Dec 09, 2005 – 07:12AM
Well, after my long post on maintaining a consistently high level of play yesterday, I waited almost exactly 12 hrs to break my own rule. I played in about 8 tournaments last night, including the aforementioned Pocket 5s open. There were more tournaments I wanted to play in last night than I had desktop real estate to have open, so I did something I don't normally do. Rather than playing my 'A' game the first hour in my early tournaments, I played aggressively and tried to build some chips up. I figured I'd either be in great shape in those tournaments or I'd bust out early and could open up the other ones I wanted to play in.
It wasn't a particularly good idea. Instead of picking 5-6 tournaments and playing my best game I played 8 tournaments, 4 of which I didn't play my best in and then some later tournaments where I played my best game. Was a huge mistake. I busted out of the Pocket 5s open on a horrible play, and my play in the Stars 150+12 was super erratic. I did end up cashing in the UB 100+9 for a reasonable payday, but all in all it was a losing night.
I truly believe that to take it to the next level as a poker player you need to be able to play all styles of poker well (loose, tight, aggressive, conservative, etc) so you can always switch to the appropriate gear for the table and time in the tournament, but I took what I knew was a sub-optimal strategy for the sake of trying to fit in a few extra tournaments. I'm really going to go back to focusing on playing my solid 'A' game all night tonight, and if it means I stick to fewer tournaments then I'm just going to have to pick a few to sit out of.
In short, do as I say not as I do :) Hopefully I can get this behind me and maintain a high level of play this weekend.
-Rizen
Dec 07, 2005 – 07:12AM
I promise this post will have something to do with poker. In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I was going to take last night off so I could watch the KU game (we won't talk about that), spend some time with my family, and get some sleep. Well, Shauna (my wife for those of you that don't know) had a final in school last night and called to tell me it would be running later than she thought. This left me at home with the baby sleeping for a good amount of time, so I couldn't help but fire up the tables. I decided to make tonight my 'night off' and play last night.
I played in 6 tournaments last night with no cashes. I wasn't really upset with the way I played because minus a few small mistakes (bet sizes, and a continuation bet I felt was horrible) I played pretty well. I went out of the UB 100+9 pretty early when my flopped overpair ran into TP/TK and the river hit his Ace. I'll spare you all the bad beat stories (you know how I feel about those) but that was pretty much my tournament night. I bubbled in 2 tournaments, in one of those 20 paid and I went out 21st. Again though, I felt my play was fine so I wasn't too upset with myself, and since I busted early I was able to get a good night's sleep.
Since I busted out of most of my tournaments pretty quickly I was left in the Empire Happy Hour (the one I finished 21st in). I was at a VERY tough table with some of my poker friends: Soupie, scgolfer, and WebGuySteve. Some of the other players weren't too bad either, so I knew making the FT was going to be extremely hard. When the Happy Hour gets 100+ people though it goes hand for hand at 30 and doesn't stop until the final table. This can make this tournament VERY boring until you get down to 10, so I fired up two 15/30 cash tables on Party while I waited.
Well, I was catching REALLY well in my cash games for about the 90 minutes I played and just crushed them. At the end of the night, despite not cashing in any of the 6 tournaments, and 4 of the 6 having a $100 or greater buy in, I was a fair amount in the black for the night. I used to play almost exclusively cash games until I switched to more focus on MTTs about 4 months ago, so it's sometimes nice to get back to my bread and butter. Overall December has been a decent month so far. I've made 2 final tables (both last Saturday) and have a good run in my cash games for a decent profit so far.
-Rizen
Dec 05, 2005 – 11:12AM
Well, I'm jumping on the bandwagon per se and starting a blog. If you've arrived here, you're probably a family member/friend of mine, or someone who knows me through 2+2 or Pocket Fives. For those of you that don't know a lot about me, here's the quick version. I'm a 27 yr old software engineer from Kansas City, Kansas who also happens to spend a lot of time playing online poker.
This blog really serves two main purposes for me right now, although I reserve the right to turn it into something a bit more in the future should something come of it. The real goal and reason I first considered starting a poker blog though was because of my recent win in a PCA Double Shootout event. My family and friends all wanted a way to keep up with how I'll be doing as I play in the Bahamas Atlantis event this January, and I figured this would be the easiest (and most inexpensive) way to do so.
In addition, I'm also a person who truly loves the game of poker, and I have a lot of quasi-philosophical thoughts on the game. Since I'm creating the blog anyways, I'll probably update it 4-5 times a week after I play with some general thoughts on some play/situation that came up that night as well as perhaps a few generalisms on poker. I also may post 1 or 2 hands a day that I think are interesting in some form or another. They may or may not be hands I was actually involved in.
One thing that is NOT currently the goal of this blog is to attempt to make you, the reader, a better player. The site is strictly for entertainment purposes. That being said, I do truly hope that regular visits here will encourage the people who read this to more closely examine their own games. If that happens to make you a better player, then I am happy to have helped. There are a lot of sites already out there that are meant to improve your poker game (and quite likely do so better than I could), so I will leave the 'teaching' to them.
On top of all of that, I first and foremost consider myself a student of the game. I learn something new each and every day it seems, or at the very least encounter a situation that makes me re-evaluate something I thought I knew to be poker gospel. I don't think the day will ever come where I don't feel I'm improving as a player, and if it does that will probably be the day my game takes a turn for the worse. With that being said, I'm *ALWAYS* happy to discuss poker. I'm sure throughout my posts I will include various ways to contact me if you wish to discuss various poker related things. One of the easiest is to e-mail rizen@sneakybuffalo.com. As a disclaimer, I'm a busy person with a 'real job' and a family I take care of. I appreciate it if you try and respect that and realize that I may not always respond to e-mail in a timely fashion, especially in the evenings when I am concentrating mostly on playing my game.
I may update this from time to time if either the purpose of this blog changes or if I get feedback that leads me to believe it should be updated. I hope that everyone who reads this gets some sort of enjoyment out of it, and I look forward to seeing you all on the tables.
-Rizen
