Some Poker Ideas

As I prepared for trip to San Diego this weekend I decided to move my funds back into Neteller. My thinking here is that any funds I already have there will not be subject of the laws that will come into being after Bush signs the bill. Kind of like a grandfather clause. What that basically means is that I will not be playing while on the west coast.

No poker last night. It was a combination of getting home late from work (8:00) and wanting to spend time with the family before I leave Saturday. Tonight should be different because I will have some time after I put the kids to be so maybe the Midnight Madness on Full Tilt is in store.

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Do any of you have issues with giving away your bankroll when the funds get low? You know, like the $20 you have some place and you go looking for a double up because you will just make a deposit if you lose. I’ve done this a few times instead of just reloading and have given it away more times then building back up. I figure I’ve dropped a few hundred doing this over time. Anyway just curious if others have done similar things.

Overall, I’m still staying a winning player. I’m not a big winner but I have built my bankroll from $5 up to a high of about $1000 before dropping back down during my unemployment era. I’m confident that being back at work will prove to be the motivation I needed to play smartly.

I’ve seen some mention about tracking tournament results to see if they are a long term profitable play. I’ve just started tracking my results and saw my return in the negative until my win Wednesday night. Now I understand that with only maybe 20 entries I don’t have enough data to prove anything but two final tables cashes in two days completely eliminated past ineptitude and increased my ROI by leaps and bounds.

Looking back on these tourneys that I’ve played I find that I have cash in about 25% of them. I could increase this number with a more conservative approach but I think my overall return would drop if I played that way on a consistent basis. Looking further shows that regardless of the quality off your play, avoiding landmines may be just as important to your success. In the end, quality of play over the short term isn’t always seen by the results you achieve.

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I’ve had a few comments about my heads-up play vs. dnasty so I would like to explain how I play this specific situation. I want you to make the decision. Either by calling my raise or by deciding to raise me. Every thing from that point has a response intended for you to make a mistake. The key is to place the pressure on the opponent. If you watched the match with dnasty, you noticed that I raised pre flop a lot. I also called or check as well as fold in the same situations. I want to change my attack, and it is an attack, so that you question your reading ability. I will raise with any two cards. I will call with any two cards. I will fold almost any two cards depending on how I’m trying to attack you. By changing attacks you put a seed of doubt in your opponent and hopefully you can get them to commit when they have the worst hand. You also get them to call down instead of raising when they have the goods. In the end, your almost never very far behind and are ahead 50% of the time. Remember this when you play heads up and it should help.

One more thing on heads up. Playing as many SNGs as I do has helped my heads-up and short table game more then you can imagine. It teaches you how to play with the short stack as well as the large stack and will give you some of the tools to improve your heads up game. Try to put in a session every now and then and keep track of how you finish. Try different things and see how they work in various situations. Eventually you will gain experience at a short table without having to final table large MTTs