working.
(Un)fortunately i wasn't that case. I ran terrible as much as you can. You know that session when everything goes wrong, coolered every top 10% hand and opponents keep doing all of kind crazy moves but hit the miracle card on the next street to easily stack off you and you looking as an idiot every minute and don't know why (of course you know).
Then you start realizing how big is your edge. My conclusion was "wtf i have no edge there"...at least that first sessions. OK, i wasn't so innocent, it just wasn't only about bad luck, definitely have to say i have many leaks need to be plugged.
It really had pissed me off and because I don't like this kind of failure right after finishing 3hr opening session i was back at learning process and trying to find all answers to questions i have had at the table.

Understand, a question at the table means you are not sure what to do or what is the best to do.
This is one of the most often problem at poker players why they suck. They are not sure what they do, if they do it right but keep playing another months, years without a need to find out what is the right, optimal play making them most of money.


There is another thing need to be said about this HU challange. If you ask how big chances i have to be winning in this format, someone can say, oh well pretty big if you can be highly profitable at any other STT format.
Yes, it might be true but the problem is not to be just profitable here.
I need to be close to crushing this format to be satisfied, meaning have competing hourly to 9man / 6max and that makes this challange pretty hard. Only the way how to achieve it is to become one of the best  // said sadly and this must be done without any impact to my standard 6max play from time point of view. That's my requirement of this HU transition and because of that i expect a very slow way to my place i want to be someday.

Tuesday 27 August 2013

There it is....

This is that short video of my standard regular session. I am not saying this is an optimal way how to play a poker but it suits me from point of view of action and giving me 300 tournaments / 1 hr which is trully interesting number.
Also need to say sometimes it is pretty hard to hold up this tempo for more than 1 hour realizing you make more than 3600 decisons within that time. Forget playing this style more than 2 hrs without a break, i have found it as an impossible mission. But no big deal you can adjust this.
Another important thing might be a question how many misclicks you make by this play. It depends how much tired (mentally and physically) you are. There are the times you can handle 35 tables without any misclick and then moments you suck at 25 tables. I am not playing strictly 30 tables it varies from 25-40 but given last PS problems with high multitabling i stay rather close to 30 tables and not trying more in these times.






Saturday 24 August 2013

HU - starting

A month ago i decided to become a more complex player and learn HU format.
There was not much time to spend on the studying so probably that's the reason why just now i can say "lets get started" and gain some serious experience from the tables.
I learned basic and advanced theory and now i need the practice to find out population tendencies and learn to react accordingly.

During that month i played a little of course just to find out what i need to know, to study more. Also i tried both speeds - turbo and super turbo.
Need to say that more enjoyable is turbo with 1500 stack, also your edge is logically higher but the future is faster agressive format named Hyper turbo with starting stack 500 chips.
The sample size is not so big, but i had pretty interesting edge there especially postflop.

Another thing is that i have realized i am not so strong as i thought in psychical endurance. Yes, in tilting, lol. Hard to admit that. The reason of that seems to be simple and obvious.
I made up the system of play which is tilting free but it requires some poker experience to use it at a table so definitely wouldn't recomment it to a novice. In my (still not released) video can be seen.
I have been using this all the time on satellites and now on HU's it is impossbile to continue with for obvious reasons.
Means i need to be more humble, modest and focus on the right play instead of looking at cashier and short-term results, all of it again like 4 years ago.

However my starting point is buy-in 15usd. Expecting playing over 1-2k games and will see what happens next.