Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Haven't updated in forever, sorry

Well someone reminded me about my blog today and I'm like oh wow I forgot about it and decided to go ahead and update it. I guess I will mainly talk about my poker life, Well as far as I remember I didn't post anything about my win in the 33$ 1 rebuy 1 add on tourney last month for 3.5k which was nice. I guess thats where I will start, I cashed out some of it left plenty to build up off, slowly but smoothly builded back up to about 5k. I also had about a 2 week break, which I cameback from like a week or two ago, I think. At first I didn't quite have my "touch" and was having a hard time winning but few days later I won the 75$ stud h/l, the funny part is that was my second stud h/l tourney ever played. Only time I ever played stud h/l was in horse, and I don't really play horse that much. It wasn't really that much but hey for about 3 to 4 hours of work 1750$ is not bad in my opinion. I been doing quite a bit of cashing out last month and little bit this month which is always great and probably means I'm getting better at poker.
I personally think there are 5 steps to becoming a "pro" at poker. I guess I will try to smart here for little bit. First one which is where everyone starts is, of course the beginner, I don't really know anybody that was born and already knew how to play, this step we learn hand rankings, pot odds, percents and outs and stuff like that, basically the math and logic behind poker. Step 2, improving beginner, well we probably fell in love with the game, we are getting sick of losing and we want to actually start winning, we are trying to get better and be able to make good decisions, we still sometimes chase too much, make silly mistakes basically, we do win occasionally but not that much, we want to start winning more. step 3, I think quite a bit of online poker players are on this step, I'm going to call it semi good player, now we are getting the hang of it, we are trying to get rid of our silly calls, chases, tilting, etc. we now know how to win more often, although occasionally we still make those mistakes, maybe because we still don't handle the emotions properly, or maybe we are rushing and being impatient, but we do start winning little here and there, and lose some here and there. Now step 4, I think is one of the toughest steps in my opinion, "solid player", now we are where we start winning quite a bit, probably not enough to live on but pretty decent side money to spend on fun things, laptop, ipod, monitor, tv etc etc. Now we are where we learned all there is about poker, we calculate our odds and outs in few seconds, we start making reads on people, we start really getting deep in hands, we think about hands in all ways possible, we start seeing patterns and stuff like that. We go deep in a lot of tourneys, have small cashes, but like I said now we are on that step where the next step is becoming a pro and playing poker for a living, I'm sure many of us thought, dreamed, tried or w/e to become a pro, not many will have success with this, because not many know what they are getting into. Many people think, well I can get up and go to bed whenever I want, I will win some tourneys and I will be fine, well not really thats not how it works. I'm personally on that step 4, but there are so many things to becoming a pro. Well first of all you need some sort of schedule, you should be playing tourneys that are most profitable for you, but also you need some time for personal stuff, family, kids, etc. Also you definitely need a backup plan, if you just don't have the nerves and just can't handle it, you need some sort of education, so its easier to get a job, of course there is nothing wrong with playing poker on free time, weekends after work, w/e, for little etc money. Also you need money to start with and some money as back up in case you go on a bad run which happens to every poker player at least once during their poker career. Also you need to learn how to become more aggresive and start taking top 3 instead of just trying to make ft, I know a lot of players try to just make ft and then try to get w/e they can get, well to be able to make actual profit, you need to get top 3 places, since they pay the most money, not many have what it takes to take down tourneys, but if you are playing more aggresive that means in some cases you might not even make the final table, that means you need to learn to deal with it and still play your best game in the remaining tourneys if you multi table, which is probably a good idea. This is also where you should be making almost no mistakes unless its just a cooler or bad beat. But yea, I'm kind of tired and kind of sleepy, I hope i made my point. I might have to reread it and rewrite it later.
Other than that I been doing ok, I'm still working on improving my game, I still do make occasional mistakes just from anger problems and sometimes not paying attention, Thats also what i need to do, concentrate more on the game, I tend to do a lot better when im concentrated. I think thats just about it for now, I'm going to go grab a snack and sleep. I will try to start updating this more often, also sorry about being lazy for last month, lol. good night.