Another break between posting, lots happening at the moment. In the broader poker world, great to see Phil Ivey finally crack it for his first WPT win. Interesting stat that he has eight cashes in the WPT – and has made the final table every time he has cashed. I think this is a good demonstration of what a fine player he is … he really seems to switch on when it gets serious. Stories abound that he finds it hard to stay focused early in the tournaments – and when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense for someone who can make tons more money in side games to go hard or go home early in tournies. It will be interesting to see if he continues with the WPT events or now he has that elusive title in his resume if he concentrates more on the cash games.
In terms of my play February was a good month, coming out of the horrible time that was Dec-Jan. Unfortunately the turn of the month into March has blown all that away, I’ve had a terrible weekend with several coolers, but also looking back at the hands I think I overplayed them to some extent. Something I need to work on is a tendency to play hands to hard after I’ve had a series of small bleeds – the standard raise in position, make a cont bet, and then have to let it go when I meet resistance. Often I notice half a buyin or more will go that way after 100 hands- then I’ll hit say TPTK with AK against a 60 VPIP donk and think this is my chance to stack him. I got caught with this yesterday – raised AK, called by the big blind. Board comes something like 8 7 5, I bet, get a call. Then the turn K comes, so I continue, end up all in and of course the 60 VPIP has flopped a straight with 9 6.
That’s probably not exactly how it happened, rather a good example though of (maybe?) overplaying. Possibly a cooler, and its always the risk playing people with high VPIPs. At only 100BB deep too what are you going to do when your card hits on the turn? If you make a standard bet you’re committed, but a check for pot control on that board allows a free card for the straight if he hasnt already made it. I need to be careful not to use results oriented thinking here and assume because he flopped an unlikely straight the play was bad, and again I’m not really complaining about the result per se, just using it as an example of how I think I get overcommitted sometimes in these hands. Perhaps its unavoidable in many cases though.
In any case – this weekend has wiped out virtually all the gains of Feb in one swoop, down six buyins in one swoop. About to do some analysis to have a look whether there was anything I could do differently.
One more thing though, reiterating a previous point – Full Tilt just seems to be getting harder and harder to find a good table. I do like their new update to their software though – the auto top up feature is simply awesome. I like to ALWAYS have a full stack, so I used to rebuy even after paying the blinds. Now I can just forget about it and it happens automatically. Much, much better and allows more focus on the play rather than missing part of the next hand with the rebuy.
