January 2011

January was very similar to how December went for me.  I went through an extremely long stretch where my blue line ($ won at showdown) flatlined.  In December it was over 30K hands.  This month...50 friggin' thousand hands.  Yep - 50,000 hands where I won a grand total of 6 buyins AT SHOWDOWN.  That is very very low.  This is obviously a huge leak.  When most people have a flat blue line it is because they have a positive redline.  Me... well, I had a flat blue line with a negative redline.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out I'm leaking like a sieve in showdown pots 

In reviewing my showdown hands, it boils down to:

• Getting it AI too light (i.e. with a one pair hand)
• Calling way too many rivers when I'm not likely to be ahead.  I become a horrible calling station on rivers. 

If I can improve on those two areas I think I will improve overall. 

Overall, I played almost 100K hands between my computer and laptop.  And the silver lining to all of this:  I am once again in the positive thinks largely (okay, ONLY) due to bonuses and rakeback. 

I am making a promise to myself this month.  I will simply not play more than 2 Rush tables or 6 tables in total.  Early on, I will only play 4 tables.  It will feel PAINFULLY slow, but I can pretty much pinpoint my decline in winning at poker was when I started multi-tabling.  I probably did it before I was really ready.  I need to go back to playing just a few tables so that I can actually THINK through my lines.  IF I can start winning with less tables I can try to up it again in March.  But February is the month where I forgo volume (and bonuses, and rakeback) in order to fix my broken game.  If I can't, well then I'm pretty much done with poker - at least insofar as thinking of it as a way to make some nice side income.